Sponsorship Secrets: Boost Your Podcast’s Earnings | Chloe Thomas

Sadaf Beynon: [00:00:00] Welcome to Podjunction, where business meets podcasting. Whether you're on a morning jog, driving to work, whipping up a meal, or just taking a moment for yourself, our weekly bite sized episodes promise fresh insights from successful podcasters who have cracked the code of using podcasts to grow their business.

So whether you're a podcasting newbie or seasoned podcaster, grab your notebooks and get ready.

Matt Edmundson: Welcome to Podjunction. My name is Matt Edmundson, one of the hosts here, but I'm definitely not the chief host. The chief host is this beautiful lady sat beside me, Sadaf Beynon.

Sadaf Beynon: What was that? It's me.

Matt Edmundson: Oh, if there's ever a reason to watch the video version of this podcast, you just, that's

Sadaf Beynon: it [00:01:00] right

Matt Edmundson: there.

That's awesome. Welcome to the show. We are a show where we talk about podcasting, how to use podcasting to grow our business. So yeah, if you use, if you've got a business and you're trying to grow it with podcasts. You're at the right place. So we're going to chat all about that today. The way the show works is we have a guest come on.

We do an interview with guests who basically have podcasts and they tell us all their little secrets. We'll play a clip from that interview and then we chat about that clip and the sort of key things that we can learn from it. And usually Sadaf makes fun of me somehow along the way or is it the other way around?

I can't remember.

Sadaf Beynon: I'm sure it's me making fun of

Matt Edmundson: you. Yeah, probably. Let's just go with that. Let's just run with that as a theory. Welcome to the show. It's great to have you with us. And today we have coming up.

Sadaf Beynon: We have Chloe Thomas, who is a podcast host of eCommerce Master Plan, which is one of them, one of her podcasts.

Yeah, she's got quite a few. Yeah. The other one that is [00:02:00] quite popular is Keep Optimising and I'm sure there's another one in there.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. She started one about sustainability and the name will come back to me at some point. But yeah she's an absolute legend, Chloe. You can't help but like Chloe. Yes.

She's just lovely and in fact, I remember when I first started out doing eCommerce podcasting, Chloe and I connected quite early on in my in my journey. And she's one of those people that is so generous and open with her knowledge and information about things. Even though in, in a lot of ways we would be seen as competitors because we both do eCommerce podcasts.

If I've ever had a question. Chloe's one of those people that I would have no dramas asking and I, cause I don't think she'd have any issue telling me the answer. Yeah, which is really nice, actually. It's really lovely when podcasters from the same space get on together like that. And actually Chloe was.

Instrumental in putting together a little a swee a little Get a group. Yeah. A contingent. Yeah. A gaggle, maybe. Of e-commerce. [00:03:00] Podcasters. So she contacted all of the podcasters in the UK that we knew about that were podcasting in this space and said, let's get together. And a bunch of us did. And we've done it a few times.

It's been great. So it's been good, hasn't it? Yeah. Yeah. . So that's Chloe's an absolute legend.

Sadaf Beynon: Yeah. And today she's talking to us about podcasting for sponsorship.

Matt Edmundson: Ah. The old question of sponsorship and podcasting. Yeah, this actually is one of the questions I asked Chloe early on when we were doing the eCommerce podcasting and people were approaching us wanting to sponsor the show.

Yeah. I was like, I haven't got a clue. Never thought about sponsorship. It's not why we did it, to be fair. So I turned to Chloe and Chloe gave me a lot of good advice. So you're going to want to listen up to this. Yeah, for sure. All right. Should we do it? Wait.

Sadaf Beynon: Sorry. Before we get going.

Question, Matt, I wondered what is the most silliest thing you believed, or you believed in as a child, or,

Matt Edmundson: the silliest thing I believed in as a child? Yeah. [00:04:00] What's this got to do with podcasting? I don't know. This is just a random question. You can make the connection here.

Sadaf Beynon: That's up to you.

Matt Edmundson: Silliest thing I believed as a child, goodness me.

There are certain things that I could say, but that I shouldn't just in case there are certain people of a certain generation listening to the show. The obvious ones aside, um, you know what? I grew up in the eighties, right? And the eighties were just this magical time. And I remember watching.

This TV show called The Red Hand Gang. If you're from a certain era like I am, you may be familiar with this TV show and in that TV show the chief protagonist this the sort of leader of the gang you I think his name was Richie. He had a computer which he called Ralph, right? Ralph. And I'm tying this into podcasting.

I just realized how I'm going to do this. So someone's bringing this round. And what would [00:05:00] happen in the Red Hand Gang is Richie would talk to his computer like Ralph was a real person and he would ask Ralph questions and Ralph would give him the answers. Okay. You couldn't do this, not in the 1980s, it was a ridiculous thing to do.

Computers were definitely not that powerful, but I believed that they could. So I started to write computer code. I tried to, I learned how to write programs so that Ralph would be able to respond to some of my questions. And so I could, I even called it Ralph, I called my computer Ralph. And I would type the questions away and it would answer.

And so I had this belief somehow, back then, that stuff like computers talking things like bikes flying, things like Street Hawk and Knight Rider and Airwolf. They were all possible. And, that there were really people like Hannibal and B. A. that never actually shot anybody and never really got shot.

With a welding torch in the back, I don't know, welding torch and a bit of metal, they could create a tank. You just believed all of those things, didn't you? And [00:06:00] it's when you get older, you go, maybe they're not so true. Although Ralph. It's now possible because we have things like, I don't want to say, Siri just in case everyone's phone's stuck and your phone's

Sadaf Beynon: going to come alive.

Matt Edmundson: And Michael Knight used to stand in the corner, didn't he? And he'd talk to his watch and he'd go, Kit, and Kit would respond to him. And you can now, I can now do the talk through my watch thing. Cause I've got the iPhone, the Apple watch thing. And so some of these things. Have actually come to pass with technology.

What? Wanted to get in on the conversation, see what's in you, obviously, there you go, let's turn that off, And so while some of it was fairy tales, actually just with technology, it's come about but yes, I'm still waiting for my car with turbo boost.

Sadaf Beynon: I like that. Thank you, Matt, for bringing it around for us.

Matt Edmundson: Somebody had to. [00:07:00] Anyway, should we listen to Chloe? Yes, we should. Here's Chloe. And one of the reasons I love talking to you, Chloe, apart from the fact you're just awesome, is a lot of the podcasters I talk to, they are in agency podcasting. Or they have a business and they are podcasting as a result of that too.

Usually the theory is I'm a marketing agency, I'm going to do a podcast on marketing, I'm going to become, I'm going to go and get 10, 000 listeners, 10, 000 people will then understand who I am as a marketing agency. So at some point they'll funnel through to us if and when they're looking for a marketing agency, the standard theory, right?

Whereas for you, actually your podcasting is your business. It's not, you're not doing this because you've got a marketing agency. You're not going on and going, hi, this is eCommerce Masterplan sponsored by Chloe's marketing company. Which is quite unique in a lot of people, a lot of podcasters that I know, you're actually using podcasting to create an income.

So how do you do that? What's your, [00:08:00] what's the main source of the income, if you don't mind me asking?

Chloe Thomas: It's sponsorship. It's as simple as that. And for us, sponsorship are the ads that go out in the episodes. So on Keep Optimizing, we take up to two sponsors per month. So they're usually tied in. She says, usually.

It was Klaviyo until December. They sponsored the whole of Keep Optimizing until December. Now in the new shiny world of 2023, we're getting sponsors that align with the subject we're talking about. And they can take a, an exclusive one for that month because it's a topic based show. We've just in the middle of, as we record this, we're in the middle of Marketing Attribution Month, which is being sponsored by Triple Whale, who are the big.

Advertising, tracking, attribution people. So they've taken exclusivity for the whole month. So that's what we do on Keep Optimising. On eCommerce Masterplan, we have currently have three ad slots per episode. So if one person goes in the pre roll, which is just after my intro, and then two people can go in the mid roll that.

I am working on [00:09:00] rejigging it again because up until last year I had a sponsor who took the whole year in that pre roll section. So now I can't, until I find another one to do that, I'm, I've got a little bit too much capacity. So I want to streamline it to keep the earning per episode where I want the earning per episode to be.

So it's always exciting. There's always something to be tweaking with it. And then we also do one sponsored. Email to our audience on a Thursday that someone pays for and it's their message that goes out in the email. So those are our three happening every week advertising income opportunities and then occasionally I run some kind of event thing that the sponsors, that we get sponsors for that's a bit like a virtual.

Historically, they've been virtual summits. This year, they're going to be a bit different because I think the virtual summit space is a bit jam packed, and I can't compete in that space, so we're doing something different and that is where the sponsors essentially they're break [00:10:00] even events where I put all the sponsors money back into marketing in order to grow my own list, to keep the whole thing chugging along.

So yeah it's basically purely and simply sponsorship of advertising space on the stuff

Matt Edmundson: we do. And how have you, um I don't do sponsorship necessarily on our podcast. People have reached out to us and asked us to sponsor. We've done a few sponsors. Whether we'll do more in the future, I dare say we will but it's not something that I need every week in my podcast because like many, it's part of my business.

It's not my source of income.

Chloe Thomas: And it's really important to decide whether you're going to do sponsorship or not. One of the reasons we didn't do it for the first two, three years of eCommerce Masterplan was because I couldn't, I didn't have a big enough audience to charge a number at which I was willing to put an ad in the episode.

Both for the effort it would be to create the ad and to edit it in and the way that would affect the, the processes we went through, timings wise [00:11:00] on the show. But also the, fundamentally, if you're listening and you're in the UK, watching the BBC is great because there's no adverts. I was like, I'm not going to abuse my audience's ears until it's worth my while.

If someone wants to pay me 10 an episode. It's not worth the effort, and it's not worth, abusing the audience's listenership. And if you're someone who's running a podcast to generate brand awareness for your own agency, I think you have to really think hard about, do you want a sponsor in that episode?

Because it, every single call to action you put in that episode reduces the impact of each individual call to action. So I think, I was always very clear I wanted it to be, I wanted the business to move towards being advertising, money, heavy, but in the right, but even then, I refused sponsorships for a while.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah. So how, from your point of view and I appreciate this is from your point of view, Chloe, [00:12:00] what size audience did you need to attain before sponsorship became a viable option?

Chloe Thomas: See that is Such a difficult question to answer because it depends on so much more than your podcast. If you're doing like a yoga, I always pick on yoga.

If you're doing a yoga podcast or a general interest podcast, you've got to be getting thousands of listeners before it's worth talking to any advertisers, generally speaking, and you're going to be earning a pretty low CPM. Like an industry standard CPM. So cost per million listens. Oh, so per thousand, listen, per thousand.

Yeah. In, when you're in a sector like eCommerce, because of the economics of the sector, you can earn an awful lot more. If I was earning that CPM, I would have to do another job. , let's just put it that way. And my podcast wouldn't have any sponsorship on them, and I'd probably [00:13:00] only be doing one. But because I'm in a sector where.

There's a whole ecosystem of SaaS companies, so software companies who want to get in front of eCommerce brands, and it's hard to do that, then there is the opportunity to do it. Keep optimising, get 250 listens in the first 28 days for each episode, eCommerce Masterplan gets 1, 000. So you can make, you can certainly cover your podcasting costs, including your own time, for 250 listens per episode in the first 28 days, which is the rough industry standard for counting these things.

Obviously, if you get it to a thousand, you make a bit more money.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, it's a bit more interesting for people, isn't it? It's it is a fascinating one, isn't it? Because I I get what you're saying that there are certain industries where actually the value of your sponsorship is very different to, say, a yoga podcast.

What?

Chloe Thomas: Even sorry, spoke up. But even with my ep, [00:14:00] my podcasts, if I did a, if I had a Shopify podcast, so 90% of my listeners were on the Shopify platform, whereas mine are across all the platforms in e-commerce, and I had. 80 percent listenership in the USA, I could probably charge a lot more than I do, but because I have a global audience that's split across different business sizes, and But if you wanted to get really hard nosed about it, you're right, everyone wants people selling this amount of merchandise a month, and they want them to be on the Shopify platform has the biggest ecosystem, so they want Shopify sellers who are doing over a million a year.

If you went laser focused on that and who are based in the US, you could charge an awful lot more than if you were doing what I'm doing. So even within a sector, it becomes Quite interesting how you structure

Sadaf Beynon: it. If you're intrigued and want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out PodJunction [00:15:00] Cohort, where you can listen to the complete interview and much more. Simply visit thepodjunction. com for more information about how to join.

Matt Edmundson: Welcome back. Thank you, Chloe, for coming on the show. Always a legend.

Always love talking to Chloe, like I said at the start. And did you, listener, did you notice that subtle ad roll straight after Chloe's talk? Oh, yes. Subtle as a brick in the face, right? But it's just but yeah we obviously have that ad role there in the middle of the talk, the mid roll ad, they call it.

But yeah, what did you think to that, Miss Beynon, or Mrs. Beynon? Really

Sadaf Beynon: interesting, actually, because we haven't, as you've said before, too, we haven't ever done, we haven't really gone down this road before. A little bit we have.

Matt Edmundson: Yeah, a few people have reached out and we've tried sponsorship, haven't we?

Sadaf Beynon: But it hasn't been something we

Matt Edmundson: just do. No, and one thing that I do know about Chloe is because her main income is sponsorship, she works a lot [00:16:00] at getting sponsors onto the show. Whereas we don't. If people come to us and want to sponsor it, We might say yes, we might say no, we're not entirely sure, it depends on who you are and et cetera, et cetera.

But we don't spend time going out trying to get sponsors for the show because that's not the purpose of our show. That's not why we did it. But I know Chloe does, right? So I think if you go down that sponsorship road it's not a case of build it and they would, they will come, like the field of dreams thinking.

I think if you've got a massive audience, people will start to reach out to you. Other than that, there might be a little bit of hustle and grind that you've got to do to go and get the, yeah, the sponsors.

Sadaf Beynon: Yeah. It struck me though how she was talking about depending on I've got it here.

The, like the changing dynamics of the audience. She has to adjust the ad structure. Yeah. So it's something you really have to be on the ball about. Yeah, you do. Like you can't just be like, okay, this is how I, this is the structure of my podcast and just let it run.

Matt Edmundson: No. [00:17:00] And Chloe's always tweaking it as well.

And I guess if you listen to her shows, it'll be different to what she talked about. Mainly because when we recorded this, it was a few months ago, but she's constantly tweaking constantly away because fundamentally for sponsorship to work. You have to have an engaged audience because that's what sponsors by repeat.

So if you can get a sponsor for one show we've turned, do you remember we had people approaches and ask if they could sponsor a show because they thought and it was mainly agencies trying to get set up and running. They're like if we sponsor your show, you could promote our eCommerce agency.

And we could, we will therefore get sales off the back of that. This is what they're thinking, right? You've got an audience, thousands of people listen to your show, which they do. Could we sponsor that? And I had to say, I remember saying to them, listen, you're more than welcome to sponsor the show.

You're going to have to get out of thinking sponsoring of one show because podcast advertising is not really about sales. It's more about [00:18:00] brand awareness, right? It's more about getting the name known out there. As we all know, it's just that constant, and you've got to, for an advertiser who's going to advertise on your show, really they've got to do it.

Repetition in advertising is a great thing, isn't it? And I think, so when agencies have approached us in the past and said, Oh, can we sponsor an episode? How much is that? And we've gone it's going to be whatever, 700 bucks. Yeah. They're like okay, we could do that because we'll get two or three clients and I'll pay for that.

And I'm like, no, you won't, unless you're like really lucky. I don't think that's, what's going to happen on. And I think you'll probably find that if you just do one, it's just going to be a waste of time. And we have said that to people. We've turned people away because I think it's a different form, but the bottom line is for advertisers to invest in sponsorship of podcasts, they all realize actually podcasting is very top of funnel.

It's very brand awareness. It's a long road and you've got to be, it does work, but you've got to be committed to the cause and you've got to have some deep pockets to throw at it. . [00:19:00] And and so that sponsorship, that company is looking for an engaged audience, basically.

. If your audience is constantly, it's not established, it's Yeah. Like changes every week. They're like we're not interested. 'cause we can't build something with, yeah. Yeah, Chloe was totally right about the audience. Keeping the audience engaged, keeping that in mind.

Matt Edmundson: Super, super critical when it comes to sponsorship. I had a question. No doubt, Sadaf actually means I have a question.

Sadaf Beynon: So she talked about, I can't remember exactly how it all went, but basically she's got more than one podcast that she has sponsors for. So is she basically saying that you can, it is possible to hit a ceiling when it comes to earning money from a sponsor?

On a given podcast? Yes

Matt Edmundson: and no. And I think it depends again on your strategy. So I think realistically with something like [00:20:00] eCommerce Masterplan, there's a, when you do an eCommerce Podcast or a podcast, which is quite specialist like that, there is going to be the initial growth, right? And you're going to grow your audience.

But sometimes it's easier to do a new podcast. Then it is to try and grow that next 10 percent on an existing podcast, right? So there's a law of diminishing returns, isn't there? So you can grow quite quickly at the start, but then it slows down. It's not our experience. We decided the opposite way.

So I think your audience can grow and it can get bigger. But again, I think for you as a business, you as a company, you've got to look at the sort of the economics of that and ask yourself. Now I know what I'm doing with my sponsorship. And Chloe was really smart on this, I thought, because she had a list of sponsors.

She knew people who wanted to sponsor the show, and they wanted to sponsor more shows. So she creates more shows for them to sponsor. And I think it's in a niche like eCommerce to do two eCommerce podcasts that focus on two different [00:21:00] themes that attract similar but slightly different audiences. I thought was genius because she already had the list of sponsor.

It's not like she went and did a podcast, one on e-commerce and one in gardening. . Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Where you've gotta rethink that whole thing. So I thought for, from Chloe's point of view, it was a very smart, strategic decision. Not that obviously Chloe needs my approval, but I approve of this message

But I again. We've not created a, I say not as in not yet created a second eCommerce podcast. We are talking about it but is it easier to grow an existing podcast or start a new one? I think only you'll know. I think it depends on the market. It depends on the niche. It depends on the listeners.

I think if you do the yoga podcast that she was talking about, you could just build the audience for that because every man and their dog likes to do yoga, it seems. Whereas the audience for eCommerce is much smaller, much, much more niche. Does that answer your question? It does, yeah. Thank you.

Very good. So what else did you get out of that?

Sadaf Beynon: I was curious. Curious, Matt. [00:22:00] How did she, because she did say she didn't obviously start sponsorship right away because she had to get the right numbers and audiences and all that. Do you know, because I know you've had several conversations with her, do you know how she got to that point where she was?

Ready for Sponsorship. How did she grow her audience?

Matt Edmundson: That's the subject for a whole different Podjunction episode. How do you grow your audience? I think again, the thing that I would say about audience growth, I don't know if you pick this up with Chloe, her Keep Optimising Podcast has 250 downloads in the first 28 days.

So let's just say on average, that's 10 downloads a day for the first, 28 days. Obviously, it won't be like that. It'll be much more stacked at the front. When it's released the thing about that, what that tells me is you don't need a large audience to make it work for you. As in you don't, some people think I've got to have an audience for a hundred thousand.

I've got to get a hundred thousand downloads a month to make this worthwhile. And the answer to that question is yes, if you're going down the [00:23:00] traditional route. So on any eCommerce platform. Sorry, any podcasting platform, let's talk about the right niche here. So if you take any podcasting platform, for example, we use Captivate, right?

They don't sponsor this show. Captivate, you totally should sponsor the show. But we're big fans of Captivate and you can definitely check them out captivate. fm. We love what they do. They have this ability to build in ads pretty easily, right? And you can go to. Add buying platforms. There are places that you can go where you can go, these are the kind of people that I'm looking for and they'll sponsor your show and they will pay you.

I think the average rate is 34 bucks CPM. I think that's what it is from memory. Last time I checked 34, 37, something like that. So CPM cost per million, right? So for every per thousand, it's a French meal every time it messes with my head. So the cost per thousand. If you get 34 bucks standard per 1, 000 [00:24:00] downloads, now bear in mind, most podcasts don't have over 250, let alone 1, 000, but let's say, her most popular podcast has 1, 000 downloads a month or ours, let's say ours has 1, 000 downloads a month and I can get 34 bucks a month or 34 bucks per podcast on average,

I've got to do a lot of podcasts, right? Or I've got to have a big audience. So if I get paid 34 bucks, but I've got 100, 000 that's very different then, isn't it? Because I'm getting paid whatever, three and a half grand just working my very poor maths, times 34 by 100, 3400, three and a half thousand.

Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. Someone's going to prove me wrong. Actually 34, 000. But let's say then you're getting three and a half, 4000. So You've got to have massive audience for it starts to really generate any significant salary or income. The way Chloe does it, which I think is much smarter is she's in a niche where actually It's not really about 34 bucks per thousand downloads.

This is all about the value [00:25:00] of the listener. And she is quite right. eCommerce is an industry where actually the value of getting a customer is quite high. So for someone like Clavio, who used to sponsor her podcast, getting people to switch to their. Clavio is an email software, by the way. So if you do email marketing, we don't use it.

We use Clavio in our eCommerce business. We do. But for Podjunction we use ConvertKit, but they're all the same. They do these sort of email marketing platforms. So the benefits, obviously the value of a customer for Clavio is quite high, really high, because I think for our eCom business, we're paying like five, 600 bucks a month, that's six, seven grand a year, sterling.

You don't need many of those to make it work really and so they're going to be a lot happier paying a much higher rate to sponsor the show as long as it's obviously working for them. And I think that was super smart, that whole niche thing makes sense. And yeah I think sometimes the niche is better than the download numbers, especially if you're looking to make an income from podcasting that is [00:26:00] sponsorship, right?

If that's your sole source of, like for Chloe. There are other ways to make money from podcasts, obviously, and we talk about a lot of those on the show, but sponsorship is probably one of the key ones that people initially think about. And I think with someone like, if you're doing that route where Chloe is doing sponsorship, picking niches where there's going to be, where you have to, you don't necessarily have to get a large audience, 250, 000 people listening to the show, downloading it every month, where.

Where that niche is willing to pay a higher rate. I think that's a clever idea. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Does that answer your question? It does. I can't remember what your question

Sadaf Beynon: was now. How did she grow it to that point

Matt Edmundson: In the first place? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just it's, yeah. You don't, like I say, you don't need massive audiences and getting 250 people to listen to your podcast.

It's not, you can do that pretty straightforwardly, I would have thought if 250 people aren't listening to your podcast, months we need to have a conversation or there's lots more PodJunction episodes for you to consume. It's [00:27:00] probably a better way to put it but yeah, or check out some of the, can I do a quick plug?

Yes, please do. Why not? Cause it's my show. Oh, it's your show. Actually it's your show. You can do a quick plug. So PodJunction Cohort if you've not checked it out, do check that out because what we do is we put the full interview on Cohort and you can listen to that entire interview. We do charge a small fee for it.

That's how we make money. That's how we pay the light bill and put it out and that's how you can support this channel. When I say small, it's I want to say four bucks a month. Yeah. It's tiny, small and you get to listen to the full episode, which a full episode, the full interview, which is always useful.

But of course, from our point of view, how we make money out of this, it's not on charging someone four bucks a month. Is it? Let's be real. And they sponsor the show. So PodJunction Cohort is our own thing and we use that mainly as the show sponsor. Although, like I say, Captivate FM, do reach out, I will have a conversation but but obviously that for us, that's very top of funnel.

So you'll start going along to Podjunction Cohort. We hope you like the [00:28:00] stuff you might do, might take one of our courses. We've got two courses coming out. One's a hundred bucks. One's going to be like 900 bucks. We also have a podjunction, a podcasting service, which we offer business clients here, strategy meetings, which we charge anywhere from three to five grand, I think, for the initial consultation depending on when this is coming out, prices may have changed, do not hold me to those.

So you can see, we have a very clear funnel and podcasting is very much the top of our funnel. And that's how we make money from it. But with Chloe and sponsorship, we don't be, yeah, don't need big numbers. But it's quite a fun road to go down. I think you can make it work. Very interesting. Yeah, totes, totes.

Very interesting. Key takeaways.

Sadaf Beynon: For me, we don't do sponsorship, but I did,

Matt Edmundson: I did. That's not true. We sponsor our own podcast. I think that's a really good. I think it's the reason why I want to be so pedantic about this because not only will it please my eldest son, who is the most pedantic person on the planet.

The reason I want to be so pedantic about this [00:29:00] is because actually. You have to see it that way. If someone's not paying you to sponsor your show, you are paying for it, right? So there has to be a reason for that show. There has to be a purpose. So what is that purpose? So if you think about yourself as a sponsor, for us, it's to grow our membership, it's to grow our courses, it's to get people into, as long as we understand what that is, we can understand if the show has been successful.

And so it's like Michael Gerber always says, if you build a business and you're not selling that business. , then you are buying it. You are trading your time, your effort, your energy into that business. And so is the exchange worth it? Yes or no? And I think you have to think about that with your podcast is like, if I am, if I don't have an official sponsor, I am the sponsor.

As the sponsor. Am I happy with what the podcast is producing for us? Yeah. Does that make sense? It does. Yeah. So sorry to No, be pedantic. No,

Sadaf Beynon: that's fine. So I'll get to what Matt just said.

That's my key takeaway. Yeah. [00:30:00] No. My key takeaway based on what Matt just said is that yes, we need to be aware of our listeners and our audience. So if we need to make tweaks to the content we're putting out, we need to be aware of that instead, let go. We like it this way, so

Matt Edmundson: this is what we're doing.

Yeah. Very good. And for me, key takeaway, you don't need nu, you don't need massive numbers to make this work. You just need an engaged audience. So if you focus on building an engaged audience. It can work really well for you. So yeah, key takeaways. Chloe, you're a legend. Absolute legend. You are awesome.

In fact, can I say that? It's not my show. You can say that. You can say that. The reason why I'm joking about this is on every single podcast that is technically mine. Podjunction, I don't think is mine. I think it's more Sadaf's baby. I do this thing at the end where I go, in case no one's told you yet today, let me be the first.

You are awesome. Create it awesome. It's just a burden you have to bear. Chloe has to bear it. I've got to bear it. You've got to bear it too. And he can't hold

Sadaf Beynon: back. He can't.

Matt Edmundson: Love it. Awesome. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Great to see you. [00:31:00] Bye for now.

Sadaf Beynon: And that brings us to the end of today's episode at Pod Junction where business meets podcasting. If you enjoyed the insights from today and wish to hear the full conversation with today's special guest, don't forget to visit the pod junction.com where you'll find more information about how you can join today.

Whether you listen while on the go or in a quiet moment, thank you for letting us be a part of your day. Remember. Every episode is a chance to gain insights and to transform your business with podcasting. So keep tuning in, keep learning, and until next time, happy podcasting.[00:32:00]