Building a Profitable B2B Podcast - Teacher: Ryan R. Sullivan

Hello, useful content creators today on useful content. We talk about how to build a profitable B2B podcast.

we talk with someone who has helped hundreds of founders, entrepreneurs, and creators from around the world launch and grow their business. Podcast.

we get into why many B2B podcasts fail. Why creating a podcast might be better than recording short form videos with your phone.

What is account based podcasting and how you can use it to attract your ideal clients, and finally, we look at why founders should always be involved in the creation of their company's podcast.

Enjoy the conversation and let's make useful content.

HEllo and welcome to the Useful Content Podcast. And today we have a brand new teacher in our Useful Content Classroom. Ryan Sullivan. Hi Ryan.

uh, be here. We've been connected for, I don't know, probably years at this point. So it's, I'm, I'm excited, man. Let's do it.

Yeah, it's great to have you on man. It's great to have you on. I, I've been following the content and there are a few things I want to ask you about the content that you're releasing in general, before we get into what we came to talk about today, which is like podcasting for business and how to make profitable content at scale.

Uh, but I'll, I'll, I'll get to that just now, but before we do that, could you please tell the people what you do and how you help your clients make useful content?

Sure. So we help B2B mostly service companies, um, create podcasts that are profitable or, you know, in another way of saying it is just have the podcast do what they want it to do.

Yeah. 

is 90 percent of company podcasts fail. You can quote me on that if you want, but just go and search them up. of them don't exist now. And if they were effective. Then they would keep doing it. 

So that is the problem that we have solved slash and are solving, um, in many different ways. 

when you say the podcast feel, what exactly does that mean?

Sure. Yeah. So a podcast it's that that's where it becomes a gray area, right? But my definition of a podcast failing for a company is that it's just not doing what they want it to do. in that case is, Oh, well, we, we launched this podcast. reality, they probably didn't really launch it. They just kind of like put it out there, right? And then Yeah, but we don't have a we don't have a hundred a thousand downloads an episode Well, then I would say Okay. Well Is that the goal that you what goals did you set when you came in? They're like, well, we don't really know So it's you go down this rabbit hole of realizing that there really weren't any goals to begin with

Yeah. 

another company do it and then they did it so When we talk about failure in podcasting for a company podcast, it's just whatever expectations you had, it's not meeting those.

But in reality, you probably don't know why you had those expectations to begin with.

Yeah. So when I hear podcast feeling, and I agree with you that if you don't set a goal, then you don't know where you're going towards and it probably is just going to eventually peter out. But is it possible? that if you have, if you do set goals and you have a podcast from a strategic perspective, that it comes to a natural end, a natural lifetime based on the strategic purpose of the podcast.

And then would you say that that podcast was successful?

Yes, so I'm not the arbiter of like, truth is what I always say. So, not here to tell you what to do with it. I'm just the facilitator, right? So I'm just the guide. So yeah, I mean, a company podcast, I mean, let's look at podcast SEO real quick. Let's do a double click on that. When I, in English, that means, Hey, you had this company podcast, you did 20, episodes. Your episodes pushed on these platforms, podcast platforms, if done correctly, forever, as long as nobody else is answering. Or has better retention or answering that keyword better than you. Then the podcast can constantly bring you, um, you know, whether it's viewers or downloads or listeners, et cetera, results, whatever you want. So yeah, a company podcast can totally come to a natural end. I've seen that before. Um, but typically we're working with companies who are either just started one or they have one and they want it to do something else for them.

Right. So that it can, can both can be true, right? You 

could have 

totally, totally. Yeah. 

Yeah. 

Okay. Well, it's interesting. So some companies already have a fairly engaged audience based on other content. And I've heard you give the advice that if some company already has this engaged audience and they're thinking about whether they should do an audio podcast or they should start YouTube, that it's better for them to do the podcast.

Now, here's my thing about that. When people, when you say podcast today, people often automatically go to video in their brain. Uh, Uh, you know, so is it that, so why not do both? Why not record the video podcast and use that for the audio purposes as well? Or are you saying that both can happen as well?

Yeah. So if I say podcast, that's what I mean, I mean, audio and video.

right. 

Yeah. It's 2024. This is where we're at. Um, podcasting at this point is a, essentially a, a way to start video content. 

Right? 

Yeah. 

if we were just to look at the reality of it, it's, it's, it's the opposite of just recording videos with your phone, meaning that doing that works. That's the problem, right? Is that you can record a video with your phone and post it on LinkedIn. If you do have this engaged audience and then people will love it, but that's not a strategy, right? So the podcast gives you the strategy and the structure, just for example,

I want to make that clear because sometimes people separate the two, some people still think, and I guess those people have been around for a while when they hear podcasts, they still think exclusively audio 

I get that though I think there's massive benefits to the audio we just had somebody in our group coaching program to come and guest speak for us. His name's Anthony. Um, get more listeners. com is their service. And they're all about podcasts, SEO. They don't even really talk about video or YouTube. Um, at least not the way that we do.

So there's different, it's not as much levels to the game. It's more so there's, There's um different the podcast can do multiple things at once Um, and that's the benefit of it I mean, I don't know any other content form of content that can literally be become 90 percent of all your your marketing And help you close more deals

Yeah. And we'll get to that quantum of different things that it can do later on, and I want to get into that, but let me ask you one more question before we move on, because I've noticed something about your content on your podcast. Now, something that I myself. I want to do, but I can't do, right. And let me tell you what it is.

I admire the fact that you have a different thumbnail and you have great thumbnails too, for every single episode of your podcast, but I think that is so much work. So first question is why do you do it? And the second question is how, how do you do it? What's the system you have?

so i'll give you a you everything. I'm not going to hold anything back here. So number one, why do I do it? Well, let's look at our system. Let's look at our strategy, right? My strategy is here. I'll give you the hard and fast what works on LinkedIn video from a video perspective will not work on YouTube. But what works on YouTube will from a video perspective, most likely work on LinkedIn. So that's, that's the five year thing that we've figured out. Just take my word for it type of thing, right?

Hmm. 

With that being said, now let's have a power play. Let's have a combo. Let's leave out text. Now copy on your post.

We can talk about that, but let's leave out podcast SEO. Let's leave out blogs. Let's leave out newsletters. Let's just focus on video for a second. So we have the YouTube video. So say, for example, right. Yourself, you go in and you have a framework and you go, you know what? I'm going to create four YouTube style videos.

These are five, 10, maybe up to 15 minute videos, but I'm going to do that in a way where I have a script or format that allows me to pull two to four clips from the, that long form YouTube video. So I've optimized the title and the thumbnail. And the format of the video for YouTube, though, at the same time, I'm creating this thing that I can pull these clips from, add copy on top, which is the key for LinkedIn, as we know,

Hmm. 

know, and then post those as clips, right? So that is the strategy. So it's starts on YouTube, then moves to the clips. And then also, though, let's go on to the side route, which is that that episode is also being. There's an audio intro and audio outro being added to it. And then it's going on the podcast platforms that

Hmm. 

optimized for podcast SEO, right?

So that's going to have a different title. That's going to have a different description maybe. So what we're doing is we're going from the source content, which is longer form five, 10, 15 minutes. If you want to talk interviews or co hosted, we could talk about that too. But just in the con in this context, um, we are taking those videos, That video is getting a custom title and a custom thumbnail I am deciding what the title and thumbnail are going to be just so everybody knows Um, and and we teach our clients how to do this, right? And then from there those clips are being cut into most likely vertical and then they can be repurposed on instagram tiktok youtube And obviously linkedin And that's the Some of the how I mean the why is I don't want to be restricted to one platform I don't want to be just restricted to linkedin Um, I want to grow my audience on youtube.

I want to grow my audience on my podcast I want to grow my audience everywhere if I can so i'll start with linkedin nail one platform Get that down outsource and automate as much of it as possible While maintaining the results and then i'll move to say youtube or these other platforms

Yeah, that's great. That's a great way to do it. A great structure. Um, I'm kind of happy that LinkedIn is finally in the conversation when it comes to short form content, like in earnest, in the conversation. Now, when they used to call that list, shorts, reels, TikToks, 

TikToks, used to just kind of skip over LinkedIn. Now they're actually in the conversation since they released this new. 

Hmm. 

it. There's no press release. They've rolled it out to a random amount of people. Seemingly random. I got it really early. People were like, how'd you get this video feed? I'm like, I don't know. I'm just, like, they just gave it to me.

They didn't tell me they gave it to me. So, and then some of your videos are on it, and some of them are not. So it's just everything's very confusing. I agree with you. I'm just saying the way that LinkedIn, AKA Microsoft does things, it makes no sense, but we're here. We're just, it's their world and we're living in it.

Yeah. Yeah. We're the guinea pigs right now. They're testing everything on us. So I'm happy to be on it. I mean, Uh, from a results perspective, 

just from my impressions and a reach perspective, it has been, it seems to be working in that department, but I know eventually they'll pull those things back and

Yeah. 

it a bit more restrictive, but I guess if now you can utilize it to get some reach, if you do, if you have good structure for your videos and you know what you're doing with it.

So that, that's a good thing to have 

right now. 

Yeah. I mean, if you don't mind, I would like to just give a little bit of, um, two sides of the coin, right? So let's just look at it like this, right? Yeah. Yes. With that being said, you know, video, let's look at the internet guys. It's video. That's it. I mean, literally it used to be text. Now it's not, it's video now. Great. We can all agree. If you don't agree, this podcast isn't for you. now moving from there, going, let's, that's reality. You can, like I said, you can record these TikTok style videos, right? And I know many influencers who do it and it's great. I love it. They all have a podcast. So if between me and you, man, there's a reason you're doing this, right?

Let's look at what would I rather do? I would rather sit here and talk to you for an hour, 45 minutes, whatever it is, and then just go and pull moments from that. rather than trying to create 20 to 30 different videos. So I'm just, when, when we, when I talk to people about podcasting, when I talk to founders, CEOs, marketers, CMOs, I do not talk about anything related to podcasting. The first thing I ask them is what type of life do you want to live? It's what type of literally how do you want your life to be? To change, right? So you're not recording videos. Now you are recording them, but how are you recording them? That's, that's the question. So do you want to be the guy that's recording 30 videos to the phone like this? Or do you want to be the guy or gal who is sitting, laying back in their chair for 45 minutes an hour? Right, and it can just talk openly and then you could go ahead and create the content from that So I just want a caveat with that because that's just do a bare reality, right? 

Like 

Yeah, yeah. 

down to nothing else

Yeah, that's a compelling argument. You know, do you want this or do you want this? You know, what would you prefer? Prefer to have to set up your phone and do thirty videos, thirty scripts or or just have to go deep on one particular subject that you know everything about, you know? Um and so I I think that's a a good argument to push people into the thinking about it the right way.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. Good. So none of this is, that's a great foundation that we've laid, right. We haven't touched the actual topic that we came to talk about, although we kind of have, so let's, let's get into that. So building a profitable business, profitable content at scale, right. Using podcasting for business.

So when you say a profitable content at scale, what exactly do you mean, Ryan?

Sure. So when I say profitable, I mean, hey, these videos, it's not that the videos are monetized. It's that it's not that your video gets 10 million views that goes viral on tick tock and then tick tock pays you because you're a tick tock creator. There isn't a world where that happens. And that's not really what the world that I'm talking about, though.

I know people who do that and that can work for you. The world that I'm talking about is Transcribed There's content you're creating now. That would be text posts, that would be, typically there's a social media manager creating the content, which, by the way, you're, basically what you're saying is we're taking a person who's not an expert at anything that we do. And we're going to have them create all the content. So we're going to have them be the, be the voice and face of our entire brand. Okay, I'm making that sound crazy because it really does sound crazy. So the alternative to that is okay. Or you're the founder who's making the content who probably doesn't have a system.

You're successful, right? You don't even probably need to make content. Now you do because you realize, hey, the internet, we need inbound leads instead of outbound, right? But you have this successful business. Okay, great. We have clients, we have case studies, we have success, we have a website, we have everything.

We're cooking. Now we want to start creating video content because the internet is video. Okay, then how are we going to do that? The podcast is going to do that, but then what type of podcast are we going to create? Before we go into that, let's look at the two subsets. There's two different types of brands in this case. When it comes to content, there's business brands. That means the podcast is part of your sales process, part of your marketing, part of your content, part of your FAQ section, et cetera. Then you have an influencer brand. That means your podcast is your product. That is

Yeah. 

That is Chris Williamson.

That is Rogan. You name it, right? Let's, we're gonna move that one away. We're not gonna talk about that one. That, the influencer brand, like I said, that's the TikTok, etc. But, but then, hey, just so you know, we keep it for a second. Just so you know, we're not going for millions of views here. So when you don't become the next Gary V, we're not going to get mad.

Okay, great. We're not going to be Gary V. We're not going to be Rogan. Great. Perfect. Okay. Now we're on the business brand. So when we talk profitable podcasting, what that means is attracting ideal prospects with the podcast.

Hmm. 

And I can double click on that if you want, or if you want to

Yeah. Go, Go, go, go, deeper. That's here. 

Oh, 

way to add revenue, With a podcast if you are a a founder CMO marketer somebody higher up in the business already have a business Successful with clients profitable revenue right not struggling to survive then number three you have some sort of personality, right?

You don't have to be you can be introvert extrovert. It doesn't matter right again. I'm not the arbiter of truth Now if you want the easiest way, right? Which there's caveats to all of this, which we can go through. But the easiest way is to do what's called account based podcasting. just talking to a founder yesterday who we were talking about, you know, strategic advising with his business.

But, but towards the end of the call, he just started talking to me about his podcast. That wasn't even the point of the call. He said, yeah, I've been running this podcast. For seven years and we're getting like a few thousand downloads a month But he's like I've generated over two million dollars in business from the podcast

wow. 

like technically it's prop like it's very profitable But you know, what else can I do with it?

Right and then we went down that rabbit hole But the first part of what he said is the key, right? It's like, he's like, we're at a few thousand downloads a month. That's most people don't have a hundred downloads a month, right? So he didn't even know what he didn't know, which was great. Right. And we can lead them in that direction.

But the point of this is that he interviews people that could be of benefit. to his service or vice versa. His service could be a benefit to them. And if you do that and you are a real person and you do have a real business and you say you are who you say you are, then you are essentially guaranteed to generate revenue by interviewing ideal prospects. Now, the other side of that is maybe the content's not that good. That's why it only gets a few hundred downloads. But do you care? Again, I'm not the arbiter of truth. So if, if that's success to you, then that's success to you. Then we have what I would consider the content matrix, like the podcast matrix.

So it's a split of, it's a mix of the account based podcasting, the YouTube style, the solo short form. It's a little bit of a mix of everything where have one third solo. So you would be, for example, you would be the. Just the talking head, right? So one third of the content, the next third of the content would be co hosted episodes that could be with a potential prospect or it could be with another leader in your industry.

It could be with your, somebody else in your company. the other third is client interviews. Founders. A lot of times have problems with the bottom of the funnel. Founders fall into two categories. They either do the education really well, they know how to bring people in that don't know what the hell you're talking about, or they love to sell really hard.

It's like really, not many people fall in the middle.

The middle girl. 

especially for those founders who, hey, like we know how good our freaking thing is, it's so good. Okay, great. But you can't say it like that, right? Like we both know how good our service is, but when you say it like that, that's, it doesn't attract people. So that final piece, the client interviews, right? Or success interviews is what Alex Ramos would call it. Um, we started doing this before I even knew it was a thing. Um, and we've done probably 10, maybe nine or 10 of them. We try to do one a month. And so that's your bottom of the funnel. So that is basically the split.

Um, when it comes to profitable podcasting, you realize I'm not going to be the next Gary V. Okay, sick. Now from there, let's move from there. Okay. You would, this thing has to be profitable. If we want the easy route, let's just interview a bunch of potential prospects and then some of them will close. If we want the more long term route, if we want all of the benefits, okay, then let's have this split between maybe co hosting an interview episodes, you know, some solo episodes, and then maybe some interviews too.

Yeah, I love that. I love that because, okay, for me, for example, me, I am in the position now where I've run this podcast for a bit, right? Um, it's, it's doing pretty well in terms of reach and people engaging with it. And I don't know how, um, you would view this, but it's actually.

In my country, it's, it's the number one marketing podcast, right? And so, you know, so it's, it's doing pretty good 

with that 

now. 

good.

Yeah. Yeah. And so I am thinking like what you mentioned there about the client interviews. Now, this is something I know, It's not as if I don't know this. I know bottom of funnel.

You need to show that transformation to close the deal. I know this. It's in my brain.

Yep. 

can't, it's undeniable that I know this fact. But for some reason, up until you said it just now, And interestingly, somebody had asked me about it and somebody else was on the podcast and mentioned it, but I'd kind of file that away in, well, do this later or whatever in my brain.

But now that you mentioned it, it's popped back in my head again as, oh, I need to interview these people who we've done stuff for. And, and that, that cadence that you mentioned, that frequency. It sounds ideal like once a month you 

sit down with somebody and you get the The full story or we do we do um client interviews for our clients all the time So we already have the questions.

We know what to ask And so I I think That yeah, yeah now that you mentioned it. I should do that

yeah, well, hey,

I should do that 

it, right? And yeah, but that's not, you know, that's really what we're getting at here is, hey, if that was part of your podcast strategy, you wouldn't have to think about doing it.

Yeah, yeah, 

it like you would go. Well, here's a slot that I need filled Okay, which client is going to run this be on this interview today, right?

So that's how I would say half of the benefit of podcasting is just having this structure Having this weekly structure on monday Um, you know, we're at the end of august here. I don't know when this is going out But monday is like I said, it's my birthday, but it's also my 200th episode, you know

right 

we've done i've done it for the last You Yeah.

About like 150 weeks in a row. Um, a little bit while back I took some time off. Um, but yeah, I mean, it's sticking to that structure means that I'm not gonna go. Like I can't stop, right. I can't stop. Um, and within that, that means that you have to do the client interviews after you set out, said that you were going to do them.

Right. 

Um, 

so we look at it. There's a, Oh, look at the thousand benefits of podcasting. But Hey, accountability is let's not leave that one out, you know, we all need it.

Yeah, I agree. I agree 100%. I think that, uh, and you know, here's the, here's the thing, right? So initially when, when I launched this podcast, that, that the doing, this wasn't the point, the business has shifted.

Okay. 

and so because the business has shifted, I am now in a position where I have to go and, um, look at the strategy again.

So this, these are signals. Now you just reminded me that. That's something we need to have on the tape. Just reassess the whole purpose of the podcast and the way in which we're going to use it and use it as a tool. Okay, great. Enough about me and my thoughts. Let's go on and move on to some of the other things that you've said.

You, you talk about B2B marketing, having a midlife crisis. I don't show what that means, but I'm sure you're going to get into that. 

Um, and you say in the next five years that it'll be more difficult to find, uh, talent will be more difficult to find. And you were referred to The announcement era of marketing.

That's a lot of stuff. Tell me what you mean when you talk about, uh, where B2B marketing is at. 

So when it comes to B2B, um, marketing, we have a, Um, there, there's the, the reason why B2B marketing is changing is not because companies are not successful, right? The reason why companies change is it's, it's typically one or two reasons. It could be a combo, but it's either pain or growth. It's either, oh my God, we're losing money, help, or it's holy crap.

We're growing, right? So it's like kind of one of the other ones, right? So we had this era when I say the announcement era. Meaning B to B companies grew a lot without social media, right? That's why they're here. That's why they're successful. They used email, they used ads, a lot of ads, right? Um, huge, right?

Massive marketing budgets. And a lot of that went to ads. It didn't go to organic social, right? So they were successful in that. That's good. But also that era has changed. Look at changes how they rank everything like every day. And listen, I'm not an

Yeah. 

so I don't know all 

Yeah. 

but I see people. Being like what is happening?

Yeah. 

Yeah. 

so they could they realize okay great. We have been successful in these other channels, right? I think cold isn't is just always good, right? It's like it seems like it always works even when email deliverability stuff changes somehow You know cold is cold like you can call as many people as you want They're not gonna shut you down Right, so that works too But then they realized okay, these other things are changing like the deliverability rates are going up There's a problem where our ads aren't as effective, et cetera. There's too many ads, right? So what happened was their social media, when they were at the height would just be announcements.

It would just be like,

Yeah. 

we just got this new certification program, or Hey, we just won this award, or Hey, like, here's a, here's our employees. It would be very like internal. Right.

Yeah. 

And so now it's shifting to, um, now it has to shift to, can we use social media to literally bring in deals? Right. And so that is the essentially the B2B marketing midlife crisis where we had an era of a lot of the direct response, the ads, the cold that was working.

I came into marketing with working for a company that sent sent 3000 cold emails a week.

Right.

Insane. And a lot, a lot of companies, like you can't really do that now. There's ways, you know, I know people are still doing it, but it's just obvious that the organic social side, um, it's, they know they need to do it, but the

Yeah. 

how do we do it?

And that's what brings us here.

Yeah. Yeah. So you believe in that organic social as a result of 

what You see happening in the market. 

to though, that's the thing. So that's the caveat is you have to believe in organic social for it to work. It might work if you don't believe in it. Like if the CMO believes in it, but the founder doesn't. It might kind of work, but you really need company wide or at least leader, leadership based buy in.

No doubt.

Okay, great. So now that we've established that, what is this midlife crisis and all the announcement era is basically at a close and that companies have to invest in organic social, which I agree with, by the way, I think I love organic social. I don't deal in ads, even though ads are useful and they 

can't be depending on what you, what results you're trying to get.

And if that's part of your strategy. Very, very useful, but I love organic because organic really does help with that relationship building part of it. And it gets people to buy in over a period of time. It's, it's really very effective for long term and for customer retention for, for the, you know, customer lifetime value, really, very, very, very good for that.

All right. So let's talk about the fact that Podcast is the way that you approach it. And as we're talking about today, but you've said that the podcast is just the vehicle and that the talent is actually the fuel in that 

vehicle. When it comes to organic content, 

explain to me what you mean by that and why is that important to understand?

Sure. Yeah. Great question. By the way, you're really good at this, man. That's a great podcast.

Okay. Thanks. I 

appreciate that. 

doing? Um, so it's quality in quality out. It's the tap. When I say talent, I mean, typically the founder, um, if it's a funded company, yes, maybe the founder has less experience in that thing. But if you talk a B2B service company, right, that founder is probably solving.

They were probably just solving their own pain point when they created their company. So they're an expert. Um, so that's why having somebody below the C suite being the face of the content is a little more risky. they have, um, direct experience or similar experience, right? As the founder, right? But when it comes to the talent, say, um, let's use our B2B examples, which not everybody listening might know of, but, um, you know, Chris Walker B2B

Yeah, yeah, 

He, he does group coaching. Right? Like it's so simple, but it's like real. He does basically a live podcast every week, right?

yeah, 

the guy he's, you know, you're the guy, if you're the girl, if you're whoever you are, you, that is leadership, right? And so what I find is that founders again, they are successful. If you are that successful, and if you do know what you're talking about, and if your business is so great, then what's stopping you from on, clicking record? So, there's a little bit of a diversion of, uh, responsibility in a sense, where like, Yeah, I get it, but I'm busy and can somebody

yeah, yeah, 

they can be amazing They couldn't they can be the face But either even if the founder isn't quote unquote all of the talent, right? And I don't even make all of the content at our company either, but my partner Jack It's either me or him because we're the ones creating the content Doing all the things create on the front lines, right?

Like I will not ask my audio editor though if he wants to I would love for him to do it But I won't ask Ivan to start, you know teaching Audio right to our prospects, right? Um, so i'll i'll do that. It's fine. Like i'll cover it. So that's really the split there is like The founder is the talent, um, whether they become the talent on the podcast or the face or not They still have to be involved in it.

I would say somehow

I would say so. I think that is a good thing to plug in right there because you often find founders and you made a point that they often say, I'm busy, I'm busy. Let the marketing department handle 

that. 

the marketing department's busy too. Yeah

Yeah, 100%. And I, and I think that the founders, especially if they've been in the business, they were, you know, there's some founders who started it. They were the ones that actually built the thing and they built it. They added people, they added people, the business grew. So they know these stories. They were there in the sales calls.

They were there when the thing was grimy and if you didn't know where they would succeed. 

So they have all of these different things that they can share and not just be. actual outcomes, but what was behind the outcomes.

yep 

And, um, and I think that's such a great value. Even if, even if you, you're not doing like the day to day, um, selling anymore or the business stuff into interfacing with customers, they do have things that can bring great value.

Don't you agree? 

Yeah. no 100% man, 100% and also like even on the founder 

note, right? Um You Isn't the point to take yourself out of the business? Right? Like, I thought you get successful So then you could pay people to do stuff that you don't want to do to take yourself out of any low level work Meaning lower being, meaning like stuff you already know how to do and then you grow, train, lead people that stuff.

And then now you're at the top and you're the main decision maker. In that case, you shouldn't be that busy, right? But I know it's a lot of time. It comes back to a founder syndrome that we all have, you know? Um, but, but on to your point as well. Yeah. There's a lot of people. There's a lot of talent within your organization that is just not being recognized.

Ask them to come on a podcast and see what happens. See what happens to their productivity. I guarantee you it's not going down.

Yeah, for sure. For sure. For real. So let's talk about how that works. Yeah. how creating that podcast would actually work and there are many podcasts which are seemingly generic right there you could just swap one one out with the next and nobody would notice but how can you make this unique podcast what are the steps that you take in order to say well this is something that people will actually want to hear about

Yeah, so the first one is I would not as much focus on your core audience. I would focus on the niche or the niche within your industry. So the less competition you have, the less unique your idea has to be. if you look at, you know, say, for us it was life insurance. Um, this concept called infinite banking, which I won't go into the definition of it, you can Google it. But, um, 

what, 

I, I know it, I know it, I recently saw, yeah, yeah, yeah, I, I, I know. Well, at least the financial concept of it, I know it. Go ahead.

Yeah, so you borrow against your own life insurance to basically remove banks so you don't use banks anymore. Put your money into life insurance. Sounds crazy. Um, go, you're going to have to go through wealth warehouse podcast. By the way, you could break it down.

Right. 

in that case, right, we helped our clients launch this podcast, infinite banking podcast years ago. There weren't that many podcasts there. So them just coming in with like, Hey, we're ex military guys. You know, we're disciplined. We're like on a certain side of the political spectrum. Just that alone was enough to differentiate them. That's one example. if you look now, another podcast, for example, um, that we, uh, helped with was in the, uh, I guess it was like the marketing space sales and marketing.

So like cold, like cold calling's not dead type of deal. Um, it's phone ready leads was one of the companies they acquired. So, um, it was, yeah, it was like outbound cold calling, right? In that case, there was a lot, there's a lot of sales and marketing podcasts. So we came up with the idea of like, let's do sports center. You know, U. S. Based sports program, by the way, for people who don't know,

Mhm. 

that. But for this, so let's have a list of stuff on the side, let's have a list of topics where we bang through them. There's a co host, and then there's, there's like an interviewer and interviewee, right? And so in that case, they created a sports center style podcast for their industry. So you don't always need The idea of like, let me interview people the day before they die or something crazy.

Right. 

that's Stephen Bartlett's example. You don't always need it in B2B and in these niches. If you're going cultural, yeah, forget about it.

You need the most unique idea probably in the world. But, um, if you're, that's the benefit of us being in smaller industries here is that you can be a little bit less unique. But that doesn't mean you just start the random show where you just interview random people. That's not gonna work either.

Right. Okay. So, so the thing about like having a podcast where you, uh, um, so let me, let me draw an example. So, so this podcast that we're doing right now is, um, I'm interviewing experts about things in marketing just as a general, um, Umbrella, right?

Sure. Yeah,

of the reasons this is so useful is because the, a lot of the things that people share are basically evergreen.

Sometimes they last for a long time and you could use the content over and over again, especially if it's a, it has a strong point of view and it relates to your business. So when you leave here, you can take some of these clips and you can use them to just talk about what you do, how you do it, the nuts and bolts of it.

There's another version of podcasting where that I have kind of was thinking about where it's just like a news, a new show where it's recent things in your industry. So for example, um, uh, the godfather of content marketing, Joe Pulizzi, he does that with, with, um, With Rose, I can't remember his first name and they do this whole marketing.

And basically it's by and large, it's a news show. They go on recent topics. What's happening in content marketing. But after that's done, it's done. That is not really strongly repurposable. Um, when you, when people come to you and they come with an idea, like I want to do current things in the industry and I want to do this new stuff, do you guide them away from that immediately?

Or do you say, well, let's see what your ideas are. And let's talk it through and see what you want to accomplish. How do you decide on which one to go with? Yeah,

in the podcasting industry, especially B2B there, right? And I see that gap, you know, and I'm like, Oh, should I fill that? Or, you know, I'm like, should I make the new podcast news show for B2B? But, um, I don't discourage clients from doing it, but I think that none of us realize how hard that really is. So, when I say, like, how hard it is, that means You cannot stop, and you literally need to get the content, form an opinion about it by the time you release it, right? Which could be days, hours, or minutes, right? So, when you talk about like, yeah, news style content, high, high of it is it's literally amazing.

You're the number one news program in for that industry. You have all of the reach. You have all of the leverage. You have all of the data. You have everything. The other side of that is we don't know how long it's going to take to work. We don't know if it's going to catch. We don't know. It's in so much time.

So I would say if you are going to go in that direction, which again, I think is a great idea. Uh, I would say launch it as its own entity because it's going to

yeah, 

a company, right? It's not really that it's a new show. We kind of just do on the side Um, so I would say in that respect like treat it like a new show There's a reason why you know, uh television is So, you know not easy to get into right?

yeah, yeah, I agree. And I think sometimes if you have the thought that you want to mix it in with your current podcast, it just doesn't fit. It feels weird when you try to do both, you know, um, have this current thing that's happening and then Uh, have these, these expert interviews and then have these solo these client interviews 

it, 

I guess exactly, it would be different podcasts, but then, you know, some people might think, Oh, they might just, let's just do all these things together.

And that doesn't work. Does it.

No, well, there's a way around this, so you can do both. Um, what you can do is, that's why it's really nice to make like YouTube style videos too, is you can do reaction videos. So you can just react to stuff. That's very, very, very popular. Every time I did a reaction video to Chris Williamson, or Alex Ramosi, or Joe Rogan, it would get way more views.

It wasn't attracting the people that I wanted to attract, if you want the easy hack to just get views at least on youtube Um, or even maybe tiktok or these other platforms just make a reaction to something that happened and have an opinion on it Um, so that's the way to get around that

Yeah, I noted that. I noticed your top three videos on YouTube were all Joe Rogan videos. 

Uh 

and

I 

I, 

that 

I, I, you stopped doing it, right? 

And I was gonna ask if you noticed that and you double down on it or it just was a fluke, you know, 

type of thing. 

yeah, so my mindset was like I don't want to be I, I don't really want to hijack other people's success. So I want people to just follow, like consume my videos because of the quality of my videos, not because of I'm talking about Joe Rogan. 

So I just made a decision. I either could have went all in and I could have been the guy who talks about Joe Rogan guy, or I can just stick to what I'm doing and I'd rather get the views that I get,

Yeah, yeah. 

So, yeah, I

Yeah, 

it was, it was a case study.

yeah, yeah, 

yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a good thing. I'm glad that you didn't become the Jorugan guy, you know. That would have been a little troublesome. Because there are many Jorugan guys, by the way. 

Uh, 

yes! 

yeah, 

that's 

Yeah, Yeah, exactly. All right. So the last thing we want to touch on is just how important is the customer when deciding on your podcast?

And, um, and the fact that you have to put them first, you have to put them before the company. Let me get your perspective on that and tell me how would that work for somebody creating a podcast?

Yeah, so you're saying your question would be like, how to think about anybody from prospects to customers when it comes

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Cause I think 

you, you said that. Uh, if you, if you're creating a unique podcast that it's more about the customer than it is about your company, right? So yeah. How is, how does that, how does somebody approach that and make sure, how does one make sure that it's about the customer first and not your company first?

So, I mean, if you're posting on social media anyway, that's going to give you a great indication of what's going to work and what's not going to work. You can make a podcast based on your most, 10 most popular posts, you know, and there's your podcast, right? Now, what you can do is you can take those 10 posts and those ideas, then you can have the framework.

We, you know, we have a script that we do. Give to our clients for the YouTube style, five to 10 minutes. It's a certain framework. So then you could apply it to the framework and then you can do some SEO research and figure out, okay, what keywords do I want to rank for say on Spotify or Apple, um, or Google or YouTube. And so then you can marry those together. So you go, what worked on social versus what work, what the market is looking for. you want, you know, high. Volume, but like low number of results, right? So say it's like LinkedIn video, right? Maybe there's no podcast about that, right? Okay, great. Maybe I'll take my looks.

Hey, wait, half of my best poster about LinkedIn video.

Yeah, 

Maybe now that's my podcast, right? So that's how I would look at it. There's no exact science though. We have this kind of. Framework for doing it in, you know, when it comes to our clients. Um, but yeah, I mean, if you want this simple way, just take what's already working.

yeah. 

don't have any content that's working and you've been doing the announcement poster, you've just been trying, well, that's when it's okay. I would sit down with somebody who really knows how to do this and I would design it with them.

Okay. Great. All right. So we we're coming in for the finish line here. And, um, before we wrap up, are there any like big things that we should know about creating this B2B podcast that you haven't mentioned before? Or the last podcast I was on, I asked the person, is there one thing to rule them all? Is there a principle that people have to use when they are making their podcast that makes the most sense?

And maybe you could share that principle.

Yeah. So the one is time. Um, so when it comes to podcast principles, is the biggest one. You gotta let it work. Um, I'm talking six to 12 months, 

Yeah give it tthat give it the time 

there. 

we have ways to

make it work faster,

but long term results come from playin the long game

just, there's no around that. The next one would be other people go in your market, could be friends, could be competitors, especially competitors. What are they doing? Do they have podcasts? Right. for example, you know, um, Sweetfish media is a pretty big B2B podcast production company. They do it. They have a podcast about B2B, right? So I look at that and I go, Oh, interesting. Now my videos are not even close to like the style of their content, right? That's on purpose. So around. Then number three would be quality. The thing that you, thing that is literally requires zero skill or talent is getting a nice camera and decent mic. You know, a light in this case, mine doesn't work today, but luckily I have another light. It doesn't always work. That's not the point. The technology is only great when it works, but Investing in quality meaning everything from the pre production to the post production Um, it comes back to our common thread right the talent piece.

Um, you're never gonna regret that you're never gonna say damn that It sucks that I bought that really nice camera that I use for all my videos Nobody ever says that

That's great. That's great. That's great. So yeah, I asked for one principle. I got three and I hope the people appreciate that we got three things. So Ryan, people may want to find you online, do business with you, check out your content. Where can they find you online?

Sure, so it's Ryan R. Sullivan. If you use the R, you'll find me a little bit easier. I'm working on that Ryan Sullivan SEO, but it's a tough name to, uh, to rank for. Um, beyond that, yeah, YouTube is Ryan Sullivan as well. Ryan R. Sullivan. So Google Ryan R. Sullivan, you'll find me. Um, I guess I'm having a good moment here cause my light is going off.

Um, for the, sorry for the audio listeners, my light's going crazy right now. But, um, yeah, um, podcastprinciples. com is our main site. I would say just DM me, just add me on LinkedIn, add a note. Thank you. 

Which would 

Yeah. 

and just be like, Hey, saw you on this podcast. Um, I'll got resources. I got anything you need.

Let me know. We'll give it to you. And then finally we have a group coaching program that's for podcasters who are also business owners or it's for companies, um, for us to help train their employees when it comes to podcasting. So that's our, uh, our intro slash trial program that we're scaling up right now too.

So if you want to get in on the action, that's how you can do it.

Okay. Excellent. Excellent. Go check Ryan out in all the places that he's mentioned. Uh, it will be in the show notes. Um, thank you so much, Ryan, for joining us today in a useful content classroom. Thank you students for being here. Useful content classroom. Dismissed.

Peace.

And we're clear. Good. That's it. I glad you enjoyed yourself.

I 

glad you enjoyed yourself. 

host. I mean, that's, was top quality right there. You're really focusing on the audience, which is key.

Yeah. 

everybody will do that.

No, absolutely. Absolutely. I, there's no other point. I mean, I, you know, there are two things. Part of it is selfish, obviously. I want to learn stuff 

as well. Right. So I talk to people who are interesting to me. Um, but another big part of it is that the audience must get value.

Mm 

They must get value. And that's what useful content is about.

There are four things. There's educational, it's for a specific person. It's um, educational for a specific person. It can be reused. And the fourth one is, why am I blanking on this right now? There's a fourth one, but, but, but those four things are 

usually what defines how my content is made. And, um, and definitely the education part is number one.

It's high on the list. 

People have to learn to learn stuff. Yeah. 

the walk, right? I mean, you're literally doing, that's the best example is you run the system that you sell, you know?

Yeah, yeah, 100%.

Best 

But thanks, thanks so much for coming on. I, I do appreciate it and um, Yeah, you were ripping man. You, you explained everything so clear, very sharp. I can tell you're passionate about this for sure.

No, thank you. Thank you. It's so many reps, man. I try to do at least a couple of interviews a week, you know, but I'm also, uh, that's why I'm, I'm outsourcing everything and automating everything I can because I want to just be out there making the content and doing and talking about it, you know? So it's, uh, it's been a lot of like. You know, all of these things, none, nothing that I said today is new. It's

Yeah. 

that I've said before.

Yeah, 

but it's just about those reps of saying it over and over and over again and getting really good. So, and at least that's my goal. Hopefully people can take something out of that.

yeah, yeah. Getting on those reps is, getting in those reps is essential. Very, very essential for quality communication and building a quality product and just getting a point of view out there as well. Um, what about DJ Sully? What about DJ, DJ Sully?

the drop, baby. Sully Bob on the drop. Um, yeah, man. I mean, I'm cooking. I got gigs. I got a gig last weekend. I got a gig this weekend. I got a gig next weekend. Um, it's uh, I started another, a business, you know, side business with it. I worked for a company for four years left. At the end of last year, went fully self employed. Bought a DJ set up, now I'm buying a photo booth, so, that's 

Oh, 

like, a side job for me and my girlfriend basically for us to, cause if we worked together all the time, we would kill each other, but if we just do it on the weekends, it's not that bad, so,

yeah, yeah, 

man, I appreciate you asking about that, I'm getting back into music too, and, you know, it's still on the side, I gotta build the empire too, but.

yeah. That's why, is it, is it Sully is a bop? That's Sully bop?

Yeah, you know, it's a guy, there's like a basketball player with this guy's like name. It's like Sully Bob or something like that.

Oh, 

in some other country. And some guy told me that like 10 ago. And then that's where Sully Bob came from. So

yeah, it's just 

like, okay, you know these days like kids, I don't know if there's still a thing They say if a good song is a bop

it's 

Uh, yeah. Yes 

taken advantage of that, but I, I probably should. ha 

maybe maybe that's cool man, that's cool man good stuff. All right, let me let me cut up the recording now, yeah 

Yeah, 

interviews are fire, you know?

that's what it's for 

the after 

show after 

class is what I call 

it 

class. Oh, I like that.

Very good, very good