Hey parents join the LA Kings on Saturday, November 25th for an unforgettable kids day presented by Pear Deck. Family fun giveaways and exciting Kings hockey awaits. Get your tickets now at lakings.com/promotions and create lasting memories with your little ones. Today on Radical Personal Finance, we're going to talk about how to grow your podcast audience with effective marketing.

If you're interested in podcasting, you will definitely appreciate this show. But even if you're not specifically interested in hosting your own podcast, give this show a shot because I think there'll be some tips in here that you'll be able to apply to your business no matter the industry. Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, the show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

My name is Joshua Sheets and I am your host. Welcome. This will be fun. We're going to talk a little bit about new business podcasting, but I really, yes, technical stuff on podcasting, but good stuff for every one of you. That's my goal anyway. Let's see if I can deliver on this goal.

Trevor writes in and says, "Hi, Joshua. I was inspired to start my own podcast six months ago when I listened to your episode 300 entitled 30 Podcasting Lessons Learned from 300 Episodes. Your words of encouragement were invaluable for me and really made me believe that I could do this.

Your suggestion to focus on content and not the technical aspect of podcasting was the most significant takeaway for me. The podcast is only 30 episodes in and we consistently publish an episode every single week, but wondered if you could provide some suggestions on how to grow your audience. Background information, I'm a Canadian-based personal finance podcast host co-host format with the occasional guest.

Thanks so much, Trevor." Well, Trevor, you have come to the right place because the first thing that you should be doing when you're trying to market anything is reaching out to other people who are in the business. And this earns you a plug for your Simple Money Solutions podcast.

So if any of you are interested in Simple Money Solutions and personal finance, and especially if you are Canadian, many of you write to me emails and say, "Joshua, do more Canadian content." If you are Canadian, you will want to check out Trevor's podcast called the Simple Money Solutions podcast.

So there's one thing, Trevor, this will help you to grow your audience. But I'm not going to leave it there. I'm going to give you more than that. Before I go into some specific tips on how to do it, sponsor of today's show is Libsyn. Libsyn is the podcast hosting company that I use and the same company that you should use if you have a podcast or if you want to have a podcast.

And during the course of today's show, I'm going to tell a story about a friend of mine who I got to start a podcast and he did a total of, I think, five episodes and landed a very nice job change with a nice increase in responsibility completely by accident.

That came out of his podcast. So I think that many more of you should start podcasts and I want to get more of you to do it. So this show is going to be a little bit of a hodgepodge. I'm going to be answering Trevor's question. I'm going to be talking about marketing, especially podcast marketing.

But the tools that I share will relate to content marketing in general, which is the most effective form of marketing right now for many of your small businesses. And this will relate to broader business in general because the principles that I'm building on are the same principles that all businesses operate under.

How's that for a tall order? I'll finish the Libsyn ad more at the end of the show, just simply to say that if you would like to sign up for a new podcast hosting account at Libsyn, you will get your first month for free with the coupon code, discount code Radical.

Use the discount code Radical and you will get your first month for free, which can be a substantial savings to you. And I'll give you more info at the end of the show on how to actually use that code. So Trevor, let's talk first about your show and then we'll expand this out and this will help others of you who also have podcasts.

You took my advice to heart about focusing on content first, and I applaud you for that, because without a good show, you can attract people to it, but they won't stick around. Now, the definition of good show may vary. Different people are looking for different things. I have a good show that appeals to a certain demographic, but my show does not appeal to other demographics.

That's OK. That's what we're trying to do in the modern world. As we are seeking, as the Internet has opened up opportunities for us to share with one another and interact with one another in smaller niche groups, it allows us to find people that connect with us for whatever reason they connect with us.

And so we don't have to have generalized appeal anymore, like, say, the radio business has to have. So that's good. It's good that you're focusing on your content first. I took a quick lesson just for a few minutes to one of your shows. You have good audio quality. So that's great as well.

In today's world, there's no excuse for poor audio quality. A few years ago, it was different. But in today's world, there's no excuse for poor audio quality. So you've got good audio quality and you have, we're going to assume, a good show with good content. The listeners will be the judge of that.

You and I don't get to judge that. Listeners get to judge that. So on that basis, let's talk about marketing. Now, when I started Radical Personal Finance, we were at a different place in the podcast space. And I want to emphasize to you that just because I said you should focus on content first, that doesn't mean that you should focus on things other than content.

Big business lesson here. Timing matters. It may not be possible for us to jump in and time the stock market perfectly to know when the stock market is going to be up and when the stock market is going to be down. That may not be possible. I'm going to say, I don't think it is.

Not possible for me. I don't have that skill. But that doesn't mean that you can't time a market that you know. When I launched Radical Personal Finance in 2014, I was engaging in market timing. I wanted to be a year earlier. Remember, I started doing the show in 2013.

I was looking around saying podcasting is growing. The technology problems have been solved. There aren't a lot of good personal finance podcasts. This is the time to do one. That was why I did it. Now, a year later, it took me a year to extract myself from the personal finance, from the financial advisor business.

But I was still intentionally extracting myself because I was watching the timing. Now, three years later, the market has changed. It is no longer enough for you simply to have a show that just kind of exists. Because it's become much more crowded. So now you have to have a show that stands out.

Now, everybody needs a show that stands out for some reason. My show stands out for a few reasons. First, it stands out because of my personal unique brand. The concept of radical is intriguing to people and they are interested and they say, hey, I'm interested to know what radical means.

And depending on the show that they tune into, radical might mean eating out of a dumpster. Radical might mean how to invest for massive wealth. Radical might mean putting a tinfoil hat on and trying to figure out how to spend money privately. Radical might mean Joshua's rants against, you know, taxation is theft or whatever.

Radical is part of my brand. And so that's something that attracts people. And I attract a radical audience. Another thing that's unique about my show is my background in financial planning. So I speak to people who are looking for more technical content and information. There are other things as well.

But you've got to stand out with your show. There's got to be, pay attention, a unique selling proposition. What is unique about your show? That's the question that you've got to answer. Now, you probably couldn't answer that right at the beginning because you were saying, OK, I'm just going to start this show.

I'm not exactly sure what's going to be unique about it. But today you've got to answer it. You've got to know what is unique about your show. And you have to lead with what is unique about your show. And this is the same for every business. For you to do marketing right, you should be turning on your ideal client and turning off everybody else.

And your marketing message should be completely focused on that, on always leading with what your unique selling proposition is. So my first thing that I don't like about your show is I don't know what your unique selling proposition is. Your show is called Simple Money Solutions. So that's OK.

I got that. It's about money. But I don't know what it's about with money. In your description here in iTunes, which is the number one place that you've got to focus on to start with, Simple Money Solutions is a podcast released weekly devoted to helping Canadians navigate the world of personal finance.

The focus is on simplifying complicated concepts and breaking down relevant Canadian personal finance news articles. So we're going to get very tactical. And this is an example that all of us have to pay attention to. Your first mistake is you are unfindable. You're unfindable with the modern methodology of searching in iTunes.

This is the number one way that people are going to find you. For some businesses it's searching in iTunes. For some businesses it's searching online. For some businesses it's being seen in the local town. Every business is different, but every business has to first create awareness between their ideal customer and themselves.

That means that their ideal customer has to be able to find them. Now by focusing on content first, you're ensuring that over time you can build up the most powerful form of marketing, which is word of mouth. Your existing customers, and I'm going to use the term customer so that our discussion is more broad rather than just listener, although in your case it's the same thing.

Your existing customers should want to tell other people. That's the most powerful form of marketing and it doesn't cost you anything extra. It doesn't cost you money on top of what you're already doing. But how are your customers going to find you? You wouldn't open a great restaurant on the junky side of town without trying to figure out how to get in front of your customers.

So this is why in some cases real estate is very important. Is there a busy road there? Or if there's not a busy road, how can you get people there? And I want you to think about the example of a physical business as you think about your podcast because you can just simply apply and adjust.

So first thing, you're not getting any traffic because you haven't put your signage out effectively and told people what business you're in. The first problem that you have is your podcast doesn't say either in the title or in the description who your perfect ideal client is. It needs to say that.

Now I think that you're probably trying to appeal to Canadians, but here's your problem number two. And by the way, Trevor, I'm going to say a lot of things very directly. You know this. I'm being direct for the sake of good communication. Don't be offended. Number two is you haven't done your homework yet on findability.

The only two things in the iTunes podcast store that are searchable are your title of your show and your subtitle of your show. And neither of those things has a unique selling proposition in it. Simple Money Solutions is the title and Simple Money Solutions is the author tag. I misspoke.

Those are the only two things that matter. So if you look at my show, for example, it's Radical Personal Finance colon. And then there's a whole bunch of stuff that you can't see on your phone. But in that is investing, insurance, personal finance, blah, blah, blah. And then it says Joshua Sheets at Radical Personal Finance.

And then that is a bunch of stuff that you can't see on your phone. Super long, super annoying. But those are the only two things that I've got to work with as far as findability and searchability. And you are neglecting both of those things. So if your show is about personal finance, you should say Simple Money Solutions colon personal finance, investing, etc.

from a Canadian perspective. Thing number two. My guess here from reading your description, not listening to your show. My guess here is you're trying to work on and to appeal to the Canadian marketplace, the Canadian personal finance marketplace. And I think your market is wide open. I'm not aware of any exclusively Canadian shows that are working in this area.

But if I were Canadian, I can't find your show. And here's what I want to tell you to do. Go into the iTunes app store or into the iTunes podcast app and search money. See if you find out you show up. You won't. I've done it. And also search Money Canada.

And see if you find it, wind up, show up and you won't show up. And the reason is because you don't say Canada and you only list Canadian in the description. And these are not searchable databases. iTunes does not inventory this description. The description is read by humans and the title and the author sections of your iTunes listing are read by search terms.

So how is somebody going to find your show? Now, here's a lesson. You're not the only one who makes this mistake. A lot of podcasters don't know. So you need to be the one who knows. You should be, if you're building a podcaster, you should be spending less time listening to my show and more time listening to podcast coaching shows.

I bet you probably are. But you should. That's very important because that's how I learned this stuff. We don't have the option. It's one thing. And forgive me if I conveyed an impression that somehow I kind of bumbled out of bed and sat down and just recorded a show.

That is true. I sat down and I recorded a show. But once I decided that this was going to be my thing, I've done my very best to do an excellent job and to be as good at it as possible. And you've got to approach this, everything you do in the same way, that when you're going to build a show, you've got to be as good as possible.

You've got to have everything as good as possible. I know you're already doing this because you have great artwork and you're doing good production quality. Now you've got to apply it to findability. So your goal right here for you is you need to have simple money solutions and insert after that the search terms that people are going to find you on.

When I started, I just, yes, I just listed my show in iTunes. And at that time there was less competition. But I was laser focused on being findable for the term personal finance. And still I rank very well when someone searches for personal finance. That's why the name of my show is Radical Personal Finance.

My internet search ranks are fantastic. Even though my website is simply an adjunct thing for the show, I'm highly ranked on Alexa, even though I do almost nothing on the website. And it's all based upon the fundamental of that term, personal finance. Now you've got good in terms of you've got money.

And I don't think you should rebrand, but you need to study it and you need to include those keywords. Now for everyone listening who's not a podcast creator, are you making the same mistake in your business? I see this every day when I look at the trucks that are going down the road and people are more concerned about being cute or being graphically appealing instead of telling people what they do.

I hear this all the time when salespeople call me. And I'm an easy sell, but I want to know what people do. And so one of the most valuable things that you can do is to be clear on who you are and what you do. Who you are and what you do.

And the first thing that you focus on in a business should be native, should usually be native discovery. People just simply finding you because they drive past your business or they come right across you on the web. And how are they going to come across you? How is your ideal customer going to find you?

That's the first question. They've got to be aware of you. They got to look for you and you've got to be there when they're looking. Now that's probably not enough because the major rule is you can't just sit back and wait for things to come to you. You've got to go out and make sure the right people know about you.

It's not who you know, it's who knows you. So you've got to get out and make sure that the right people are aware of you and are aware of your brand. That's why if you opened a car lot, you go out there and you put giant balloons and you run ads in the newspaper and you put commercials on the radio.

Well, you got to do exactly the same thing to market your podcast. You got to do exactly the same thing, just the digital equivalent of it. You've got to get out there and be in front of your ideal customer. So this comes back again to the value of a niche.

One of the worst things that I, the worst challenges that I face is the challenge of having a generalized personal finance show. I do not recommend it. It would be much better for me to have the social security podcast right now or the financial advisor podcast right now than to have the radical personal finance podcast.

In pursuing radical personal finance, I intentionally chose to pursue a generalized audience rather than a specific laser focused audience. That makes it much harder to build traffic. I chose that because I felt that with my background and qualifications, I could compete there. And I wanted to compete, I still want to, I want to compete against the generalized audience.

I want to compete against Clark Howard. I want to compete against Dave Ramsey. I didn't want to compete against the financial advisor next door. I want to compete against the big guys. So I chose the generalized audience. But it is really, really hard. It's really hard and I don't recommend it.

You'd be much better off probably by focusing down into a specific narrow niche. Now, in your case, the world of Canada is open to you. Canadian personal finance is wide open to you. And if that's what you're going to pursue, then you should pursue people who specialize in that.

The first thing that you do is you try to figure out where are my listeners hanging out now? Answer, they're hanging out right now on Canadian personal finance blogs. So now you get out your computer and you start writing articles and you submit those articles to your other Canadian personal finance blogger friends.

You need to meet those Canadian personal finance blogger friends. There is no substitute for meeting people and building friends and building relationships in the business. So you do that by changing the channel. You can send emails. That's fine. It's better than nothing. But one of the most valuable things you can do to communicate the value of a business is to get out of a busy channel and get into an uncluttered channel.

If your prospective client has email inboxes that are totally full, pick up the phone and make a call. If your prospective client has a phone call that's completely full, go see them in person. If their office is full of people, you've got to figure out a different way to get in.

You always want to in selling and in marketing, you always want to figure out a different way to get in. Especially when you're kind of going out. And this is just a generalized business concept. So for you, you need to get out and you need to meet the other personal finance Canadian bloggers.

You need to meet the other Canadian personal finance newspaper columnists. You need to get out and you need to meet the other Canadian personal finance podcasters. The world of content creators is a very small world. But you've got to get into it and be known in it. Whatever it costs you to do, if you're serious about this and you've obviously taken it seriously, whatever it costs you, you got to do.

When I started the show in July of 2014, my first month of doing it, my show had just launched and I knew I needed to get out and meet with other people. So I believe it was July. I went to FinCon, wherever it was that year, and I had put my household on the smallest budget I could possibly do.

So I was doing everything as inexpensively as possible. I drove to FinCon in Texas and I slept in my car during that trip in order to make sure that I could go to the conference and not spend a lot of money. But I knew I needed to go and to meet other personal finance people involved in the blogging, you know, podcasting world.

There's a conference in your industry and whatever it is that does that. And you've got to be there. You've got to be there to start building friendships, building relationships. And while you're there, you look to serve. So you look to serve. Service is the fundamental methodology of advancement. That's the way the world works.

It's built on service. So you serve your customers, you serve your audience, you serve your co-workers, you serve your fellow podcasters, etc. And as you continually continue to effectively serve, the more people you serve and the more effectively you serve them, the more money you make. Because dollar bills and hundred dollar bills are just nice little tokens of appreciation for excellent service.

Your fundamental task is number one, create something great that will serve somebody. Number two, figure out who you're going to serve. That should be number one. Number one, figure out who you're going to serve and what you're going to serve them with. Number two, create something great that serves that person effectively.

Number three, make sure that that person is going to be able to find you easily. Whether that's they're going to find your store, they're going to find you in the yellow pages, they're going to find you with a web search, they're going to find you on Facebook, they're going to find you in iTunes.

Make sure they can find you easily and then get out there wherever those people are and get your name and your stuff put in front of them. It's no different for your podcast than it is for my podcast. It's no different for any business in the world. It's as simple as that.

So I think there's some action steps for you. Hopefully this is simple. Try to keep this very concise and give you just a few things to work on. For you, Trevor, the best thing for you, you got to fix those tags. You got to change your show title and your author tag and include in there search words, keywords, because those are the only two things you got.

Everything else doesn't get searched. I promise the story and then I'll close out the show. Friend of mine, so I want to see, the reason I'm interrupting radical personal finance here with podcasting is I want to see many, many, many, many thousands of you who are listening start podcasts.

Not all of you should. If you don't get excited by talking, you should probably not start a podcast. You should probably write or do something else. But many of you listening have thought, well, could I do this? And I want to get so many people doing podcasts. I do not believe that the majority of you listening will be able to build a full-time business doing a podcast.

I don't think so. I don't think there's room for it. I don't think that it's necessarily even a good idea to try. Maybe you can. I've done it and it's possible. But man, is it hard? It's really, really hard. But I still think you should do it. And I have some reasons why I want this to be done.

Podcasting is a powerful tool of communication. It's something that you can use in so many ways. I'm in the process of launching three more shows right now. I'll tell you about them when I've got their websites up and everything ready to go. But it's a powerful medium. And for the sake of the best trend in today's world is the freedom of information.

And the fact that any individual person can affect many other people at a low cost. We know that with the fact that every single one of you can publish on Facebook, can publish on your Twitter account, can pull out your phone, shoot a video, upload it to YouTube and build a massive audience.

But podcasting fills a unique niche that's different than all of those things. And podcasting is very, very simple to start today. It's not easy to build a big show. But it's very, very simple and easy to start producing things. And the more of us that are out there creating stuff that we give and try to serve those people that we need, the better.

And the more that freedom expands, the more people are helped, the more the world is democratized. So if you've ever had an interest in creating a show, I encourage you to do it. I got a friend of mine to do this. He was working in a niche where he was working in a Christian nonprofit organization.

And he created a podcast for his specific job title. Because he had some ideas that he wanted to serve. So he put out, I think about five episodes over a course of about five or six months. It wasn't any kind of crazy go-to thing about a huge show. He just wanted to put out some simple audio messages that he did.

He was found because of that podcast and offered a substantial job change and a substantial promotion because of his work in that podcast. He never started it to do it. But he was found because he'd taken the effort to build something that was related to his career. And that is something that each and every one of us can do and must do.

Podcast, website, whatever it is, I encourage you get working on it. As we go, I said I would tell you about how to do Libsyn. If you want to start a podcast, what you need to do is go to Libsyn, L-I-B-S-Y-N dot com. Ignore everything on the internet. Don't go on YouTube.

Don't buy courses. Go to Libsyn dot com and start there. Email Rob, R-O-B at Libsyn dot com. Ask him for a tutorial. You get a free tutorial that'll set up everything for you to get started and start there. Rob at Libsyn dot com and Libsyn dot com. If you sign up for a show, use my discount coupon code, Radical.

You'll get your first month free. Here's what you need to do. Libsyn, I'll give you the radical personal finance trick. Libsyn does their billing on the first of every month. And on the first of every month, you pay the bill. So what you should do is wait till about the third of the month.

And on the third of the month, sign up. Use the coupon code Radical. Sign up for the largest package that they offer. So you have unlimited, basically massive upload opportunities. And start working on your show. It'll give you the first month free, but it'll give you the first billing date free.

So if you start on the third, that means that on the first, you won't be billed and you won't be billed till basically the second month in. So sign up for an account, use the coupon code Radical. Sign up for the biggest account, because if you start with a small one and then you need to upgrade, then you lose out and you start paying immediately.

Start with the biggest one so you save money from the beginning. And then just before that second month billing date comes around, drop your account down to whatever you need. So there is your advice for the day. I want all of you to start creating podcasts that want to.

And if I can help you more, do that. Go check out Trevor's Simple Money Solutions podcast. You can find it in the podcast app store. Take it a listen. Do him a favor. Rate him and review him and subscribe to him in iTunes. That'll be a huge favor. Trevor, keep up the great work.

This show is part of the Radical Life Media network of podcasts and resources. Find out more at RadicalLifeMedia.com. Hey, parents, join the LA Kings on Saturday, November 25th for an unforgettable kids day presented by Pear Deck. Family fun, giveaways and exciting Kings hockey awaits. Get your tickets now at LAKings.com/promotions and create lasting memories with your little ones.