Indepth with Matthew Holman: Leveraging Podcasts for Subscription Business Growth | Matthew Holman

Sadaf Beynon: Welcome to Podjunction Podcast, a show for podcasters who want to use their podcast to grow their business. I'm your host, Sadaf Beynon, and today I'm joined by Matthew Holman, also known as the Subscription Doc, the host of Subscription Prescription, and a master at using his podcast to drive his whole content strategy. Sorry, I kind of butchered all the names over there, but I'm joined by Matthew, who I'm going to ask to if you would please introduce yourself.

Matthew Holman: I would love to, Sadaf. So, yes, I am Matthew Holman. I'm the founder of Subscription Prescription. It's a media and consulting company that helps direct to consumer or e commerce. Brands with subscriptions do a lot of different stuff in addition to consulting, newsletter, podcasts, social media. But yeah, the joke is, you know, my dad's a doctor. I'm not a real one myself. I play online.

Sadaf Beynon: Nice. I like that. I like that. Well, thank you, Matthew, and welcome to the show. It's really great to have you back.

Matthew Holman: Absolutely.

Sadaf Beynon: Thank you, Matthew, I was wondering if you could start by telling us about that light bulb moment that made you realize that podcasting was a great tool to help you grow your business.

Matthew Holman: Absolutely. I think podcasting is one of those things where, you know, in the space that I'm in, in subscriptions, it's often not top of mind. I mean, some brands, it's top of mind, but for a lot of brands, they're very growth focused. They're trying to acquire that next customer and then they want to go figure out subscriptions. And so when we had the first for a while, and a lot of feedback we got from people is that they would listen, they would read the newsletter in bunches, right? They, you know, they'd wait for three, four, five of them. They'd get 30, 40 minutes or an hour set aside and go and read a bunch of, like, the ones that they'd missed recently. And so that kind of screams like podcast. Right? The idea is, like, people are using our content as a means of improving their overall understanding of how they can manage their business, to give them ideas. We get a lot of feedback from people who feel like it's a great training. So, like, new hires at companies that don't know a lot about subscriptions, they'll point them at our podcast. So podcast just kind of screams, you know, an opportunity for people to digest content, to help educate them. And also just because sometimes it's difficult to explain complex topics in just writing. Like, some things do well in writing and other things. I think it's better to have a conversation or a discussion, which is, again, a podcast.

Sadaf Beynon: Okay, so since you've been podcasting, do you find that being able to talk through different ideas is easier for you now than it was writing it all down in blogs and newsletters and stuff?

Matthew Holman: It is. And I think initially it's important to kind of keep. Understand that initially we thought the newsletter and podcast would be kind of separate. Like, the newsletter would be kind of like this style of content, and the podcast would be more like me just talking and occasional interviews. But ultimately we actually ended up changing that to having the podcast lead the content strategy. And so being able to talk through stuff, for me, I think it's also like. So I'm a content creator. I've been doing like, ebooks and social and stuff for years, and it's often difficult. I think one of the hardest things about a content creator is to find the method or process that really resonates with how you like to work. And I've, over the course of couple years, been able to land on, and we've been doing the podcast for about a year now, realize that the podcast strategy, podcast first strategy really does work well because I can talk through ideas on the podcast that I can then put into a newsletter. Right. If I get a question on social or something, a client says to me, it's easier for me to go start talking on camera and recording that than it is to go, like, write down those ideas and then talk about them. If that makes sense.

Sadaf Beynon: Yeah, yeah, definitely makes sense. So you were saying that your podcast leads your content strategy. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Matthew Holman: Yeah, absolutely. So I think, you know, as a marketer, everybody's trying to find that formula, that process of, like, you know, how you create everything you create. So just to kind of like, run through how ours works. The podcast essentially leads the schedule for all of our content. So each week, you know, or, I mean, we're recording in bunches. So it's not like we're recording week after week, but they're getting released every week. So, like, we're recording this on a Wednesday. We had an episode that dropped yesterday. We'll have an episode that drops next Tuesday. So what happens is the podcast is first. So like, we did a podcast episode. Say it's like an interview with the founder of a subscription brand. So then the newsletter then becomes like, learnings or gleanings or insights from the founder of that subscription brand. And then the social media becomes talk is talking about the newsletter and podcast about, like, Past issues and upcoming issues. And so it leads all of our strategy, how we create it. Podcast newsletter social is kind of like top down how that works.

Sadaf Beynon: Yeah. And so just, I'm just curious about the social platform. So newsletter, is that just an email thing or do you do that on LinkedIn as well?

Matthew Holman: I do both. So I'm a huge fan and proponent of doing it on both. Just because LinkedIn is so easy to use. I think if it were, even though it's difficult to see like analytics wise, like how effective it is because it's difficult to like market directly to people on your LinkedIn newsletter as opposed to email. So we're doing the newsletter on Beehive and LinkedIn. So I basically will write it in Beehive and then I just copy and paste it over to LinkedIn and then I hit publish as a post. It takes like two minutes to do the LinkedIn piece. But the thing that LinkedIn does, it's really, really interesting is it automatically asks any new connections or followers if they want to follow your newsletter. And so LinkedIn is trying to get people to subscribe to newsletters. So that's kind of like a no brainer. So like our newsletter list is around 16, 1700 on email, but we're around 22, 2300, maybe 2,400 now on LinkedIn. And I don't push, I don't like. I mean we make, when we make a post on LinkedIn to get somebody to subscribe to the newsletter. We're including the link to Beehive. Right. We're trying to capture the email, but it's growing faster on LinkedIn because LinkedIn is just organically trying to get people to get to the newsletter. Of course, I highly recommend doing both. Really easy.

Sadaf Beynon: Oh, that's really helpful to know. I've started doing hours on Beehive as well, but I didn't realize it was just a quick copy and paste. I thought there was more involved on the LinkedIn side, so I just haven't looked into it. Okay, thanks for that tip.

Matthew Holman: Absolutely. So you asked about social too, so yeah. So we're on LinkedIn and Twitter. I've tried some of the other platforms especially like we'll take. So we do video clips off of the podcast episodes as well. And it's just been difficult to try to like get really good at each platform because each platform is a little bit different. Twitter, we have a good strategy and LinkedIn, we have a good strategy and that's where a lot of our customers are. So we've stayed focused on those things. And then again, the content strategy is we sometimes are pushing for people to check out the newsletter, the podcast, or we're just doing value driven content. So like, you know, here's the three things you can learn from subscription, brand, founder, or here's the top mistake I'm seeing around Black Friday Cyber Monday sales for subscribers. You know, we're doing content like that on both things.

Sadaf Beynon: Yeah. Okay. And why, why Twitter?

Matthew Holman: There's a really strong direct to consumer audience on Twitter. So I think again, I think it's really important to find like where your audience is. Um, so for context, our Twitter audience has grown a lot in the last year. But say like, say like a year ago I had about 10,000 followers on LinkedIn and a thousand followers on Twitter, but we got two to three times the inbound off of Twitter than we did off of LinkedIn. So it's a tenth the size, but was outperforming from an inbound standpoint for leads. So now it's doubled. Like we're over 2000 followers on Twitter now and still doing really, really well. So it's just again, really important to understand where people live and where there's maybe whether that's Reddit, Facebook, different groups. TikTok. TikTok's difficult, I think, for business, but trying to find where your audience is and where they're active. Not just where they are, but active there.

Sadaf Beynon: How do you do that? How do you find where they're active?

Matthew Holman: I mean, if it's an industry you work in, hopefully you're already aware of that. Right. Like, I think it's difficult if you're a new salesperson and you're trying to like break into say like automotive sales and then you're trying to figure out where, where people that, you know, run auto shops, what social media platform they are, if they're on one. Right. I think it's a lot easier when you're in the space. So like I've been in D2C for a long time, so I've known about. It's called DTC Twitter. Like it's a thing like even everybody on there calls it that refers to as that it's somewhat insulated in the sense of like, you know, it can be hard to break in, but once you do, it can be really, really successful. So I think there's research on that obviously, like just, I mean it feels, it feels kind of cheesy just to mention like very obvious stuff, but like interviewing people, trying to get a handle on where people are living where they're consuming content, where they're spend their time. So you have to interview people, interview your prospects and your ideal customers to figure that out. And experiment a little bit too, I think, is always a good idea.

Sadaf Beynon: Yeah. So for something like, say, Instagram, would you experiment and put some content on there just to see what happens? Or do you not go there because you don't think your target audience is there? Do you know what I mean?

Matthew Holman: I would say it's more like. So when I say experimenting, it's not like one post. It's like it would need to be several months of focusing on it. So because you can't just put a post on Instagram or TikTok or even on Facebook. I mean, Facebook isn't as viral as it used to be, but you can't just post a couple times and then, and then see if. Oh, based on analytics, we got. Because it'll literally be, we got 3 likes on this post and 2 likes on this post because you're really, really small. So it has to be like trying to develop, like a really clear content strategy for that platform and then go with that for a while to see how it works. And then, because what ends up happening, say Instagram's a great example. There's, there's, there are reels, there are static posts, there are stories, you know, how you, what you start crafting might be different from the first couple weeks than it is like three, six, you know, months in. So you have to have a, a strategy. You have to be able to, like, experiment with that strategy. When I say you want to experiment with stuff to try to see if it makes it work. Otherwise it's, you're just not going to see any effects. It's like, again, like, I like working out examples. It's like, oh, I want to go see if, like, going on walks are going to help me lose weight. So I go walk for 10 minutes a day. Like that might make you feel better, but that's not really going to have a strong effect on your, on your body. As opposed to like walking for 30 minutes or an hour, or walking uphill or walking with a weighted vest. Right. There's all these different things you could do with walking to see if that's going to have an effect on you or not.

Sadaf Beynon: So what do you think is a good timeframe then, to test, say, on something like Instagram?

Matthew Holman: I'd say three months.

Sadaf Beynon: Three months?

Matthew Holman: Yeah, three months. You should start, you should be able to see some kind of progress, get some kind of Feedback. There are also other ways to, like, jumpstart that a little bit. Like, you can boost posts, you can put a little bit of paid spend behind them. That's like, especially effective on, like, TikTok to try to. The. The idea is you're trying to test, to see, can I create content here that's going to resonate with some people? And then the next step from that is, are these people like my audience and do they want to buy from me? So, for example, like, I've done a lot of TikTok stuff, but it's gotten me zero inbound. It's gotten me zero. Like, people asking questions. Like, that's a good, good gauge, right? Like, yeah, Twitter we were on for a while, but Twitter, occasionally we would get spikes from people being like, like, responding and having opinions. And then we started getting people tagging us with questions that they wanted answered related to subscriptions. And so that's when you're like, okay, this is really working. But, like, if you're posting on Instagram, you could get to 10,000 followers and still not get any inbound. So it's. So, again, you have to. That's the hard part about social is what's actually going to get people's attention and then are those people's attention the people that are going to buy from you?

Sadaf Beynon: Yeah, yeah. Finding the right people.

Matthew Holman: Right?

Sadaf Beynon: So repurposing sounds like it's a great strategy, especially, you know, if you. If you've got the right platforms that are working for you. What about if someone was just starting out and like, wanting to repurpose? What would you. And are feeling quite overwhelmed by knowing which one to try content on? What advice would you give that person?

Matthew Holman: Yeah, I would. I mean, for one, I would say, like, start in a place where you are comfortable. Like, if you, if you've been on Instagram, that's your platform of choice, then start on Instagram because you at least will already know a little bit about what performs well for you versus others. I think what's difficult is like, if you hear, say, for example, if you're starting like, you know, a decorative paper company and you've never been on Pinterest, but you know, you need to be on Pinterest, like, that can feel overwhelming. So it's good to find like, mentors or people that have done it before, other founders, other people that are active on those platforms if you need to learn to get in there. But I would say, like, start on a platform you're comfortable with because the hardest, the hardest part about content repurposing or not is consistency. It's like with consistency comes the learnings about what you should be doing and how you should be doing it. So again, it's like working out. You really don't know what you don't know until you start doing it and figure out what works for you and what you respond to. Because what works for you as a workout versus what works for me as a workout are going to be very different. Same thing as with social. I think the idea of repurposing though is it makes things a little bit easier. So like for example, if we're talking about even on Pinterest and you made and you were recording a podcast, you, I would suggest recording video and then make. Put video clips on Pinterest. Video. There is video on Pinterest. That's actually where my daughter goes to watch videos because we won't let her on TikTok. So you could put videos on Instagram, right? And other places. So like repurposing and there are a lot of platforms out there you can use to like edit those videos. You can find a virtual assistant or somebody on Fiverr to help you edit them, or you can download Cap Cut and start playing around a little bit with yourself. Again, I, I would just say like, it's all about reps, repetitions, it's all about some consistency. And that's why I like some of the repurposing ideas because I could record say a 30 minute podcast and get six, seven, maybe 10 minute clips that are really, really cool and then I could post those over the course of four, five, six, seven days if I wanted to do one a day. Right when we started our repurposed strategy, I waited about two months. I did about, I got about six or seven episodes of the podcast in with clips made so that I could do like two or three posts a day in multiple places with video clips. So but again, I'm a little bit more seasoned in that regard. I would just say it's. That's why repurposing is fun. You know, Again, my process is I'll take the podcast, I take the transcript off, I post it to YouTube as well as other podcast platforms. I take the transcript off YouTube, I put the transcript into chat GPT and now I have a, you know, summary that I can use to write off of or I could prompt it to try to help it write it for me. Right. As well. So there's a lot of tools out there. But again, if you try to, I. This is my personal Advice is if you try to figure out all the tools up front, it just feels really, really overwhelming. Yeah, you have to just start it and then know that there's most likely a tool to automate or make something easier for your process that you can work on and discover in time.

Sadaf Beynon: Yeah, no, that's great advice. Just thinking about what you were saying about your own processes. Do you feel like you found your sweet spot with the way you repurpose things, or are you still trying to test some things out?

Matthew Holman: I mean, I'm always testing things a little bit in some ways, but yes, like, we're fairly consistent with how we're creating strategy. I think the things that bother me a little bit or where I think we're short, like maybe not great at, is I'm not actively trying to grow the podcast and the YouTube audience because our social does well. And so the. The. We view our content like the. The newsletter. I don't get a ton of people that reply to the newsletter and go, oh, my goodness, can you help me figure this out for my business? We have good open rates. We have a lot of people that tell us, they. They read the content, they love the content. Same on the podcast. I'm regularly meeting people that, that listen to it or watch it. So it's more like kind of like nurturing. Like, if somebody's curious, they want to learn more, they. They use that content. The social media stuff is more like kind of like the poking the bear kind of thing. Like, hey, are you doing this? Like, hey, could you do this better? And so that's what gets people to reach out, to want to connect. So I would say, like, if I were looking at what I want to do, say, like next year or in 2025, it might be like, hey, can I start crafting the content on the YouTube channel or on the podcast so that it would grow organically on its own to build our audience. And that's difficult to know because we're fairly niche from a topic. But, yeah, I don't know, maybe if we started talking about a few things more broadly, our audience would reach, or maybe we could spend more time, like, SEOing or optimizing search engine results for some of our content. So that's where I feel like we're maybe coming up a little bit short. But again, that's. I'm not too bothered by it because the content chain that I kind of outlined is like, bringing in US Business and revenue and stuff. So I'd rather maybe scale up the bottom end of the content piece. Or figure out some other stuff to add than necessarily worry about building the audience, the podcast audience. But anyway, that's my two cents.

Sadaf Beynon: No, that's great. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. So talking about your. You touched a little bit about your podcast guests and who you're speaking to. Can you tell us a bit more about your guests, who you have on?

Matthew Holman: Yeah, absolutely. And so I'll say, like, our strategy is we do every other. In the sense of. So I'll do. I'll do one episode of me just talking about a topic, and then the following week I'll interview somebody. And so initially, when we started the podcast, I invited some of the biggest names in the subscription expertise space, which was really, really fun and kind of like fanboy moment for some of the people that I got that came on and wanted to talk subscriptions. And I think now it's really just led by a strategy of who can I invite on that I think is going to have some. Something interesting to say that my audience is going to pay attention to. And so that's typically two types of people. So if you're in the space, say if you own a subscription company, you want to hear from other subscription owners about how they've built their business and what's worked or not for them. Right. That's. That's generally really compelling content. But then the other part of this is experts. So like in subscriptions, I might bring on somebody who's an expert at Facebook ads, talking about ad strategy for subscription brands, or an email marketing expert or a design expert. So I try to, like, bring people on from a lot of different aspects that of that business that people are thinking about and try to, you know, payments processing, because subscriptions have a lot of payment processing, obviously. So that's kind of like what leads the strategy there. I think what's, what's tricky in the podcast space is there's kind of like two. I see. And maybe there's a third one. But there's like kind of two general strategies that people employ. It's either try to bring on as big a name as possible because you'll get more people to tune in, or just do what you think is most interesting and hope that it resonates with people. And I'm trying to do a blend of both, where I try to bring on people that I think will be interesting for the audience, but also interesting because they'll have, you know, relevant things to say. But again, my podcast hasn't necessarily grown up organic. Again, I think it's mostly because of the niche. It's fairly small, the problems that we're speaking to, but at the same time could still be better. But that's just kind of like what I've learned and seen and how we try to think about it.

Sadaf Beynon: Yeah, no, you're right. There's always room for improvement, isn't there? But which one do you think out of those two seems to work better?

Matthew Holman: I don't think either one necessarily works better. I think it depends on the topic. It depends on the clips that we get out of it. Again, I know that a lot of people really like hearing me explain a topic and how I think about it and how they should approach it, but I also know that people really appreciate, like, you know, a different perspective or different ideas. And so that's, like, for the foreseeable future, I see no reason to change how we're doing that because we get really positive feedback from both. I would say the. The gap would be, as a consultant, I'm selling myself. If I'm just interviewing other people and occasionally mentioning what I do, I'm missing out on an opportunity to demonstrate my own knowledge, my own expertise, and why people should listen to me or follow me. So. And same thing with social clips. Like, you know, interviews can be really good. I think what makes the interview stuff more interesting is when we clip up the podcast, we'll share those clips with the guests so that they can use them. And we don't tell them to please share. We just say, hey, here's some clips in case you wanted them. But when people are sharing about their interview on our show, that does well for our socials as well.

Sadaf Beynon: Yeah, that makes sense. I like your strategy of doing an interview with a guest and then doing one for yourself. As you said, you're also trying to sell yourself as well, and that's a good approach. Yeah. And the topics that you choose when you're flying solo, do you base those on the questions that have been coming in? How do you do that one?

Matthew Holman: Yeah, that one's kind of more like pulse of the. Of the space. Like, I was talking to a potential lead, and they were telling me about how, like, their subscription software partner was telling them they needed to do XYZ in their business. And I was like, wait, what? No, no, no, no, no. So let's do an episode about why your subscription software partner should really be an advisor, not directing strategy. They help on the tactics side of things, not the strategy side. And so that was actually, like, this week's episode that came out, or, you know, When I'm seeing something really interesting or something work on the acquisition side, like let's do, let's do an episode talking about acquisition or, you know, we haven't talked about the fundamentals of different email strategy in a while, so let's, let's talk about that. So it is a little bit of like, you know, what I see getting asked online, what I come and run into with prospects and people that are just trying to pick my brain, what I get from clients, and then also what I talk with about, with like other experts because there are other subscription experts out there. If we're just chatting about stuff, it's like, oh yeah, we should do an episode that would be fun to talk about that or something like that. So there's a lot of just like listening and just trying to track down ideas, which I don't think is too hard.

Sadaf Beynon: Yeah, I can, I can understand. Especially if you've got people that you're already having conversations with that are in that, in that space.

Matthew Holman: I would, I would add and say that I think what's really important with content is to have. And, and if you've been only half listening, maybe tune in to this part because I think this is really, really important. Especially like we just had the election in the US Just happened like yesterday. And you have to have a perspective, you have to have an opinion. And it often helps to have an enemy. Right. So I have a friend's company out here called Luminous. They sell inventory management software and they're going against netsuite, who's the big incumbent. So a lot of their early content Strategy was attacking NetSuite and why it's bad for businesses of certain sizes. And so for us in subscriptions, like, our perspective is that subscriptions are often an afterthought. They're often run by junior level people in the company. A lot of resources are spent on the acquisition side, not on the retention side. And that they're often forgotten and that most people obsess over the back end of subscriptions, not realizing that subscription strategy starts with how you acquire a customer in the first place. So those are our perspectives, our opinions. And so we regularly will bring up that perspective and bring up that opinion. And if we're looking for topics, we will look at those opinion pieces. And so if you don't have a strong opinion, then you're, then you don't give people a reason to want to listen to you. It's just something interesting, maybe, but it also is like part of the sales process. So there's A little bit of sophistication here. It's like, hey, I know that a lot of brands are doing this, are operating this way, and we work with brands that operate this way. So I'm gonna harp on brands that operate this way because I want them to go, yeah, that's me. How can you help us? And so that's kind of like that idea of why you need to have an opinion in your content strategy and your podcasting. Regardless of the space you're in, the industry you're in, even if you're just doing a podcast for crocheting, it's really important to have a perspective and strong opinions about at least some parts of crocheting. Otherwise, like, you'll just be another podcast out there that nobody thinks is relevant.

Sadaf Beynon: So you're saying to have an opinion and put that stake in the ground.

Matthew Holman: Yes, absolutely.

Sadaf Beynon: Yeah.

Matthew Holman: And that's why I mentioned the US Election. Like, you know, love him or hate him, Donald Trump is amazing at that. He has really strong opinions that are very divisive. But if you agree with him, you really agree with him. So, yeah, you don't have to be that extreme, but you need to have opinions of what you're doing. Right. Because otherwise it's like, why should somebody talk to you? Why should somebody buy from you? Right. Again, if you're in automotive and you're complaining about the amount of time it takes to get an oil change. Okay. Well, you're trying to reach people who think that oil changes take too long so that they'll come out to your business to get an oil change. Like, that's. It's. You just have to think through why. Why that opinion needs to be there.

Sadaf Beynon: Yeah. Can you say a little bit more about. You said have to have an opinion, have to have an enemy.

Matthew Holman: I think an enemy is easy. So an opinion is part one. So if you're ever. If anybody out there is looking for idea or insights on branding strategy, I would highly recommend reading the story Brand. It's a book. I think you can get it on audiobook, obviously. And they've got content too, so they bring up the idea of the whole idea is in every business, people are facing obstacles and enemies all the time. Enemy can be anything from a competitor. It can be, um, like, you know, like if you're running a warehouse, how difficult it is to hire consistently. For example, like. Cause people don't want warehouse jobs in general. So if the enemy is, like, trying to hire, like, like how difficult it is to hire good help in a warehouse and you're selling like a job placement service for warehouses. Like you're going to make the enemy like turnover. Right. And so the, the enemy allows you to put the, the example of Star. So storybrand uses Star wars as an example. Luke Skywalker is the hero. Your customer is the hero. The enemy is Darth Vader or the Emperor or the Empire, and they're fighting against the empire. So when you have an enemy, you can kind of make it kind of us versus them or on your side. Again, I'm in the direct to consumer space. So Shopify, for example, is a massive platform in the DTC space and they hold this idea of Shopify makes enterprise platforms kind of the enemy and makes like the fact that as a small time consumer you can get an amazing platform. Like they say, we're arming the rebels, we're arming the small business people of the world with an amazing weapon they can use to fight back against big brands that are selling online. Right. So it's again that this idea of an enemy, and it doesn't always have to be like very, very like black and white, us versus them, but it does make it easier in content strategy to have an enemy. And again, the enemy can be an idea. It doesn't always have to be a person or a company.

Sadaf Beynon: So can it be. Because you said obstacles, could it be a challenge that you're facing at a particular time?

Matthew Holman: Absolutely, yeah. If you think about any business, again, I'm trying to think of as random examples as possible. If you're selling cleaning services, if you're selling maid services and you're trying to target busy moms that feel like it's their responsibility to clean their house. Like you, the enemy might be like that, that feeling of responsibility. Like actually your responsibility is to like provide for your family and be there for your kids. And like you, you don't need to be responsible for cleaning or like that clean house shouldn't be the thing you worry about because we'll take care of it for you so that you can go live your other life. Right. So you have to just. That's like marketing. It's like trying to like talk about that problem, talk about that issue, talk about what's bothering your customers and then because you have the solution to that problem.

Sadaf Beynon: Yeah, yeah, no, that's good. Thank you. Talking about challenges, have you had any with your own podcast, like getting it up and running or keeping it going? So I'm thinking more like production side of things rather than content.

Matthew Holman: Yeah. So we initially I had a friend who Runs a podcasting consultancy agency here in Utah. And when I was kind of talking to him about that idea, like, we ended up going with a third party to start, and it was a really, really big commitment. A lot of other people in the podcasting space had told me, just kind of get going. You can use Riverside. You can get somebody to edit. You can edit yourself if you need to. You can find an editor off Fiverr or Upwork. And so we kind of went a little bit big to start, which made us feel better, but it was also, like, a big financial commitment to kind of make that happen. And it took us a while to see positive results from that. So I would say, like, that's one of the kind of the issues that we had. I kind of stumbled into, like, just an amazing editor that does, like, four episodes a month for not a lot of money, and he does an amazing job, and he's consistent and communicative. In my mind, it's really hard to find contractors that are always communicative and accountable, like, because everybody's got so many things going on. Right. But so that's some of the issues that we run into. And then also just trying to figure out, like, initially it was all just me talking, which was really, really difficult to do. Like, four episodes a month, or, you know, one a week, where I'm just talking about a topic and a topic that is fairly niche. That's not like. It's not like I can. I could talk about it for 50 hours. You know what I mean? You end up circling back a lot about stuff. So. So that was another thing. And so deciding to bring on guests kind of, like, made it a little bit easier on me. I think it made our content better down in time as well. Yeah, that's some of the stuff that we've kind of run into.

Sadaf Beynon: That's cool. So do you. Then you've got an editor who does the editing for you, and then do you do the content side of things then when it comes to repurposing the podcast, initially, yes.

Matthew Holman: So initially I was doing some of the clips, but then I found a really great contractor that was really quick to do the clips. But I was posting everything on social myself. I was using a social scheduling tool. I was leading all that. I mean, I lead the content strategy of, like, what we're going to talk about, what's a clip. All this stuff we have scaled to a point where, while I am really good at that, that's like, my wheelhouse. I need to be selling the business, and I need to be delivering for our clients. And so we have been using, like, a social media agency the last few months to help help with scheduling and some of the content creation from the newsletter and the podcast. So they're now managing part of that strategy. I'm still the one who's picking what gets done on the top level podcast, but now there's a little bit of a structure down downstream of that of, like, you know, okay, now this, this happens, this happens, this happens, and there's more people involved. But again, because that's. Because also, like, I believe a lot of business leaders that I really respect and follow have said, you know, you've got to take yourself out of the stuff that anybody else could do and focus on the things that only you can do. And so when it comes to, like, talking to clients and explaining and figuring out what to do next in their business, that's what I can do that nobody else can do in our business. And so that's kind of where we. Why we've. We've pivoted to that strategy.

Sadaf Beynon: Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense, and that's wise advice. Do you have any tips that you can share with us for those who are wanting to get started?

Matthew Holman: Yeah, absolutely. I think for me, I talked to everybody I knew that had a podcast and just kind of pick their brain to get feedback from them about what was working or not. And the kind of funny thing was that everybody's kind of saying the same thing. Just got to start. Like, it's easier than you think. Once you figure out, like, you know, I can use Spreaker or another platform to, like, upload an episode that pushes to all the platforms. For me, the hardest part is just getting started figuring out what you want to talk about, if is it you or a guest. You know, there's podcasts that are doing it with, like, a couple people doing it. But yeah, so that's. That's kind of one of the things. And I have friends in a lot of different industries. Like, I have a friend who's. She's doing it for, like, women in leadership and coaching. I have a friend who's doing it for marketing. Right. Like, can I have a friend who's running an agency doing it? So I feel like everybody knows people with a podcast, or if there's somebody in your space or somebody like you, you look up to that you follow. From a podcasting standpoint, like, I find a lot of people really approachable. Like, I write into a guy at a trade show that has a massive Podcast like years ago, and I just started asking him about how he gets started. And, and it's kind of fun for them because they think back to like, you know, four or five years ago of like, what they were doing when they first started. So I think that's kind of step one. I think it's a good idea to like, have a. I think it's always a good idea to have a, an end goal in mind. So podcasts get used in a lot of different ways. Like, so, for example, our primary method is content creation because people are. Want to learn from us and then we use that downstream. But other podcast strategies, like you invite your potential customers on so that you can have frank conversations with them and potentially sell to them offline, for example, or other podcasts are like partnerships. Like, you know, I want to, I want to highlight a lot of the people that I work with because that'll raise my brand awareness with my partners. Right. So there's like three distinct reasons and strategies behind podcasting. So which one are you doing? Are you going to try to like, interview your guests? Because again, that. Interview your potential customers? Because that's a great strategy too. It's like, hey, you know, I might not sell to you, but I could ask you a bunch of questions about your business and learn more about what works for you or not. And I'm going to use that in my marketing and sales strategy. Or I'm going to, you know, talk to you offline and get a chance to talk to you one on one in a way that maybe a cold email or a DM on, on social media. And that might not work. So if you have that end goal in mind, then it helps make, I think, a lot of the other decisions kind of like a lot easier. Like, for example, who you're going to invite on, if you're going to interview people, if you know which one of those three things, those avenues I just outlined, then it's a lot easier to figure out who you're going to talk to and what you want to get from them kind of thing. So. But yeah, so get started and have some kind of end goal in mind and then be comfortable with the fact that that, that end goal might change how you do. It's going to change. Everybody that I've, that I love in the podcasting space have talked about how they wish they had started a podcast a lot sooner that it's really about once you get to the fifty and the hundredth episode where you really start kind of hitting your stride. And that's kind of where we're at. We're around 50, maybe 60 right now. And so it's like you start to get your hit, your stride. And now you also have this big library of past episodes that people can go through if they're interested in learning more from you.

Sadaf Beynon: No, that's really good. Has your end goal changed since you started?

Matthew Holman: I'd say our overall strategy hasn't. How we're kind of executing a little bit has, I think I've talked about, but ultimately the mission. So my business partner and I, we thought that the subscription space lacks a lot of resources, expert opinions that if you really want to learn more about subscriptions inside the direct to consumer space, you can really only kind of like go to the softwares for information and there. And everybody's biased. I'm biased. Right. But they have their own bias. And so we felt like we want to create content for people in this space that feel like they don't know what they're doing or feel like it's going okay, but maybe it could be better. Right. There's a lot of different feelings in that regard. So that hasn't changed. That's actually just confirming everything we've done the last two years, three years has confirmed that thesis that there's a lack of expertise here. People are hungry for this content. Let's just keep making more of it and more of it. And for us, what's changing is like, okay, let's change how we're utilizing some of that content. Okay, let's change some of our sales strategy on the consulting that aligns more with what we're getting. But that end big picture goal has stayed the same.

Sadaf Beynon: Right. Even if, say, even if you didn't get any clients from your podcast, would you still carry on doing it?

Matthew Holman: Oh, yeah. I mean, that is the case. Like, I don't know. I don't think I have any client who said like, hey, can we chat? I listen to your podcast, right? It's often more like I'll be talking to somebody and they'll say, hey, I've been listening to your podcast, but they reached out because of a post on LinkedIn or, or once I'm chatting with somebody, I'll mention the podcast and then they'll start go listening to it. So it's more like the podcast just leads. It's the tip of the spear for our content strategy. That's kind of how we think about the content and where, where our content strategy starts. And then it, it gets broken up into the newsletter and the Social. And so, for all I know, maybe somebody is discovering us via the podcast, but it's more likely somebody sees a social post or somebody shares an episode with them, and then they go through and see our website or my socials, and they see that there's a podcast or newsletter. And then, like, so that that kind of buyer journey is always really, really fluid.

Sadaf Beynon: Yeah.

Matthew Holman: And so I've stopped, as a marketer, I've stopped trying to, like, closely define how people are discovering us. It's more like I have a general idea of how some people are discovering us. And so we're just going to keep making sure we're hitting those points right. Yeah, right. But I mean, there's also a little bit of a belief. Like, I think this idea that somebody very clearly goes from touch point A to touch point B to touch point C to filling out a contact form is not how the world works. I just know that people consume content, are curious about this stuff. So let's keep putting content in these places. So. So we're going to keep doing it. Even though it's not like the podcast. I think it would be difficult to put a ton of money into the podcast without knowing that it was working for getting leads. But it makes a lot of sense to invest time in it because it creates all the other content for us, and so we're going to keep doing it.

Sadaf Beynon: Yes, that makes sense. And it's interesting how you're creating the podcast as a linchpin to your content in. But the audience or the. The people who are coming to you from a business perspective is the other way in, isn't it? Like from a social media or newsletter?

Matthew Holman: Absolutely. And for. And for all I know, somebody's. They're. They're binge listening to five, six episodes on a Saturday while they're on a bike ride or working out or driving. And then Tuesday they see a tweet about something I talked about, and then they DM me saying, hey, I love your content. Can we check? Yeah, you know, it could be happening that way, too. And they're just not mentioning the fact that, you know, they just listen to a bunch of episodes. Although people just say, hey, I like your content kind of thing. We get that a lot.

Sadaf Beynon: Yeah, no, that's good. You mentioned content creation. I was wondering if you had any tips on content creation slash strategy.

Matthew Holman: Yeah, I think. I think the hardest part with content, for me at least, and for a lot of people that are in my circle, is like, you know, trying to know what to write about or what to talk about. And so, you know, I mentioned, like, this idea of, like, trying to have a strong opinion and have, have. Have an enemy potentially. But I think the other aspect is like, what are three or four, like, angles that you talk about? So I'll use this in the context of like, LinkedIn. So LinkedIn is like, you know, it's a business platform, but if you talk about the same thing over and over and over again, you get kind of pigeonholed. And so it's a good idea to like, hey, on LinkedIn, if I'm, if I'm a. If I'm trying to market like a, A ski company, you know, come do events or come ski here. Like, I'm going to talk about four different angles. Like, you know, the, the how much fun it is as an individual accomplishment to be a skier, what it feels like to get outside and, you know, and connect with nature. Right. So like, individual accomplishment, connect with nature, group activity. And then, you know, maybe I'm going to add in like a personal element where I talk about my family or my life. Life and stuff. And so now if I know we call those content pillars. So if my content pillars are individual accomplishment, connecting with nature, and then like, you know, personal discovery, then it's easier for me to think of, okay, well, today I'm going to talk about, like, how hard it is to, like, keep climbing up that mountain. And then tomorrow I'm going to be talking about, like, you know, the. Some of my favorite memories as a child or being out in the woods with my dad and connecting with nature. And like, okay, the third post is like, you know, some of the things I've discovered about myself being a skier. Right. So that's that personal development. So when you have the content pillars kind of identified and you just put them in an outline format, it makes it easier to think of, like, what you can do and what you can talk about consistently. And then again, if you think about it like, if I've created three or four content pillars, then I'm going to be reaching the people that are identifying with one or two or maybe all of those content pillars, and all of those people could be potential customers for whatever it is I'm selling.

Sadaf Beynon: That makes a lot of sense. So do you have some kind of content calendar that you're always making sure you're that far ahead of yourself? How do you manage it?

Matthew Holman: Yeah, absolutely. We use a social media scheduling tool that helps manage some of that content strategy. I would say it's probably easier to think about it in Terms of a week. So another big person I follow. If you're looking at trying to get create more content, I highly recommend looking at Justin Welsh. He's on Twitter, LinkedIn. He's got courses you can buy. I've adopted some of his strategy because I think it's really smart. So in a given week, for example, so our big pillar content, the newsletter and the podcast drops Tuesday morning. So everything is anchored around that. So Monday I make sure that I have a post on LinkedIn or Twitter talking about the post, the stuff that's dropping the following day. So if you want to hear about our interview from so and so so or if you're struggling with X or Y in your business, make sure you subscribe so you can get the newsletter tomorrow. Okay. And then Tuesday the stuff comes out. So I have posts about the content that it came out generally on Tuesday or Wednesday. If we have a sponsor, I will have a sponsor related post. And then you know, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, I am creating more content around that week's post that came out as well as like say Thursday or Friday. I'm referencing what just came out now. That's like if you were to do like a post a day. So we post more than once a day. So in addition, so then what we do, so that's the core like foundational strategy. Monday we tease the newsletter. Tuesday the newsletter comes out. Wednesday we talk about the sponsor. Thursday we talk about that week's episode. Friday we either talk about the sponsor, just have something fun or personal. Then we take other past weeks content or our content pillars that we're talking about regularly and we layer more topics on top of that. So like Monday morning might tease the newsletter the following day. Monday afternoon might be something from like two weeks ago. So we do that throughout the week to try to make that easy. The other big, big point I would make about content that a lot of people make this mistake, and I made this mistake a lot is you don't reuse past content. So like if I have a post from two, like literally two weeks ago that did really well, we're going to recycle it this week because. Because nobody's gonna remember it from two weeks ago. But whatever I was talking about that did really well, they will remember that and they'll wanna talk about that again. So getta kind of move past this kind of cringe feeling of like, oh, I'm saying the same thing over again. Like nobody knows that even if you have a hundred followers, your hundred followers aren't gonna remember what content you put out last week, let alone yesterday in general. So talking about it kind of repetitively actually really helps the content strategy. It makes it easier for you to scale up your content, and that way you don't feel like you have to reinvent the, like sitting down to write a new post every single day, five, 10 a week, like, it is exhausting. So you don't need to do it, like, once you start getting some going, reuse stuff. So that's kind of. We think about like week to week and then we just plan, like, okay, this week we're doing an interview, this week we're doing a solo episode. And that gets planned weeks or months in advance because we have to, to involve other people in creating recording podcasts.

Sadaf Beynon: That's really good. And you're right, I think us included, we don't reuse our old content very well or at all. So if there's others like me out there, what would be your advice to get going on that? Because even that can feel overwhelming, especially when you've got so many episodes. How far back do you go?

Matthew Holman: I mean, just, I mean, I think, like, if you've been posting it on social, so again, you could look at your downloads as a place to start, look at your downloads, look at social posts where you're talking about that topic or that content of that episode. And if you see stuff that performs better and you probably just noticed it, like, when you saw it in the past, like, so just write down like, hey, like, these four, five, six, seven posts or episodes did better than what we kind of do on average. Like, and that's where I start to wonder, like, okay, what, what was about it? That. Why? Like, if I'm really trying to figure out how to make my content better, I'm going to look at those and see, okay, what was interesting there or not? Was it totally random? Or is it something I think I could replicate? And even if you're not trying to replicate it, it's like, okay, well, I'm going to recycle this one. Like, this one did well, why not do it again? So as a very quick example, I recently interviewed a really talented retention marketer, and that episode crushed our previous records for, like, downloads and listens on YouTube across the channel, across the board. Now I'm sitting here thinking, okay, is it. Was it her that she's just got a great network that just love her and went and listened to the content? Or I don't. Haven't really talked a ton about that type that topic in the past with another Retention marketer, huh? So that makes me want to test that again, invite another retention marketer to see if. If it was her or the retention, or maybe it's a blend of both. But it's also like, hey, I need to be paying attention to more of my content that's around this vein and start utilizing this a little bit more, because this content did really well. So. But it's not always where you see like just, you know, it's like this and then boom. Right. It's often like, you know, this is like 10, 20, or 30% better. But I've done that as well. That's what we've done to get to this point.

Sadaf Beynon: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Matthew, something that I asked my guests about is that sometimes it can be quite overwhelming juggling everything. So what's your take on balancing it all?

Matthew Holman: Yeah, for me, the easiest thing when I started to make some real progress on it was I would just block Monday early on, when I was doing it all myself. Monday would be when I would write the newsletter from the podcast, when I would write all the social posts, when I would schedule all the posts, when I would schedule the videos. Like, obviously I would do a few other things. It's not like I was spending eight hours, but I was spending four or five, six hours, you know, if you think about it in a given week. So I would do it all on Monday, so I felt like I could tackle all of that, you know, reply to emails, things. So. So I would just. Time. Time boxing is the only way to do it it. And if you do it in chunks during the week, it's too easy for other things to get in the way.

Sadaf Beynon: Yeah.

Matthew Holman: So you have to find. So now I do the newsletter over the weekend because I actually, like, try to do other stuff on Monday now. So it's like I'll take the podcast recording and do the chat GPT thing that I mentioned over the weekend because I can do that in about an hour. I can find a little bit time on Saturday or Sunday to take a quick break from whatever I'm doing and do it then. But. So I'd say that's the biggest thing. Find some time boxing. Find a day or a half day and make sure it's that all the time. For a while. I was doing like the last. When I was just doing the newsletter, I would do just the last Friday of the month. I'd have it totally blocked off. Nobody could ever schedule meetings. And I would write four or five newsletter issues in that day. That was incredibly taxing so I started breaking that a little bit and the podcast made it a lot easier on me actually.

Sadaf Beynon: So that's great. I like the time boxing idea. Thank you.

Matthew Holman: Of course.

Sadaf Beynon: Matthew, to wrap things up, can you tell me within 60 seconds why you think podcasting is such a great tool for growing one's business?

Matthew Holman: It's just a great way to allow people to relate to you, to show your opinion, your personality as well as to connect with other people in the space and I can engage.

Sadaf Beynon: Thank you. Where can our listeners find out? Matthew, thank you so much for joining us today. It's been great to hear your story and to learn from your insights. And to our listeners, thank you for tuning in to Podjunction podcast. I hope today's episode inspires you to think creatively about how you too can leverage your podcast. Be your own business. Be sure to check out.

Matthew Holman: You can find all.

Sadaf Beynon: Thank you for listening and bye for now.