Make Podcasting Part of Your Workflow

About 18 months ago, my co-founder Alan and I launched a podcast called Revenue Rebels & it failed. I thought the name was great. We booked some guests. Talked to revenue leaders. Put episodes out there. And it just... didn't land. No real theme. No narrative arc. No reason someone should pick us over the 50,000 other MarTech and sales tech podcasts fighting for attention. We were throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping for "traction." So we stopped. Classic founder move. If the numbers don't pop in month one, kill it and move on to the next thing. That was a mistake. I sat down with Dave Gerhardt for Episode 6 of Founder Brand and he called this out directly. He said the single biggest mistake founders make with podcasting is treating it like a short-term campaign. He compared it to training for a marathon. You don't run 5 miles and decide running isn't for you. His own Exit Five podcast only hit its stride after he committed to shipping weekly. He told me the growth curve follows the consistency curve almost perfectly. Not the other way around. But here's the part that really changed how I think about it. A podcast isn't a podcast. It's the engine for everything else. Dave calls it the Content Flywheel. You sit down for one hour. You have a real conversation about your industry. And that single hour becomes: 1/ 5 LinkedIn posts that actually get engagement. 2/ A 1,500-word newsletter built around the one nugget that made your guest laugh. 3/ A serialized series your customers want to follow. You're not blocking time to "create content." You're mining the conversations you already have as a founder, with customers, investors, partners, your team, and turning raw signal into something that compounds. I think about this a lot at Warmly,. It goes like this: - Every week I'm deep in conversations about how B2B teams find and act on buying signals. - Those conversations are full of insights that would take me hours to write from a blank page. But in a 30-minute conversation? They just come out. The other thing Dave said that I can't stop thinking about: as a founder, you are the only person who can do this well. You're the crazy person who decided to start the company. You're the one having the hard conversations with buyers and churned customers and skeptical investors. People want to hear that perspective. Even when your voice is raspy and you're running on half a brain. (Which, for the record, was me during this recording.) Consistency IS the strategy. Full conversation with Dave here: https://lnkd.in/gQA59vEB

I've interviewed 50+ creators for The Workfluencer Podcast Many of them are podcasters... The difference between those closing clients and those chasing clout? It's not what you think. The ones closing clients: ➡️ Turn one conversation into 10 pieces of content ➡️ Know exactly which topics drive their business forward ➡️ Treat their podcast like a strategic asset The ones chasing clout: ➡️ Post "new episode!" and move on ➡️ Choose topics based on what's trending ➡️ Treat their podcast like a weekly checkbox One group has 100 downloads per episode and a full client roster. The other has 1,000 downloads and wonders why they're still broke. Your download count is a vanity metric. Your client count is a business metric. (And I don't even look at my download numbers anymore. I track how many conversations each episode starts.) Your podcast is either building your business or feeding your ego. There's no middle ground. Curious: If your podcast disappeared tomorrow, would your business notice? 👇🏾💖

Yesterday, a future guest asked me what the biggest benefit has been from running our podcast, Best Story Wins. I didn't even have to think about it: It's the conversations. Getting to sit down with smart people leading brand and marketing at companies I admire — people I wouldn't always organically cross paths with otherwise — and hear directly what they're excited about and what's working (and what's not) outside the context of a sales pitch or client call has been both incredibly fun for the marketing nerd in me and hugely valuable for our business. And part of why it matters so much to is that, as a founder, once you have some momentum and hire smart people to run parts of the business (something we're fortunate to have done), it's easy to start to slip away from the customer and their problems in your day-to-day work. For me, this happened slowly enough that I didn't notice… until one day I realized I couldn't remember the last time I'd had regular, direct conversations with the people our company serves. And my input on various important things we were working on as an org reflected this. The podcast changed that - it gave me a way to snap out of that pattern without forcing myself back into the sales or service workflow, stepping on toes or overcomplicating things for our team, and start to establish a rhythm of conversations that are valuable to the business in their own right. Over time, I've noticed patterns emerging from these conversations. The recurring themes that emerge have become some of the best real-time market intelligence I've ever encountered. They've helped us refine services, close gaps in our offerings, and spark new ideas for content. For a company that long relied on search for inbound interest — which worked, but always with a lag — the podcast has flipped the feedback loop. Now we receive the signal in real-time. It's a big lift, and I understand the "does the world really need another podcast?" objection. But if you are on the fence about whether producing a podcast could be valuable to your business, and you have the resources and the resolve to stick with it for at least a year, I'd recommend giving it a go. *Admittedly, I didn't want to do it for the longest time. And yes, years ago I cynically thought podcasts "weren't cool" (that's on me, not podcasts). But since starting Column Five back in 2009, it's become one of the most enjoyable — and unexpectedly valuable — things I've ever done.

I've been podcasting for 10 years now. Here's how I think about the ROI. First, some background: I started my first podcast in 2014. Not for business, but as a side project. Since then I've recorded 500+ podcast episodes and podcast became a key part of the marketing strategy of each company I've been at. - My first podcast was called Tech In Boston (interviewing startup founders) - I first got hired at HubSpot as a podcast producer - Our "Seeking Wisdom" podcast at Drift was quite popular - At Privy we launched "Ecommerce Marketing School" - Today I've done 150 episodes of the Exit Five podcast Podcasting can be an amazing tool for business - if you know how to think about it (and get into the game for the right reasons). The wrong reason would be short term lift in sales and direct response marketing. Execs often only seem to care about views, clicks, and immediate ROI on podcast which is a such a counterproductive mindset. After 10 episodes and pipeline hasn't grow, they kill the program and claim podcasting (and brand channels in general) don't work. But after all these years in podcasting, I know the ROI very well. I feel it in so many different ways. It's in: 1. The content you create - audio/video content; which is how your customers consume information today. 2. The relationships you build - often times spending an hour with your ideal customers or key people in your industry. Just last week I spent an hour interviewing Webflow CMO Shane Murphy-Reuter. He was at Intercom when I was at Drift. He was CMO at ZoomInfo. We had never chatted, but crossed paths digitally. We had a FANTASTIC conversation that left me a fan of Shane, and him saying he'd become an advocate for Exit Five and a regular listener of the podcast. I also got to tell him how we're Webflow customers. We had chemistry. We shared some laughs. We talked about our kids. Shane's a key player in our space at a great company. Who knows where that can lead. Win, win, win. 3. The employment brand you build - we're hiring right now at Exit Five and nearly every candidate we've talked to has mentioned listening to our podcast; it's a great way to get a feel for how we operate, how we talk, how we think. 4. It *does* drive sales long term - we ask every member that joins Exit Five how they heard about us; after LinkedIn, our podcast is number two. But they often tell us they have been listening for 6+ months before deciding to join the community. That's how it works. 5. It builds brand affinity - we have thousands of loyal listeners; people who listen to our podcast every week. We are in their ears while they walk, run, commute, clean the house. It goes so much deeper than reading a blog post.

Free game for anyone who wants it… especially B2B brands and solopreneurs struggling to get noticed. There’s a massive opportunity in audio content that most people are sleeping on: dropping a podcast the same way a hip-hop artist releases an album. Here’s how one play helped a SaaS brand go from invisible to everywhere… I had a B2B SaaS client who was struggling with reach… low organic traffic, poor SEO, and content that wasn’t landing. Every quarter, I pitched the same play: stop overthinking it. Don’t start a never-ending podcast. Just drop a content album. One audio series. 12 to 15 interviews or solo episodes, recorded in a week, then released all at once across Spotify, Apple, Google… every major platform (think Drake or Kendrick when they drop a surprise album). Free distribution that keeps working long after launch. They pushed back. “It doesn’t meet the immediate needs of the business.” Fair… no single piece of content fixes years of inconsistent marketing. But here’s what it did do: it created a ripple effect that shifted their entire organic presence. Every episode had backlinks, keywords, and CTAs baked into the show notes. And because platforms like Spotify and Apple index episodes publicly, their brand started showing up in places it never had before. Guests shared the episodes. Their sales team used the content in outbound. Newsletter click-throughs jumped. Most importantly… their site started ranking. No paid traffic. No endless blog grind. Just an audio album dropped like a mixtape… and suddenly they had momentum again. Here’s the kicker: B2B decision-makers are 3x more likely to listen to podcasts weekly than the average internet user. Why? Because audio fits into their day… commutes, workouts, flights. While others chase social reach, your voice is in their ears when they’re actually paying attention. And you don’t even need to be the star. Interview thought leaders… they’ll likely share it with their audience. That’s built-in distribution. Clip it for social. Drop it in your newsletter. Use it in sales. Interview clients, prospects… even customers of your competitors. People love talking about themselves. Give them the mic, and they’ll do the marketing for you. If you’re a solopreneur, this is a no-brainer. You don’t need to spend months or tens of thousands writing a book. Just record an audio series… 12 episodes, 12 chapters. Same impact. Faster to produce. Built to last. Most people overcomplicate content. They think if it’s not weekly, it’s not worth doing. But ask yourself… if you were writing a book, would you release one chapter a week for two years? Of course not. You’d drop the whole thing. That’s what this is. A digital book, in audio form. A moment… not a marathon. If it works in music, it can work in B2B. Whoever does it first will look like the leader. If you’re ready to run this play, let’s talk.