An impactful podcasting career goes more than just outstanding production, in-depth discussions, and prominent guests. Above all, a podcast show is highlighted by the host’s skill to build rapport with the audience. Scott Carson talks with DJ Doug Sandler from the Nice Guys on Business Podcast about how he teaches other entrepreneurs to grow their network and influence through podcasting. He shares his five strategies for monetizing a podcast and providing valuable content no matter where you are. He explains why you have to focus on spreading your experience and knowledge across the popular platform. Doug also is offering a free class to help you launch and start your podcast. Sign up for it at http://turnkeypodcast.com/ncs.

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Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

Doug Sandler: How Your Podcasting Career Can Lead To Real Estate Success

It’s Doug Sandler, host of the Nice Guys on Business Podcast, the Turnkey Podcast, BizWiz and way too many podcasts. I’m not going to name them all. I was doing a great job with Scott. We were talking about the five ways to make money podcasting. If you are ready for 2022, this is the time for you to get into podcasting. The best time to do it is right now, and it all starts with this great episode with Scott.

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I’m jacked up and excited to be here. I’m even more excited that we’ve got a very special guest that I think is going to impact many of you out there. You’re maybe looking to up your game in the new year. We’ve all sitting around. It’s been an interesting couple of years since it kicked in, but our special guest is an entrepreneur and podcast industry leader. His book, Nice Guys Finish First, is not about dating. He’s a podcast host of the Nice Guys on Business. He’s interviewed people from Gary Vee to Arianna Huffington to John C. Maxwell and a ton of other celebs.

This guy is a friend of mine that I met a few years back at the New Media Summit. He’s got a big heart to help people succeed. He’s done 1,200-plus episodes of his show. You would want to listen to that, but he’s been downloaded over 14 million times in more than 125 countries. He’s my good friend, the man, the myth, the amazing Mr. DJ Doug Sandler, join us. What is going on?

You said I have a big heart. It’s better than saying I have a hard one. I appreciate you saying that.

I did a keynote one time where I was introducing the main man in an event. I said, “You got to love Doug. He works hard for it. He sleeps hard. He wakes up hard.” No offense to any of our readers out there.

This is how it’s going to be. If you don’t want it to be this way, tune out now.

I did an episode where I made fun. That’s the only email I’ve ever written where I referred to OnlyFans.com and taking bathroom selfies.

It excuses me from asking Arianna Huffington when she was on my show. She wrote a book called The Sleep Revolution. I said, “You’ve slept your way to the top.” She thought it was funny. I’m glad there was a pregnant pause at that moment before she laughed. I’m like, “I must have screwed the pooch on this one.” She has a good sense of humor, fortunately.

I think one of the biggest things we need more than anything else in this crazy cancel culture of the craziness of going back to many years to something in a comic said or something we said. It was a different time for a lot of things. People need to laugh more. That’s the biggest thing. If you can do that in your business, find humor and the little things like that.

You don’t even need to go back many years. Go back five minutes, and you can find why you should be canceling me. I don’t want to be canceled, but if you cancel me, at least let me get unemployment insurance.

We decided we’re going to talk a little bit on this episode about planning. A lot of businesses are starting to figure out, “2021 has been an interesting year. How do I make the most out of 2022?” I know that you are big about pre-planning things and looking ahead. I know that JJ, your significant other, does a big job with that as well too. When you’re looking at planning ahead, what are some of the things that you’re looking at and helping you achieve success? What are some of the lessons you’ve learned from some of your guests about planning and preparing for the next year?

You got to know that if you hadn’t figured out that more things than ever are going to be online from 2021 and 2020 when this whole craziness started, if you still have refused, “It’s coming back.” Even if it is coming back, let me tell you, prepare for doing business online. If you haven’t started preparing for it, now is the time. It will never be too late. The adage, what’s the best time to plant a tree? Twenty years ago. What’s the second-best time? Plan it now, do it now. Get your business online, whatever that takes, whatever that means to you.

We use podcasting as our online tool, but you can use so many. You can use an online course. You could use an online coaching program. You could do virtual meetings and have meetups online. There are so many ways that you could do it, but don’t ignore the fact that this could not happen again. It will potentially happen again, hopefully not in our lifetime. Don’t ignore the fact that online is the place to be.

I was listening to a podcast with Roland Frasier and Ryan Deiss from DigitalMarketer, who put on the big Marketing and Traffic & Conversion Summit. They sold 6,500 in-person tickets. They had maybe 25% show up. That’s one of the events that I’ve gone to for years. I was there in 2019 with 8,500 people, another 6,000 online. It was packed to the seams. That’s the case.

If you’re looking to focus your marketing on an in-person event, conference or convention, which many of our audience members are going to events, the in-person aspect of things, you’ve got to evolve. You’ve got to get your eyes and ears out to your audience, potential investors, or deal flow, whatever you’re trying to drive clients from. You hit it on the nail. You got to be online and do something.

If you have a business that is face-to-face and you’re doing live events, the idea behind it doing a live event now is maximizing the conversion of those live event attendees while they’re sitting at your event. For an event that goes from 6,500 to 2,000 or an event that goes from 150 people down to 30 people, you better have a good relationship with those 30 people that walk in the door.

 

These are the people that have raised their hand and said, “Come hell or high water, I’m going to travel through customs. I’m going to take the antigen test.” I love podcasting for that because when I have a show, I have an audience that is raising their hand and being connected to me. They’re listening to me as they listen to this show. They listened to it weekly, daily or monthly. How many episodes of your show do you have out now, Scott?

We’ve got 675 out. We’ll exceed the 700-mark with our next batch of uploads.

You probably have some people that have been listening to you in many cases for years. How great a relationship is it when you have somebody that tunes into you that’s been coming back over and over again? You have a live event and they show up. Do you think that you need to sell them anything? All you need to do is show up, be you, have an offer for them that makes sense for them financially, that crosses the intersection of them being ready and the relationship. You’ve got a deal.

JJ had a live event and we had 40 people at the event. If I counted the number of the heads that are there, I probably say we had 33 to 34 people at that event that could have bought. She converted over 40% of a room into a $10,000-plus program. When you start doing that stuff, then you realize the essential ingredient to having a relationship is you can’t do it without having a relationship with those people coming into the room. Online space is good. The face-to-face space is good. Yes and have a relationship with them as we’re walking into the room even better.

That’s the thing is JJ and anybody that’s got a podcast, we’re building rapport. You’re building, whether it’s a podcast or YouTube videos, as long as you’re consistent. We’ve had people that have listened to me beyond four years, before I was doing a podcast, an episode, they were all on the Monday night webinars I was doing. Going back several years ago, I had somebody who was, “I was listening when you’re doing a telephone conference call.”

That’s what so many people struggle with. Entrepreneurs struggle with the need to build those relationships and realize it’s not an overnight success. It is a process in what you’re doing and being consistent in showing up. I had a guy sign up for coaching with us from our class. We had virtual classes, but it was live via Zoom. People were like, “I’m coaching with you. I’ve listened to you. I want to learn from you. I want to sit at the feet of the note master.” The people I think don’t realize this guy listened to me for over a year.

That wasn’t an easy sale. That was a long-term relationship, podcasting, telesummits or whatever it is online is a nurture sequence that is a marathon and not a sprint. The issue is when somebody comes to you, Scott, as when they come to me and they say, “I want to get into what you do, into the distress notes, into podcasting,” or whatever it is. They say, “I need to make money tomorrow at it. I’m going under without it.” They don’t say those words, but that’s the vibe that you get.

I need to make money from this. Those are the worst clients for me to have. If you’re in Scott’s audience, and you want to launch a podcast. You come to me because you need money tomorrow. I would say, “Can you go to my competition?” It’s not that I don’t want you as a client, but you’re not the ideal client. The ideal client is somebody that has the capacity and the ability to nurture a relationship, like you would in networking, by going to a conference and then doing follow-up. It’s no different. It’s a different medium.

For me, the best part about it is that I get to build a relationship. The people raise their hand, and they say, “I want to know a little bit more about you by taking my lead magnet, buying a $97 program, investing in a $997 program, or involving themselves in a $15,000 Mastermind.” It’s not like I’m throwing a Mastermind to them and saying, “It’s $15,000, buy it.” Nobody does that.

I would say to somebody, “Your money is very green, but I do not want it because here’s the deal. You need to take a look at all the different steps before you say, ‘I’m in. Excitement doesn’t excite me. Your excitement about podcasting does not excite me.” I want to know when you’re down in the dumps about it and you’re still doing it.

That’s the customer that I want. The one that says, “Keep going.” The one that sees pony poop everywhere and says, “This can’t be real. There’s got to be a pony in this room somewhere.” The optimist says that. The other guy says, “This is a bunch of horse shit. I want the person looking for the pony. I’m here for you.”

I don’t want you as a client if you need to make money tomorrow from podcasting because it is a long game. I’m not saying it’s going to take you eighteen months as it took us. We have a system in place that won’t take eighteen months. If you’re not willing to give yourself a year or six months to do it, I’m sure it’s the same with you, Scott. Don’t do this and think you’re going to make money overnight.

That’s what we always say too, “This is not a get rich quick scheme.” You’ve got to invest. Investing is something that takes time. Our average deal isn’t 30, 60, 90 days. It’s a twelve-month process because we’re building a relationship with our borrowers. We’re getting them back on track and regentrifying that individual borrower and deals so that it adds value in twelve months.

 

I think we’ve done it to ourselves with the media, the need for that instant gratification. That, “I’m going to go viral. I’m going to be friends with many people.” Having big followings on people online. It makes sense, but honestly, a lot of those people that have those big followings and engagement paid for those followers. There are a lot of 17 and 18-year-old boys and girls over in Thailand that is following these Instagram influencers that don’t have any type of barrier line.

I’d much rather have twenty people that listen to my show that are engaged than 20,000 that do jack shit. For me, the twenty people that are engaged, at least, I know they’re engaged. They’ve connected with me. We don’t have millions of readers on any given episode like Joe Rogan, Tim Ferriss, Ron Burgundy, or any of those guys. We do have a consistent audience that queues up week after week. Cumulatively, we have a great audience but every week, we want the right people that are engaged to take action.

Raise their hand and say, “I want a little bit more from you, Doug.” That’s where we make our living. It’s not because we are hogs at it. We want to provide great content, be valuable to our community and our community to say, “I’ve been hanging out and listening to you for 6 or 7 years and now I’m ready to take my step in this podcasting thing or with this coaching stuff that you guys do.”

Everybody has their time frame when they’re ready. As we like to say, “Pull the trigger to get things rocking and rolling.” What scares most people is they don’t have a thought-out plan of engagement, plan of content or how they’re going to make their way in this crazy convoluted and noisy world in a lot of cases with attention spans being less than goldfish and numbers that scare people. There are 1.5 million podcasters out there, but they say 67% of them haven’t recorded a new episode or something like that.

It is some alarming statistics. It’s amazing to me because the barrier to entry into podcasting is so low. Many people get into podcasting and as quickly as they get in, they get out. I think the stat is the podfade happened somewhere between 10 and 12 episodes. Podfade, for those that are in Scott’s community that don’t know, it’s where you have been inactive after that amount of time. In some cases, if we’re doing a full-service launch, it could take 60 days to launch a podcast. Are you telling me that in less time than it took to launch the podcast, you’ve quit podcasting? How much time did you give it? We want people to understand that it is more of a long game, very much like distressed notes.

It is a long game. It’s not, “How can I turn a profit tomorrow?” I don’t want those clients. They don’t want to set a false expectation for what we’re going to deliver because we’re not going to deliver it. Is it predictable that you are going to make money? It’s predictable. There are five ways that you can make money podcasting. As a matter of fact, that’s one of the things that we’ll promote, but you’ll find one of those five that’s going to work for you. We’ll be there with you holding your hand every step of the way to make sure that it is so. That’s what I get excited about.

Before we hit those, let’s go back a little bit, take a step back, as you’re working with people and helping them put their podcast together. I won’t say long-term game because we’ve talked about that. We all know we set expectations perfectly, but when people are trying to figure out, because the biggest thing I get is people like, “I’m not that interesting. Why am I going to share a video of something I’m working on?” What engagement or content plan do you help people outline? It goes beyond the first few episodes. It goes on to something that they can implement on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.

We take a step back from even that question, which is a great question. What’s the year-long strategy look like? We say to people, “What is your goal for podcasting?” Some people’s goal for podcasting is I want to build a big community. Others it’s, “I want to become the go-to influencer and the thought leader in my space.” A third segment of the audience and I will raise my hand that this was me, “I wanted to make money. I didn’t care about a community. I didn’t necessarily even care about becoming an influencer. I needed to pay my bills.”

A few years ago, we struggled with trying to figure out how that money game is played. What I would say is, before we designed the content calendar, the question that you were originally asking, I would say to somebody, “What is your goal for podcasting?” Based upon your goal, that will determine how much structure do we need to have for your content calendar. There’s a different structure and a different strategy that we put in place if you say, “I want to make money now,” versus “I want to be a thought leader now,” versus “I want to build my community now.”

I wouldn’t look at your content calendar any further than probably 90 days in advance, especially as a new podcaster, because what’s going to happen when you start putting out your first handful of episodes or 30 days’ worth of episodes? You’re going to have people in your audience that are going to say, “I love that, but could you talk about this?” You’re going to change the trajectory of your content based upon what your audience wants. The best way to sell something to your market is to find out what your market wants. If your market is saying, “I want this from content,” then you better deliver that, or you’re going to end up losing those people as readers.

I had a conversation with a realtor on something very similar. She’s like, “Where’s it going to be in six months or a year?” It’s like, “I don’t know. All I need you to do is pull this one list, and then we can go from there. I can’t answer your questions because I don’t know what the list is going to pull or where that pivot is going to take place.”

I’ve made some left turns and right turns, depending on what your audience is. It’s part of the game. I wish Joe Rogan would take a pivot and reduce his three-hour podcast down to an hour and not read twenty minutes of ad space on the front end, but he’s making $30 million a year or whatever it is on that stuff.

Advertising and sponsorship are a way to make money, but not for anybody like you or me. You probably make more in advertising and sponsorship than I make for my show, but it’s not an area that I tend to focus on because I don’t want a job selling advertising or sponsorship space. I don’t want to market and prospect for that. It’s not something that drives me, or I get excited about.

Do I get excited about the mailbox money of having an advertiser? Yes, that’s great. We probably do $15,000 to $25,000 a year in advertising, but that’s only after six-plus years of doing this, over 1,200 episodes of doing it. That’s not where we start with everybody. That is 1 of the 5, but that is not an area where I’m like, “Let’s start there because that’s where you’re going to make your mints.” It’s not happening.

Let’s dive into the fives so we can set that straight for everybody. We’ve mentioned a couple here. What you have to realize everyone starts off with different aspects of things. You’ve helped people start off with no audience. You’ve also helped people start off with an audience. Having an audience is always better than having no audience.

It depends on your goal. Having an audience in some cases could be trouble because having an audience means that you have to do what they want you to do. I love the idea of focusing on your audience, but if your objective is to make money podcasting, that is a long-tail approach to the monetization of your show.

Let’s talk about some of the other ways to make money with what you’re doing there. I know you’ve got it down. What are the five ways people are making money?

It’s easy stuff. The first way that I would focus, if you come to me and say, “I want to make money fast using my show,” I would say, “Excellent. I want you to prospect for your guest’s seat and listen to your potential guest with two ears.” One ear, how can their message best serve the community that you think is going to be listening to your show? The other ear is could the things that the person say potentially qualify them to be a client of yours.

It’s the a-ha moment. This is the secret sauce to everything that is a strategy when it comes to monetization quickly with your podcast. I’m going first to tell you the strategy again, then I’m going to tell you what we did and how it made us money. The first month that we were doing it without any audience, without any show. You listen to potential guests with two ears. The first ear is what message are they sharing that could best serve the community that you think you’re going to have with your podcast?

If it’s a new podcast, you don’t even know because you probably have no engagement. The second ear that you’re listening for is the prequalification ear. The things that person who wants to sit in the guest seat are going to tell you, are they potentially qualified to buy the products and services that you sell? Period, the end, that is it. That’s the secret.

 

You said something in the very back part, “That person that’s on your podcast is potentially a client for the services that you offer up.” You and I have heard this from our buddy, Steve, and other people out there is that you need to be the ideal sponsor for your podcast. You, first and foremost, need to be the sponsor and the main affiliate. If you don’t have any classes to sell or any products, you can always be an affiliate for other people out there, but you need the biggest sponsor of your podcast first and foremost.

That would be a second way how you can make money podcasting. When you don’t have any products or services that you can sell, you do have a small audience. It’s required that you have a small audience to sell something to somebody. If you have a small audience, having a product or service mentioned on your show or talked about on your show, that doesn’t compete but complements the stuff that you do or the subject matter that you’re going to talk about.

Having a unique link that’s tied back to your business so that when somebody in your audience, even a small audience of twenty, if they’ve queued up a couple of times and they listened to your show, the chances are good that you’re building some trust with them. They may take a chance and buy the stuff that you’re promoting. The best part about the affiliate relationship world is that there’s no deliverable.

All you’re doing is sharing a unique link that is unique to you. It’s either a coupon code, promo code or whatever you’re using. It’s tied back to you. As a matter of fact, that’s one of the things that we’re going to do. We’re going to share how people can get this minicourse, 5 Ways to Make Money Podcasting. Scott is inviting me to his show.

He’s sharing with me with his community. If we sell something down the road. As a result, any sale that’s made will be tied back to Scott. What better person to get a part of the profit than the guy that introduced me to the community? All of those things, affiliate relationships, that guest-to-client strategy that we talked about and selling your products or services to the community that is out there.

The advertising and sponsorship are good things too. An extremely lucrative way to build a relationship is a joint venture partnership. That is a great way. Scott comes on my show as a guest. He’s sitting in the guest seat or Scott’s in my audience. I happened to be talking about it during the course of the episode, or if he’s in the guest seat, I’m talking to him before we hit record or during the episode. We’re talking about, “This is a good relationship. We jive with each other. Would you be open to sharing my message with your community?” If Scott’s not a podcaster, that might be through an email campaign, social media or any different series of ways to do it. The currency that he’s bringing to the partnership is his list of people.

For me, that’s made us hundreds of thousands of dollars over the last several years of doing this. To tell you the truth, honestly, the way we look at it is all of these five things together, the diversification of each one of these things into your profit mix is the way to go because I’m not reliant upon guest to client strategy, advertising and sponsorship, selling courses or affiliate relationships.

I am relying upon all of them working together. Over the last several years of doing the podcast, plus our business, it’s been worth over $1 million to us. I know it works because we haven’t created the system. We’ve fine-tuned the strategy and perfected the way that these things are going. We’re always making tweaks and adjustments to it.

One of the beautiful things too for our audience, depending on what your buying habits are of your audience and what they’re doing. We’re in real estate. Finance is one of the highest converting and most per dollar lead values in the industry of over $50 per lead, $52 to $53, something like that is what I saw. When I’m talking to my readers, think about this, ladies and gentlemen, you have attorneys, other educators, service companies, software, other tools and all these companies out there do offer some affiliate split, referral code or something like that very easily. They don’t care whether you’ve got 100 people or 100,000. They’re glad to have people out there.

You can say singing their praises. That’s one of the most important things is if you’re going to recommend something, don’t look like a side of a NASCAR with every type of thing stamped to your ass. You want to make sure and share actual things that you’re using or products or services that you use and recommend. If you’re selling your soul to the devil to make a quick buck, that can very quickly turn on you if you’re offering something you’re not using or selling with your audience.

I completely agree. It’s got to be something that makes sense for your audience to buy into. Mentally, they need to buy into it. They are putting down their hard-earned dollar. Don’t be so quick to put a $1,000 program into their hands. It may require that you take several mini-steps. The distance between 0 and $1, if it’s $99, the distance between $1 and $1,000 is 1. It’s not like $1, but it’s 99% of the way is to get them to take their credit card out and share that credit card number with you.

The next step, even after the small tripwire, the very next step could be a very large program. It’s not that challenging to go from a $7 program to a $500 program or a $197 program, which is typical. $7, $197 to $1,000, that’s typical in the pattern. There are formulas that work. Podcasting, we know, is one of the ways to get people onto your list. I can’t think of a better engagement tool and a trust-building tool than this space that we are both chatting in right now.

I’m so glad you brought that up, about getting somebody to pay a dollar. It’s so valuable. I make the joke and this comes back from my radio DJ days of price pigs. Those people that would show up to every live remote or opt into everything to get all the free stuff. Free has no value a lot of times, especially in the real estate space. Free events and expos, you’ll get some people to show up, but they’re all tire kickers that haven’t made an investment.

Somebody who pays a dollar, it’s so much more valuable than somebody who shows up for free every time. Podcasts, for many people in real estate, that’s replaced their freebies to become like, “If you wanted the free knowledge, go listen to my podcast. Go download and listen on anywhere you get your podcast or on YouTube or something like that.”

I’m doing a case study of my very own now. You guys can have a look behind the curtain, and Scott, feel free to share this idea along the way. I used to give away a free program. When I gave away a free launch program, a ton of people would sign up, but only a few people would show up. Instead of doing a free program, I put a $297 seat deposit on this that they will get refunded back when they launch their show. I’ve had so much great success with the people opting into the program. We have slightly under two dozen people that have opted into the program.

They’ve each paid $297. We’re in the middle of the course now, so the success rate is yet to be seen, but I venture to guess that the success rate is going to be much higher with this group. $297, while it is a lot of money, in the grand scheme of things, when you talk about the idea of making $100,000 from a podcast, which is relatively realistic to be able to do, $297 is not a lot of money, but it is enough to motivate people to do the work.

Take action. That’s where we’ve seen a lot of things. We used to offer classes like, “Sign up for a class, do a deal in six months and provide proof. We’ll give you the $599 back.” People love that. People, “Yeah.” I didn’t believe it in six months. I’m like, “I’m sorry.” Those that did are the ones that have been the most successful over the last few years of going out and taking action. They always come back. I got my training for free, but I had to do some work. I had to make investments in the workforce. I think so many people hate that four-letter word, work.

People are willing to raise their hand and say, I’m willing to do it if it’s free and you still got to sell free. We’ve accrued a very nice list for people that are interested in the podcasting space over the years. It’s amazing to me that you still have to sell free.

It’s also come to the fact that we’ve seen many entrepreneurs, many people out there who free has its strings attached to it in a lot of cases. Free now, but I’m getting charged $99 a month. That whole world has gone wild. That’s how that thing worked out there initially for me. You said something valuable, pouring yourself into the people that do show up and sign up.

I’ve always counted if I had an event where I talked to somebody or I sold one thing. That one person is who I need to talk to. That one person who’s needed to hear that message, and I’m glad to pour myself into them to help them. You never know who they’re going to share with and never know what their story is going to end up being.

What ends up happening, especially when you’re dealing with the know, like and trust factor that your podcasts can build over the course of 1,250 episodes or whatever crazy number that we have out there, is that you do get a small group of people that are extremely loyal fans. We’ve named that group of fans as Funkin fans. These are hardcore people. There are probably about twenty of them that are in our audience. You might think, “Seven years and twenty loyal fans.” Think about you listening to podcasts. It’s so rare. I listen to Hidden Brain. I listen to another one called The Daily, which is The New York Times. I’ve never reached out to them. I’ve never called them or volunteered for a case study.

They always look for people. They don’t know me, but I trust them implicitly because I listen to them and I like the host of the show. I think about it. I’m like, “I’d like to have twenty loyal people.” Imagine filling an office conference room twice a week, because that’s how many episodes that we have out every week, “with twenty people that say, ‘I want to hear more from the Nice Guys.’ That’s pretty cool.”

Those are the people that do reach out and you have to value. When you get feedback, a Q&A or a response from somebody, that is such gold out there besides writing reviews and stuff like that, I think those are going away with Apple, but getting somebody to click on a tripwire and respond or send you an email, I love getting those. That’s the best of the best feedback I can get from people. Whether they like it or dislike something, I want to hear from my audience. If they’re saying something, there’s a whole lot of people out there that aren’t saying anything as you said.

Engagement is the key to success in podcasting. It’s getting that anonymous person to raise their hand and say, “I want more.” It doesn’t mean I want to pay something yet. It means I want more. We took our loyal clients and we put them in a Facebook group that came from our show. Part of the key to success there is engagement. It’s called ACE, Accountability, Community and Education.

 

You give them accountability to the program that you have that you’re putting together. The Facebook group is a great community. There are 180 people or something like that in our Facebook group that are engaged in our program. Education, you give them a valuable tool. In our case, it’s the ultimate podcast launch formula that they can tap into to do what they want to do for their goal. Their goal was to launch a podcast.

 

It’s amazing to me that when podcasters start sharing their content with the world and they don’t have a tool for engagement. I’m not saying be everywhere. You don’t have to be on Snapchat, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and everywhere else, and have your guests. Find out where it is that your community meets. I have another show called Ford Mustang The First Generation, The Early Years. They don’t meet anywhere other than on Instagram to show pictures of their car and on Facebook to have a conversation.

I know they don’t have conversations on Instagram, but do they have conversations in my Facebook group, which has nearly 1,000 people now, 920 people in the group. You get to know where your community is. You nurture that community in whatever way that community needs to be nurtured, building the know, like, and trust factor, tying your content, in my case, through podcasting into that group or an Instagram page. Any of those things could be huge moneymakers depending on what your goal for your show would be.

Trying to find where they’re spending time at. You don’t need to be everywhere. I joke about that. I’m not going to be doing TikTok.

How many of your community members are on TikTok? Probably none. It’s like, “Why would I go there?” We tried to do Clubhouse, but most of my listeners in that show, Ford Mustang: The First Generation, The Early Years, are 55 to 80. They have no idea how to use Clubhouse. Many of them don’t have iPhones. Many of them don’t have smartphones at all. They’re using their computers to tap into the Facebook group.

Clubhouse has turned into a dumpster fire for most people.

I don’t know that because I’m never there.

We were doing around with it. We saw some peaks and valleys, but when they opened it up for all the different rooms, we started seeing a repeat of the same people, the same exact content and the numbers dropping. Others may say other things depending on their audiences, but we’ve seen a huge drop off of engagement in people showing up and doing some sort. The same people were saying the same things over and over again and a lot of bad advice from people that aren’t doing things on a regular basis.

It’s interesting about all of that. I say the same thing about Facebook and Instagram too. We don’t own those channels. They could change an algorithm. Clubhouse could change the way they do things. It sounds like they did change the way they did things slightly or whatever. You don’t own your content, don’t have a platform where people can meet and don’t have something that people can tie into to get more information from you. My host could go down, but I could take my show somewhere else, and people will still find me because I have my address that RSS feed, which is gold to us.

There are so many things that we don’t have to rely upon. I don’t need an email list. I have an email list, but I don’t need an email list to be successful at what I do. I invite a guest on. I put that guest in the guest seat, listening to them with two ears. How do they best serve my community? How can they potentially be qualified for the products and services that I sell? Convert that guest to a client using a process and a system that doesn’t come across as salesy.

I’m not sleazy with it. I don’t jump down their throat when I hear a need for what we have. I handle it as a professional would handle it. If somebody has a need for what I provide, it’s my obligation to provide it to them. It’s not my obligation to throw it down their throat. I still have to be tactful and build a relationship with them. That’s the reality of business. If you don’t like it, if you think it’s a backhanded way of getting business, don’t do it then.

You don’t have to do it. This works for me. It works extremely well for me. I’ve worked less hours in the last few years than I’ve ever worked in my life. I’ve made more money than I’ve ever made in my life using this strategy to put it together. I’m not shy about it and am egotistical about it. I’d rather work less and make more money and spend more time hanging out at my pool or with my girlfriend, JJ, going out to dinner, driving my car or whatever I want to do. I don’t want to spend that time on the hamster wheel. I’ve spent my entire life on that hamster wheel. It’s time to get off of the hamster wheel. That’s what I’ve been able to do over the last couple of years with this thing.

I’m glad you brought that up. We hear that day in and day out from investors who are trying to start something. They’re still working that day in and day out job. That’s why we’ve seen such a great resignation is people have gotten tired of the hamster wheel, no matter what it is to focus more on themselves, their value, quality of life in doing things that make an impact on them, not on somebody else’s bottom line. I’m so glad you brought that up because I agree with it. It’s 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. The world is your oyster, not your ZIP code, your backyard or the meetup group that you go to.

The guy that was spending 80 to 90 hours a week working before the pandemic and is still spending that time now, what is ever going to change in your life? You have to begin to make changes in your life. If you enjoy it, great. I love the fact that you enjoy working that much, but wouldn’t you rather not have to work so hard and still have the same reward? My dad, unfortunately, passed away at a very young age. He was 65 years old when he needlessly passed away. One of the things that he said as he was making his transition was, “You will never go to your deathbed wishing you spent another day in the office.” Come on. The reality of it is, let’s start enjoying our life.

I want to teach people through this medium called podcasting. Let’s enjoy your life, but let’s enjoy it so that you can spend a little less time working and a little more time getting out there and doing the things that you love. What is your passion project? For me, I took my passion project and I made it into a podcast. I love podcasting and my ’65 Mustang. For me, I’ve been able to do both. I don’t feel like that’s work. I don’t think that it’s work. There’s no money in it. I’m not looking to make money from it.

All I’m looking to do is nurture a community and provide valuable content through my podcasts. That same tool is used to make a healthy income. I love that. You experienced the same thing, which is so great. You’ve stayed in the game as long as you have. You wouldn’t stay in this game if you didn’t think it was valuable or made you a profit.

That’s the biggest thing too. It’s the people that reach out to you who say, “I’ve been listening to you for six months or a year. You saved me money or you made me money.” Those are the things, or “You’ve changed my life where I may be able to do this. I have more confidence.” That is the best thing. People understand that I can do this, can close on more deals or can raise private capital to change my life.

That’s always been the number one thing that staying out, the most of them. I love hearing that. You’re the same way. What is the best way for people to get ahold of you? If they want to find out more about what you’re offering up here with the 5 Ways to Make Money Podcasting? What’s the best way for people to find out more?

We’ll provide it to them in an easy-to-digest format. It’s a mini-course. It is something that you could probably go through in 30 minutes. It gives you all the secret sauce like the stuff that Scott and I talked about. It goes into a little deeper detail. The best way to get ahold of that is to go to TurnkeyPodcast.com/ncs. That’s how you can get it. Scott will be tied in with that. He’s an affiliate partner of mine. At the beginning of the show, when I said, “I can give a unique link.” You’re like, “Don’t worry about it.” I’m like, “No, I want to reward the people that helped to reward me.”

There’s no extra that you pay because Scott’s involved. I would rather reward Scott. Guess what happens if I reward Scott from somebody in his community buying something from me? He’ll want to have me back on the show again and from helping his community again. This is a free thing. You’re not buying this TurnkeyPodcast.com/ncs. It puts you into an environment where I know you have some interest in podcasting, which is great. Scott, thanks for including me with your community.

That’s a big thing is that we’re thinking about 2022 and talking about things. A lot of people need to start marketing more and sharing what they’re doing more. It’s one of the things I preach at the top of the hill in my lungs to share your journey. Everybody’s journey is different. You don’t have to be Doug, Scott, Gary Vee or Joe Rogan. Be the Lores, Steves and Codys out there, and share your message out there. You’ll be surprised with the audience you have, but also the engagement and the sense of community built from people that are going through the same experiences of growth. I think it’s one of the most valuable things that people don’t realize.

Thanks for sharing my message with your community. It may not seem to connect with those in your community. If it doesn’t connect with you, these words, hopefully, you got a little entertainment of doing this. If you did connect with anything that I said, and you want to talk about it, opt into the thing that we shared, TurnkeyPodcast.com/ncs. You’ll get a bunch of ways that you can reach out to us beyond that. We will not be calling you and pressuring you to buy anything from us. It is a cool way to start a relationship is give you something free.

If you’re looking for a cool early model Ford Mustang to take pictures in front of it, Doug does run on his Mustang for photoshoots too.

It was so funny how that happened through my show. A company called Haggerty Drive Share had an offer to like, “Rent your classic Mustang.” I’m like, “I’ll rent it, but I’m not giving the keys to anybody.” They say, “You can rent it for photo shoots.” I’ve done about half a dozen of them so far. They’re fun. I live south of Santa Barbara in a small town called Ojai. I’ve taken my car up to Santa Barbara, as the wedding capital of the world. I’ve had a lot of nice couples that have taken photos of my car. I get to spend a couple of hours driving the car, showing it off, polishing it and enjoying it. It’s a very cool thing.

It’s sharing your love and passion with others.

It will come back to reward you too. I’m not looking for ways to make money with my show or my car, but what’s funny is it has found me even in small ways. I’m like, “I’ll accept it. Thank you for the gift.”

Thank you, God. Keep it coming. Doug, thanks for coming on the show and sharing your insight. It’s a valuable and amazing tool for those that are looking to take their message to a whole new level in the new year. Next time, we got to get together and have a bottle of wine, shake our dairy air a little and have fun at some point.

I’m ready to go. DJ Doug is in the house. He’s ready to start spinning.

Guys, take advantage of that amazing tool that Doug offered up there. Start sharing your message and journey. If you’re a fan of books, Seth Godin said the best in Tribes, “We are all a part of different tribes, and all of our tribes need the leadership.” It might as well be you. Share your voice, a message and start leading your tribes. We’ve all been a part of a variety of different ones. You might be surprised who wants to listen to you. Go out, take some action, and we’ll see you all at the top.

Important Links:

• Nice Guys on Business Podcast
• Turnkey Podcast
• BizWiz
• Nice Guys Finish First
• OnlyFans.com
• The Sleep Revolution
• DigitalMarketer
• 5 Ways to Make Money Podcasting
• Hidden Brain
• The Daily
• Ford Mustang The First Generation, The Early Years
• TurnkeyPodcast.com/ncs
• Tribes

About Doug Sandler

Doug Sandler is an entrepreneur and podcast industry leader. His book, Nice Guys Finish First is a #1 ranked Amazon Best Seller. As a podcast host of The Nice Guys on Business, Doug has interviewed, Gary V, Arianna Huffington, John C. Maxwell and dozens of celebs. Doug is a nationally recognized speaker, writer, and founder of TurnKey Podcast Productions, providing podcast production, editing and launch services. His Nice Guys podcast, with over 1,200 episodes has been downloaded 4 million times, in more than 175 countries.