Podcast Workflows - Tips for podcasters to grow their podcast without wasting time.

Joe Casabona (00:00)
Alright, so we are recording. It says live recording, which is not usually what it says. And I am just going to maybe refresh YouTube here and see if everything's working properly. And if it's not, well, that's fine. We're still here and we're recording. Alright, I know I'm streaming to Twitch, which is great. So I am...

Joseph Smalzer (00:17)
Awesome. Yeah.

Joe Casabona (00:28)
I'm somewhere right now. Hopefully I'm in like all of the places I tried to connect. Yeah. And then let's see. Okay, cool. I don't want to spend too much time doing this right now, but... All right, well, that's fine. We're recording and we're streaming to at least one place. So let me come back here.

Joseph Smalzer (00:34)
It's just all the things.

Joe Casabona (00:55)
So first of all, Joseph, thanks for signing up for this coaching call. Kelsey is is joining us now. Kelsey, we're live and recording. I hope you're cool with that. Awesome. Awesome. So I looked over your form. I checked out your podcast. Do you want me to start with my observations or do you want to ask some questions?

Kelsey (01:05)
Yes, hello. Of course. Yeah, absolutely. All good.

Joseph Smalzer (01:05)
What's up, Kelsey? Thanks for joining.

Yeah.

Yeah, since we are recording live from this, probably people that will eventually watch this that don't have the background. I'll start with a little context and then we'll go from there. So yeah, my name is Joseph Smallzer. I'm one of the founders of greater than 0%. And we are actually a 501c3 tax exempt organization and we have a podcast, which is a main form of what we do. And our mission is to find people and causes changing the world and sharing their story. That's the mission of our organization and our podcast slash videocast.

And so what we've been doing over the past four years is interviewing other nonprofits globally. So folks in the US, folks in Ukraine, folks in all parts of the world in hopes that people listening will go on a journey of awareness, education, and engagement. So hopefully we'll be sharing some topics that people maybe never heard of before and want to get more curious about it. So dive deep and educate themselves. And then ideally,

Our mission is to also help every human being find their cause. So we want to share so many different types of stories from different parts of the world in hopes that every human being will find an organization that they get inspired by and want to get engaged with. So we've been, I think we've interviewed about 170 plus nonprofits globally to this point. And we are always looking for improving what we're doing, whether it's via automation, whether it's growing our audience.

Finding new ways to get our stories which are the stories of other organizations out there into the world And and here we are so came across you Joe and your organization and like I said we're always looking for ways to improve and And and here we are and then Kelsey if you want to introduce yourself feel free

Kelsey (03:00)
Yeah, sure. So my name is Kelsey and I help run the social media for greater than 0 % and I've been doing this for a little over a year. I was connected via a professor that I had at Loyola who is good friends with Joseph. It's been an incredible experience so far. I feel like our biggest

At least my biggest goals in growing our social media is kind of to increase the engagement and to really build that community of people who are tuning in every week and not just engaging on socials or not just engaging on like Spotify or on the podcast itself, but kind of synonymously connecting those communities. Yeah.

Joe Casabona (03:41)
Awesome. I love that. Loyola, good Jesuit college. I went to the University of Scranton. So, yeah, yeah. Awesome. Love that. So, yeah, that's great. That makes perfect sense. And I did, I took a look at your podcast and some of your goals. So for context, for anybody who's watching or listening, you know, Joseph filled out a pretty lengthy form.

Joseph Smalzer (03:46)
yeah, yeah. Represent, yep.

Kelsey (03:48)
awesome!

Joe Casabona (04:10)
Just so we can kind of hit the ground running on this call. And so you go through your whole process. I really like a lot of what I'm seeing here. But the first thing I did was kind of look at what with your goal of you feel you can improve audience numbers and listeners level up the podcast professionalism a little bit. There are a few places or a few things that I identified relatively.

quickly that I think you'd be able, these would be quick wins for you, right? So looking at your podcast, which I had up and I think I closed out of Apple podcasts, but looking at your podcast, the title of it was the first thing that jumped out at me because when we're doing a, especially a podcast where we have kind of like business goals, advance the business, gain people to understand.

the business, you have a good mission statement for greater than 0%. But we want the value proposition to be really clear with the podcast. Right. So recently, I think you're on my mailing list. You might have seen this, but recently I rebranded my podcast from how I built it to streamline solopreneur. And there's like kind of a long tagline after that. Right.

Joseph Smalzer (05:17)
Mm -hmm.

Joe Casabona (05:32)
I rank for busy, I rank number one for busy solopreneurs now when you search in at least Apple podcasts, maybe, maybe not Spotify. I haven't checked that one because like the vast majority of my listeners come from, from Apple podcasts. But when I search for your podcast, GTZP is the first thing I see. And then a nonprofit podcast about volunteering and corporate social responsibility.

I would challenge you to think about who your audience is and the problem that they're trying to solve because it is, and I made this mistake early on too, right? It's the name and the description are very focused on you as the organization. And we really want to try to answer the question, what's in it for me, right? So when a listener comes across your podcast, they should know.

Joseph Smalzer (06:23)
Mm -hmm, mm -hmm.

Joe Casabona (06:27)
They should immediately have an answer to the question like why should I listen to this podcast? And if they just see GZ GT ZP as like the first few letters they're gonna be like, what is that? So it's unless they already know who you are there there they may not want to tune in and then the same thing with the description we want it to read like a movie synopsis, right so Again, the first sentence is about you and this is really good that information should be there. I

Joseph Smalzer (06:40)
Yep. Yep.

Joe Casabona (06:57)
because it is information about your nonprofit organization. But the first thing we really want to do is hook the people. We want that in a world moment, right? Like that you, that is stereotypically part of fake movie trailers. So, you know, we want to think about what's the problem that we're trying to solve and how can we get listeners to tune in. And then you have like, you know, we believe

that however big or small of a positive impact you have, every bit counts. The first sentence of your description could be, are you a non, like, first of all, I guess I should ask, who is your target audience?

Joseph Smalzer (07:40)
Yeah, no, that's a great question. And I don't think we've really narrowed that down. There's two types of demographics, I guess you could say, that we're trying to reach. The first being, so my day job is at Amazon. I do this as a side passion project. And so because of that, I've developed my professional network pretty well. And so I'm trying to connect the more affluent population in the tech industry with organizations and communities that they typically don't.

Joe Casabona (07:53)
Okay. Okay, wow.

Joseph Smalzer (08:09)
come across based on their demographic and their affluence level. So that kind of IT executive is kind of demographic number one, because I want to have them connected with these organizations. And then the second target are the younger generations that are coming up that digest media in very, very short form. So the younger generations, how do we get them more involved with volunteering?

Joe Casabona (08:31)
Mm -hmm.

Joseph Smalzer (08:34)
or with giving back. Typically these are people that don't have as much expendable income, but they'd have some time. And so we're kind of attacking that first audience, which probably has more money to go around to maybe get them engaged with these nonprofits. And then the second demographic is the younger generation that maybe has more time versus money to get them involved volunteering more so than anything. So that's kind of, if that answers your question, that's kind of what we're targeting, but that's about as far as we've gotten with that conversation.

Joe Casabona (09:02)
Gotcha. Okay. And then your organization, how do you, how does, how does it make money? Okay. Okay.

Joseph Smalzer (09:09)
It doesn't. Yeah, it doesn't right now. we, I, I fully, our board and our founders fully fund any of the costs related to this really, it's, as you know, it's a lot of software fees more than anything. and so it's luckily it's not too much. We don't have like a brick and mortar that we have to pay rent on or anything at this point. so yeah, so we're just covering the costs ourselves, but of course it'd be great to have a future plan where it's, you know, self -sufficient.

Joe Casabona (09:20)
Yeah.

Joseph Smalzer (09:34)
whether that's through monetization and through partnerships, what have you, but we really haven't gotten to the point where we need it or just really haven't invested much time into discovering how to make money.

Joe Casabona (09:44)
Gotcha. And I, okay, so I guess let me take a step back and say, how does, how does, what's the, the business plan for the nonprofit in general versus the podcast, right? If we take, if we look at your overall business, right? Cause the podcast more or less serves the business, right? Yeah.

Joseph Smalzer (09:58)
Yeah.

Yeah, I'd say the podcast is 90 % of what we do. So really the business is a podcast and it was really a side passion project where I've organized tons of volunteer events and fundraising programs and didn't want to be the middle person between all of this and wanted to scale it out to more people. And so I figured let's share a couple of stories of nonprofits that I know, see how I enjoy that experience doing the interviews, see if we get a good response if people listen.

Joe Casabona (10:04)
Okay. Gotcha.

Joseph Smalzer (10:29)
And just see how it goes from there. And that was four years ago and 170 nonprofits ago. So yeah.

Joe Casabona (10:34)
Wow. Okay, this is really good, right? Because one of the first things I recommend people do is to kind of define a mission statement for their podcast. This is the thing that's going to kind of be like your guiding light, right? Like the canon, like canonical thing for your show, right? And usually it's in the format of my podcast helps people like my target audience.

solve the problem of whatever their problem is by and then whatever the goal of each episode is. And what I'm hearing, and correct me if I'm wrong, is you are helping nonprofits by trying to connect them with both donors and volunteers. Is that right?

Joseph Smalzer (11:20)
Yeah, yeah, we're like, especially for small and medium sized nonprofits that don't have the expertise or the bandwidth to have a marketing team. We definitely do provide the marketing of their story for the week that we promote their specific episode. But we never ever plan on charging these nonprofits because they're small and medium and some large. We've interviewed some very global organizations. Maybe they'd have more funds to pay for things like this. But.

Joe Casabona (11:27)
Yeah.

Right.

Joseph Smalzer (11:46)
But yeah, no, we don't want to charge our nonprofits, but we are. Yeah, we're trying to connect people with these nonprofits, however that means, in hopes that somebody listening will get involved in a nonprofit and maybe find a little bit more meaning in their lives by getting involved and giving back.

Joe Casabona (12:01)
Yeah, yeah, I love that. That's really admirable. My brothers and I tried to start a nonprofit organization several years ago because my mom has MS and it's like a lot of work and it was a lot of work for a bunch of mid -twenty -somethings who were like starting families and careers at the same time. So definitely a lot of work and it's really admirable. So I think like maybe even the first line of your description could be like, are you a nonprofit organization?

Joseph Smalzer (12:17)
Yeah.

Joe Casabona (12:31)
that feels like you're not making an impact while I'm here to tell you that you are, right? Like, this is gonna, cause I think it's, especially early days, like it can feel like you're just spinning your wheels and you're not reaching the right people, right? So something like that, that'll really like make potential listeners raise an eyebrow. And then again, it's the same thing with the title. You know, it could be, it could be, you know,

something really focused on that right like Nonprofit connections or like nonprofit links something, you know, it's kind of some sort of Let people like nonprofit should definitely be in there. I would say like podcasts shouldn't I think you know if you're like You know if you're like in the shower section of Home Depot, right? Like everything is not called like the whatever whatever shower

Joseph Smalzer (13:04)
Gotcha, gotcha.

Yep. Yep.

Joe Casabona (13:28)
You know it's a shower, you're looking at the shower. Or maybe cars like a better example, right? Like, yeah. Yeah, exactly. And then same thing with the episodes, right? So again, I think this is another quick win for you. Episode number, colon, and then whatever the name of the nonprofit is, I assume, doesn't open a curiosity loop. And it only really...

Joseph Smalzer (13:34)
Yeah, yeah, just redundant words that take up space that we don't need, yeah. Yeah.

Mm -hmm, mm -hmm.

Joe Casabona (13:56)
This really only helps people who are familiar with the nonprofit you're talking to So, you know, I would I would again like what's the main Like what is good works do and why should I care about good works? And then the like the first line of the description right in this episode we interview Isaac Esen Esen Esen Esenie

Joseph Smalzer (14:00)
Correct, correct. Yep, that makes sense.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Casabona (14:27)
So, you know that again like in this episode, I know it's a podcast episode. I know it's going to be an interview Give me the first thing, right? you know again like a movie trailer doesn't start with like Jake gillin hall or ryan reynolds is deadpool, right? Yeah in this movie ryan reynolds plays deadpool. I've watched far too many videos about Easter eggs in the deadpool trailer. So very top of mind for me

Joseph Smalzer (14:37)
Got it. Yep.

or in like in this movie. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

You

Joe Casabona (14:56)
so again, I think those are like some of the really quick wins, right? and then, so positioning your podcast can really help you with the directories because most people still do find podcasts through directories. But if you have a, you have a dedicated website, or you have a website at least for, for your organization, I would also recommend making sure the episodes are like have a podcast section.

on your website and have each episode as its own post, right? Because this is going to help you with just like organic search engine optimization. And it's going to give people a place where they can go if they don't know how to listen to podcasts. It sounds like you are you have a lot of tech focused connections, but for people who are trying to get involved, they may not know like.

Go to, you know, there's that purple icon on my phone, right? Whereas if you're sending people to the website, there's gonna be a good place to listen there. Anecdotally, like I have a locally focused podcast where we talk to a lot of non -technical people and our web player is the most popular way that people listen. So yeah, so like giving people those options, it looks like you're also, are you publishing the episodes to YouTube?

Joseph Smalzer (16:18)
Interesting, okay.

Yeah, we are. We can use it more as the archive. On our website, if you go to organizations at the top and then click into an organization, that's where you could play. The YouTube is embedded in that. So I think this is a little different than a web player than what you're talking about. Is a web player basically the anchor Spotify podcasters link specifically that it creates? Are you saying?

Joe Casabona (16:31)
Yeah.

Yeah, so I'm not super familiar with Anchor slash Spotify for podcasters, but most hosts will give you like an embeddable code that you can put on your website. I'm going to go out on a limb. This is a big limb because I usually check this. this is a Webflow website. OK. My background is in web development, so I usually take a little look behind the curtain.

Joseph Smalzer (17:14)
Yep, yep, that's our website.

Joe Casabona (17:21)
But so so there may be an integration there or Like or maybe anchor or Spotify for podcasters gives you a website that you can point people to just like a web -based place online For people to go

Joseph Smalzer (17:40)
Is that better than a website?

Joe Casabona (17:42)
The the host provided thing no But like I you know, I don't I my goal for this call is to give you like the the quickest wins and not like Have you leaving like completely overwhelmed? I think a website is best Because I mean especially for like anchor Spotify for podcasters, which I'm just gonna call Spotify for podcasters from now on

Joseph Smalzer (17:45)
Yeah. Okay. Figured.

Yep, yep.

Joe Casabona (18:12)
Like their goal is to keep you on the platform, right? So like they're not really incentivized to make a good optimized website. Whereas Webflow reasonably wants you to have a good web presence. And if you're again, like if if if your website, if your podcast lives at gtzp .org slash podcast and then slash podcast one seven five for the episode.

This is new content for Google to be like, this website's living, right? Yeah, exactly. And then further, right, if you make the episode titles a question or some open -ended thing, it's more like that people are kind of searching for those things, right? How do I get volunteers for my nonprofit? So if you're talking to LifeSphere, this is the one I happened to click on. If you're talking to them about how they get volunteers, right?

Joseph Smalzer (18:47)
Yeah. Yep.

Mmm.

Joe Casabona (19:12)
maybe somebody will tune in and listen that way, right? So those are the organic ways to do it. So those are the quick wins. I know that in your, in the forum and based on what Kelsey said, we have a couple of goals. Let's prioritize the other ones, right? Making money, automating more, getting better engagement on socials. Which of those should we talk about next?

Joseph Smalzer (19:35)
man, could you say them again? Sorry, I was distracted, pulling up. Yep.

Joe Casabona (19:39)
Automating more, making money, and getting more engagement on socials.

Joseph Smalzer (19:48)
I'd say engagement is number one. Automation is pretty, I feel like we've automated a good amount, honestly, with the zaps that we have and with Calendly. So it's probably just getting more listeners at this point and more engagement on social.

Joe Casabona (19:49)
Okay.

Awesome. Love that. So cool. Positioning really good. The other two things I would say for growth, getting more listeners, the best way is podcast swaps. Right. So talking to others, right. You have a nonprofit, so you can talk to other nonprofit focused podcasts or locally focused podcasts for your area or for just maybe areas in general that are talking to nonprofits. And you can come in as an industry expert there.

And then your call to action could be check out our podcast or if you want to be featured on our podcast, reach out, right? The story I always tell. So if you've heard this, I'm sorry, is about friends. Are you familiar with the TV show Friends? OK, great. So that's that was my favorite show growing up, even though I was like 10, like nine on the first season. I was far too young to like watching it with my seven year old. I was too young to be watching that show. And now she is, too.

Joseph Smalzer (20:48)
Yeah, yeah, I'm familiar with it. Yeah.

Joe Casabona (21:01)
But in season one, they were getting like 16, 17 million views, each for each episode, which like sounds like a lot until you remember that like that was like the only thing to do on a Thursday night at eight 30, right? if you were at home, and then about halfway through the season, first of all, they had one outlier and that was the one with Chandler's mom, played by Morgan Fairchild that got like,

27 million views or something like that. But when they did a two -part crossover episode, the one with two parts, maybe you remember these episodes. Helen Hunt from Mad About You was on the first episode. They go to Central Perk and they see Phoebe, et cetera, et cetera. The point is that Mad About You was also a show in that lineup. And then in the second episode,

Rachel has to go to the hospital and the two young doctors that they run into are George Clooney and Noah Weill from ER. After that, they were averaging between like 22 and 27 million views, right? They increased their viewership by like 20 % because they got in front of other similar audiences, right? And so I think that you're meeting people where they are when you go on other people's podcasts.

Joseph Smalzer (22:03)
yep, yep.

Mm -hmm, mm -hmm.

Joe Casabona (22:26)
As far as the socials go, socials are tough because obviously they want you to stay on platform. But I also tell people that like your pod, the podcast, like where like Twitter or Instagram or whatever is like the first date. The podcast is like the 15th date, right? It's like people want to know more about you by this point, right? So on social,

What you want to and could do is repurpose your content in a way that is complete. If that makes sense, like you don't just want to tease the podcast and then tell people to go listen. You want.

Kelsey (23:11)
Like would that include like part 1, part 2, part 3? Is that kind of for these videos?

Joe Casabona (23:15)
So like, yeah, so if you're like creating a couple of, if, you know, if you're, I guess if your goal is to like be on Instagram reels, right, it has to be 60 seconds, I think, right? Okay, so like still like not a lot of time. So yeah, I think that like, if you want to, the goal here is to deliver value on that platform and get people to follow you on that platform. Because,

Kelsey (23:26)
Yeah, I think it's like 90 now.

Joe Casabona (23:45)
then they'll kind of see you more. And then you can have, then you can maybe hit them with an occasional call to action to either join your mailing list, which is really the one I recommend or listen to the podcast. I think join the mailing list is generally a better one because it's a lot easier for most people to understand and it's an easier move, right? Like if they're on their computer, join my mailing list, just put in my email address. If I'm on my computer,

listen to my podcast is I need to grab my phone, open my app, find your podcast, subscribe to your podcast, which is enough friction to prevent people from, especially on social media, right? It's, I equate it to like, I like to walk around my block, right? And I'm like, I'm ready for like a 20 to 30 minute walk, right? If I'm walking and someone comes up to me in full runners gear and is like, hey, we should run a marathon. And I'm like,

Now, I'm not ready for that. I mean, I'll never be ready for that personally. But like, the context I'm in, right? Listening to a podcast, probably smoking a cigar, if I'm being honest with you, in like, maybe jeans, I'm not ready to run a marathon. And so people who are on social, having them watch a one minute clip and then going, hey, listen to this hour long interview, they're not ready for that, right? They're like maybe in line at the grocery store or like,

Joseph Smalzer (24:50)
Mm -hmm.

Joe Casabona (25:12)
are distracted from an email they have to write, right? And so join my mailing list again is an easier move. And then almost every email service provider I know allows you to connect an RSS feed so that people automatically get emailed when a new episode comes out. I run my mind a little bit differently because I'm promoting a podcast that's kind of just tangentially related to podcasting.

But then I do like the behind the scenes stuff, right? And that's where the podcasters can get a look at like, hey, this is the episode. Here's something I thought about during the episode. But if your mailing list is perfectly aligned with your podcast, then just the hey, new episodes out. Here's what we talk about. Check it out here. Right. Because this this may not increase your downloads, but it will increase the number of people who are

at least a little bit engaged with your content, right? And then they'll see it, they'll get the top takeaways. This is why I always, in my episodes, I do like a cold open, and then I do like the three things that you'll get from this episode. If in those first, I don't know, three minutes, they feel like they've gotten everything they need to get, they can bounce, right, if they want, fine. But they'll probably want to stick around if they're interested in the content. But my goal is to like, is,

win people over and hopefully get them to hire me as a coach or to do some automations for them. So with with your goal in mind, you're talking to nonprofits. Your goal is to get them on your mailing list or listening to your podcast so that they can learn and then understand that you have this expertise as well and you can help them. Right. Am I am I mischaracterizing that?

Joseph Smalzer (27:09)
I'd say, so I think the audience is really just every normal human being that is looking for a nonprofit to get engaged with. Like we do have an audience of nonprofits because those are people that we've interviewed. But like you, for example, if you've ever asked a question like, I want to get engaged or give back somehow, I don't know where to start, we want Gridden 0 % to be where you go first.

because we have all these sound bites of all the interviews of the executive directors, the leaders of these nonprofits. So you can listen to a few, scroll through a few quick 10 second reels of these executive directors sharing what their mission is, what they're doing, some stories, and then really following up with that nonprofit, not us. Yeah.

Joe Casabona (27:53)
Okay. Gotcha. So it almost sounds like you have a directory of nonprofits for, okay. Okay, this is really good, right? Because then like the description I gave earlier is probably not great, right? Maybe the hook is like, do you feel like you can do more, right? Or do you feel like unfulfilled, right? Like something to really get at that emotional core of like, I'm just kind of floating through life and I want to help somebody. And so...

Joseph Smalzer (28:11)
Yep, yep, something like that, yeah.

Joe Casabona (28:22)
Yeah, so this is really good, right? So then you want to focus your content and your newsletter on that, right? And so that's my social media play, right? Understanding that we want to deliver value on the platform and then hopefully get them to, again, I think the mailing list, my phone is blowing up. And then hopefully...

Joseph Smalzer (28:27)
Mm -hmm.

Joe Casabona (28:49)
Again, I think the mailing list is better than the podcast just because that's the easier move, right? We want like a series of frictionless actions. Because then like if they get your email and they can just click a button to listen to your podcast or watch it on YouTube, that is frictionless, right? OK, that's easy. Like I'm drinking coffee. I can put this on, right? this is really good. I'll subscribe, right? Which is why like the podcast is a slow burn.

Right. This is like anybody who's like, yeah, you can get like millions of downloads in like a month. It's like lying to you. Or they're buying those downloads. Right. So does that make sense? Like this is what I've given you. I don't want it to be too abstract. I want you to come away and be like, no, we should do this.

Joseph Smalzer (29:21)
Yeah.

Right, right.

Yeah, yeah. I think that, yeah, so focus content, series of frictionless action, automate email. So I think that's something that's definitely we could do is right now we just do a monthly newsletter. We don't let people know when new episodes come out. It's more so we have one monthly where we aggregate the previous four episodes on that newsletter and say, here's the four that we've done. We could always add an automation for connected to the RSS feed to just send an email out with a quick blurb, say like, hey, new episode out. Here's what it's about. Click if you want to listen.

in addition to that monthly newsletter. So that's definitely an option. Kelsey, having maybe joined the Mail List as part of some of the call to actions for social is easier, is easier actions for people to take. Could be something we could kind of A -B test. Yeah, cross interviewing, that's something that I've really never done. I've never really been interviewed by people. I'm usually doing the interviewing.

so that's something I, that, that, that could be low hanging fruit. just, I need to find out who's, yeah, what, what podcast to be on.

Joe Casabona (30:40)
Yeah, so I think there are a few really good and I'll follow up with a link to this. But there's a couple of really good places to find podcasts, right? One is for free. There's Tink Media's podcast swap database. Right. So these are podcasts who are looking to do podcast swaps. And then the other is Podmatch. Podmatch .com where you can sign up as either a host or a guest.

and then it'll automatically, every, I think, five hours or six hours, something like that, match you with potential guests or hosts. And so that's a really good thing, right? And if you're looking for guests, it's a lot easier, because everybody wants to be a guest. But if you're looking for hosts, it'll match you with hosts that you can then pitch. If you're pitching, I think that...

Joseph Smalzer (31:19)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Joe Casabona (31:35)
Someone who gets pitched constantly again. We want the focus to be on the podcasts listeners once in it for their audience I get too many that's like I have 14 patents and graduated from Harvard want to have me on your podcast and I'm like No, like I don't unless you start with like hey, I know your listeners are like strapped for time And like one of my patents is like how to turn your computer into like a Rube Goldberg machine. great. Let's talk about that

So I think like if you have a few stories, talking points, takeaways to for nonprofits to help them get funding or engagement, I think that's going to be really good, right? Because I think while your podcast is talking to other people about how they can get engaged, this is in the service of helping nonprofits. This is where your website is. And so.

moving into monetization, right? It's really hard to invest a lot of resources into something when it's not making any money. And it sounds like you have a really good and dedicated board to help. But, you know, things do need to be sustainable on their own eventually, right? And so I think for you, I have like a smash framework for how to, I call it the smash framework to figure out how your podcast can make money.

Joseph Smalzer (32:43)
Mm -hmm.

Joe Casabona (33:02)
It's sponsorships, right? All familiar with that. People pay you to talk about them on air. Memberships where listeners or other people pay you for extra stuff. So like most common you're going to see like ad free extended episodes is probably some just don't do anything. They're just like, yeah, pay us extra and great. Right. But most like you need to deliver something.

Joseph Smalzer (33:27)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Joe Casabona (33:30)
Affiliates and that's affiliate links. So when someone clicks and buys something you get a commission essentially The trick there is like finding good affiliate programs like Amazon affiliate. No offense Amazon affiliate Probably not gonna pay the bills right unless you have like a massive audience And then the second s is selling so you're selling a service and or product and the H is helping so you are helping people right and so I

Joseph Smalzer (33:40)
Yeah. Sorry.

Joe Casabona (34:00)
Looking at this, you maybe want to pick one or two of those to say, OK, how can my podcast make money? Sponsorships is always an obvious one. You do generally need to actively pitch on that. Right. So I think most people get in their head and say, like, well, when my podcast gets X downloads, then I'll start pitching or then sponsors will come to me. I've launched. Well, I've launched three of my own podcasts.

four of my own podcasts. Three of them were sponsored. Five of my own podcasts. Three of them were sponsored before episode one came out. So this is this could be about the relationships you have. It could be about the value you're providing, the other properties you're doing. You have YouTube, right? And then you have a newsletter. So maybe you offer a sponsorship package where.

You mention them on the podcast, right? You give them a shout out in a YouTube video, which could be the same. And then they're the presenting sponsor on your newsletter, right? And then if you're doing short form social media content, maybe you make a real or a short form video or a post or whatever about them. And those are ways to deliver value for sponsors. I think for you, your best bet here,

Is if we are serving non -profits, we want to, well first we want to be mindful that the non -profits you're serving may not have a big budget. But they do have a budget. And like something I need to remember to tell myself was non -profit doesn't necessarily mean no money, it just means like, you know, your book's gotta be more or less zero at the end of the year, right? I think that's right. Is that like, am I, if I'm completely wrong on that, yeah.

Joseph Smalzer (35:50)
It just that just the money has to be reinvested for the most part. It has to go towards the organization. Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Casabona (35:55)
Right, yeah, okay, yeah, you're not like putting out dividends, right? Like to, yeah, right. Right, that makes more sense than the way I put it. Like, we're starting at zero in our bank account every year. So, you know, you might consider, you have a really good directory, you might consider a, not like a jobs board, but maybe like promoted members, maybe featured members.

Joseph Smalzer (35:59)
Yeah.

Hehehehe

Joe Casabona (36:24)
Right. Especially if they're running like an event in a certain month. Right. So if you have well, June is Pride Month. Right. So if you have a nonprofit for a pride organization, maybe they'll want to promote themselves in your newsletter or on your podcast, something like that or like Father's Day. Right. So maybe like, you know, MLB does like a prostate cancer thing. Maybe you consider that. Right.

I think that that's probably a good way to do it. And then if you have a good, if you have your good network and you're connected or you're aiming to connect people, maybe there's a situation where your organization can connect funding people to nonprofits, right? And this is something that you could talk about on the podcast, right?

you just heard about how Blue Yellow USA provides medical, humanitarian, and non -lethal aid to, I'm gonna guess, the Ukraine here. I'm only seeing part of the description. If you wanna get involved in that, we help connect nonprofit organizations with people who are looking to fund or people to volunteer. Sign up here or join our mailing list to learn more, right?

Joseph Smalzer (37:32)
Yes.

Joe Casabona (37:50)
I think that kind of using your podcast to indirectly sell to people who are looking to connect with nonprofit organizations could be a good move here. So those are the ways that kind of like, based on what we've talked about here, I think could be good ways to monetize. Naturally, yeah, yeah, great question, right? Helping would be like coaching, consulting, and courses.

Joseph Smalzer (38:12)
What's the helping? Do you have an example of the helping again?

okay, I'll catch you later.

Joe Casabona (38:18)
Yeah, sorry service like the selling and helping kind of feel similar The main difference is like with you with selling right? You're not You're not necessarily like Coaching nonprofits and so you're probably looking to sell a product or service, right? Whereas me my main my other podcast actually the one that this episode is gonna be on Like this type of episode

shows how I help people. And so that's like, that show is focused on the H more than the second S, which would be like, buy my podcast templates, right? Like that's kind of like the thing I'd sell. Does that make sense? Cool. Okay. So I threw a lot of information at you. What do you, where's your head at right now? Yeah.

Joseph Smalzer (38:58)
Mm -hmm.

Makes sense, yep.

A couple, yeah, I actually have a couple of questions that are different, but I think we mentioned them very briefly early on. I just signed up for Chartable. I don't know if you've heard of it, but okay. And I'm trying to figure out how those numbers are determined because at one point we were like number two for like nonprofits in the U .S. or in number two for like CSR. And now we're like completely off the ranks. So I'm wondering, yeah, yeah, if we should be,

Joe Casabona (39:26)
Yeah.

Nice.

Yeah, so that's...

Joseph Smalzer (39:45)
And I don't know if that was because our website, we used to post a blog every week about the episode and just, I have, I have a newsletter on my LinkedIn with like 1600, followers of the newsletter where I do a summary of each episode. And we just basically copy that, that, that newsletter to our website blogs for SEO reasons. And I haven't done that in a while. So I'm wondering if that's the reason why we dropped off the charts or not. If you have much experience with like chartable and rankings.

Joe Casabona (40:11)
Yeah, that's a really good question. I'm not familiar with how Chartable figures out their rankings. Chartable is owned by Spotify, right? Now it's like Spotify acquired them. For Apple, again, like all of these places are gonna be like a little bit secretive, like, you know, like the Google algorithm, right? But I know like some of the ranking factors of Apple is...

are going to be new listeners to the podcast, new subscribers, completion rates. When I say subscribers, I mean followers, because now subscribe means pay. Follow just means follow. So like those are some of the ranking factors. So maybe like when you were publishing your blog, it was encouraging new people to go check out your podcast.

and maybe now competition is more stiff. But that could be a consideration. There's a lot of testing there. It could also be the subcategory. I don't know if, is it business, colon, non -profits? Is that, or is?

Joseph Smalzer (41:30)
So we do Spotify for podcasters and I think one of the problems or one of the challenges with this Somebody told me that you could only do a certain amount of tags or something or you can't do tags. So it impacts SEO Due to this inability Yeah, I don't think there's like a podcast categories that you choose versus being able to type in tags

Joe Casabona (41:32)
Mm -hmm.

Okay.

Gotcha.

Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly right. So and some podcast hosts allow you to pick up to three. Some only recognize two. This is like it's like a little bit the Wild West. So it looks like I'm looking at your show in Apple Podcasts. If I look at browse.

Joseph Smalzer (41:55)
Ahem.

Mm -hmm.

podcast category. The only one that we chose in Spotify for podcasters is nonprofit. It doesn't let you do tags. It just lets you choose one podcast category.

Joe Casabona (42:23)
Okay, so non -profit sounds like it's its own category.

Joseph Smalzer (42:27)
Yep. Yeah, it's a subcategory within business.

Joe Casabona (42:31)
okay, yeah, it's a subcategory. Okay, that's that is more what I thought. Okay. And you can only pick one on...

Joseph Smalzer (42:36)
Okay.

one podcast category and this is the one we chose. Yeah.

Joe Casabona (42:43)
Okay, yeah, so I mean that's probably wise, though you might want to experiment with like...

I'd have to have them in front of me. But you might want to consider what's another category that you might rank well for. So my show, I'm currently, I'm like, I want to wait a couple more weeks. But the category I'm currently experimenting with is, I think, management business, a subcategory of business called management.

Joseph Smalzer (43:01)
Mm -hmm.

Joe Casabona (43:20)
because it's time management, right? Whereas I was originally just in business or maybe entrepreneurship and like the competition is really stiff there, right? So that's another thing that you might want to consider. I think there's, I haven't looked at, I know that there are some places that have that data, but you know, you might want to consider if there's another category that you could fit into.

Joseph Smalzer (43:33)
Yeah, I bet.

Joe Casabona (43:48)
seeing how well you rank there. I will say like nonprofits probably the clearest fit, yeah.

Joseph Smalzer (43:58)
Yeah, it's the one that makes the most sense, I think, for sure. I think Spotify, they don't have the ability to add tags, so it'd be awesome if you could have a non -profit and then a couple other ones.

Joe Casabona (44:06)
Yeah, yeah, and like usually, I mean, this is like, something else that I think about. and like, I know I'm very cognizant of potential costs and things like that, but, I generally shy away from recommending Spotify for podcasters for most people. because it's free, Spotify is mostly incentivized to serve.

kind of themselves, you may be giving up some of your content. And so like there are other hosts that will give you more features and kind of paying for it means that you're not necessarily the product. So you didn't ask about that and I try not to cause people more money than I have to.

Joseph Smalzer (44:40)
Hmm.

Yeah, I mean, we're open to, especially now that you know a little bit about more of what we do. We're open to looking at podcast host options, especially if you get out a couple of tags and if there's other features that help automate and maybe reach a bigger audience. It's definitely worth considering. So I'd love your advice on what we should look at and consider.

Joe Casabona (45:21)
Yes, so I, so full disclosure, I'm an RSS .com evangelist, so I am on their payroll. But they have, one of the things that drew me to them was they have a $5 a month for nonprofits plan. And it's like, I think it's usually like $10 a month, I think. So that's.

Joseph Smalzer (45:32)
Yeah.

Joe Casabona (45:50)
gonna be the most affordable, not free plan. And they are really supportive of modern, we should say we, I guess. We are really supportive of like the modern features, micro donations and stuff like that, chapter markers. I've heard our customers say that they love our analytics because they're really deep.

Joseph Smalzer (46:01)
Yeah.

Joe Casabona (46:19)
like very local, not just like state, but like county or town. And so like maybe that's helpful to you, right? If you're working with nonprofits that are concentrated in a certain area, that might be able to inform you on how you might monetize or if you, you know, areas that you might want to serve. So I really like RSS .com for that reason. And again, like because they have the...

It's called the student and NGO, I guess, non -governmental organization, but like a nonprofit organization, plan for $5 a month, which is the best that I've seen. Other hosts that I think could serve you pretty well.

Transistor is what I use and it's really expensive. Transistor is what I've used for a while, I should say, like before I was with RSS .com. They're really expensive, but the features that I use are dynamic ads and private podcasts, right? So I would probably like eliminate those from your consideration for a bunch of reasons. And then the other one that could be really good is Captivate.

They're going to be more expensive than RSS .com, but they have a lot of really good and interesting features. So I think those are probably the two that I'd probably narrow it down to for you. Kind of given what we've talked about. Again, I would say. Like if you're ready to move to RSS .com, right, I think that that cost savings is really like that's not a dramatic cost. But if you are being cost conscious or.

you're trying to prioritize stuff, I would prioritize the things that we talked in the beginning first, right? Because those are like the changes that you can make that could have just like a really organic impact. And then move on to getting people onto your mailing list and promoting your show through your mailing list. I think those are the things that could increase engagement, right? Something that you might want to include is like a question for each episode so that when the email goes out.

You get people replying with answers to the question. Things like that that could increase your engagement and get your podcast in front of more people. With I'm going to have to listen back because however I worded it earlier, I thought, wow, that was a really good way to word it. I think like a series of frictionless actions is what I said. So we really that's I think that should be our aim because just telling people subscribe to the podcast is a

Joseph Smalzer (48:53)
Yeah.

Joe Casabona (49:02)
a series of friction full actions for some people. For a lot of people to be honest.

Joseph Smalzer (49:07)
Right, right.

Awesome. All right. And then the last thing is just automations. You said you come from the coding background. So currently our workflow is, and I add this to the form, is we have a little link on our website. People go to make a referral if they know of a nonprofit that we should interview. It automatically sends that person an email saying, hey, you've been referred. If you'd want to be on our podcast, here's a calendar link for a 15 minute pre -call.

that automatically schedule it with me. So at this point, I haven't really done anything at all. And then, I get on the call and, when that call starts, another email goes to them to actually schedule the interview. So while I'm talking on the call, I say, Hey, next action for you is to go to your inbox and, you know, book the interview. And so, that's the whole process we have for, for pre -interview for post -interview. We don't do much editing at all. which saves a ton of time. And, we use Riverside's features like the smart clips.

that they've released and transcription to do a lot of the manual labor that's now been automated with AI through their services, which are great. So that's, and then, you know, that's it. And then I do, and typically do a newsletter every week, summarizing using Gen .ai as well to help write a blog for that.

So there's not too much input going on for pretty good output, but again, I'm always open to hearing some other additional ideas from you about this, about this area.

Joe Casabona (50:43)
Yeah, so I think something that did stand out to me was that you don't edit your podcast. How do you structure your podcasts? I guess how like how's the yeah.

Joseph Smalzer (50:55)
Yeah, so, and I brief the person, our guests every time about this, but I first introduce them, ask them what the mission is of the organization that they run, and then I ask why you, so a little bit more personalization so they can kind of humanize themselves with the listener to kind of explain their passions of why and what led them to being the leader typically of that organization.

And then we get into the nonprofit details. So the history, current state, what their future plans are of that organization, and then engagement. So what type of engagement are they looking for, whether it's volunteers, donations, partnerships. And then I end with, is there anything you want to leave us with before we wrap up the interview? And that's like the flow that I have typically for the entire show, which again, also open to changing anything. Yeah.

Joe Casabona (51:43)
Yeah, absolutely. So I think that one of the one of the biggest pitfalls for all interview shows, right, is the desire to not edit because to like introduce the raw unedited conversation. Most people don't want that, right? Most people, 78 % of people listen to a podcast to learn something new. So if we look at it through the lens of the people you're serving, people who want to get involved with nonprofits,

I think we, I would want to front load the episode with what's in it for your listeners, right? I think it's important to highlight the nonprofit, right? And their mission and things like that. And if, if your goal is to just put nonprofits in front of people for them to decide to get involved, I think that's one thing. But if, if we want people,

But if that's the case, right, then you'd want to position every episode as, like, this nonprofit serves X, Y, and Z, here's why you should get involved, right? I think if you want to create listeners who keep coming back, then they should get kind of a new insight from each nonprofit, regardless of whether or not they'd want to get involved with them. Yeah.

Joseph Smalzer (53:07)
Correct.

Joe Casabona (53:07)
So I would front load your interview. So if you don't want to do a lot of editing, I get it. I do have all of my episodes edited mostly because like I breathe heavily into my microphone and I hate that. But then like I also get on, I don't know if you could tell, I get on tangent sometimes. So I do edit for content and I'll make notes about that. I think in Riverside you can create markers during recordings now. Cool. So I'd probably like add a couple of markers.

Joseph Smalzer (53:32)
Yeah, you can, yes.

Joe Casabona (53:37)
for times when I think, this is gonna distract more than endear. And Riverside makes it really easy to just kind of edit for content, right? Because they have the transcripts edits now. So I think I would structure the interview as, talking to each nonprofit about...

maybe the biggest impact that their volunteers or donors have made. Because now that's like a real, that's a human interest story that puts your listener potentially in the shoes of making a big impact, right? Them telling a story about how, you know, this one big donation allowed them to send, you know, like 900 tons of food.

Joseph Smalzer (54:19)
catch him.

Joe Casabona (54:34)
to the Ukraine or something like that, right? And then like the donors will be like, hey, I can make an impact like that. Or on the volunteer level, right? Like there was, you know, this group of volunteers that, you know, planted a garden for the nonprofit and then started, you know, like growing food and vegetables that they were able to hold a farmers market and raise money for, you know, something like that, right?

Joseph Smalzer (55:04)
And do you usually think I should start with that or just like it in post, pull that part of the episode and start with it kind of as the teaser and then get into the, the, the flow that I had. Cause I know some people do that, right? They just pull out a part and start with that and then get into the.

Joe Casabona (55:16)
Yeah, really good question, right? In the interest of not making a lot of work for you, right? If you're not doing any editing, then I would spend a little bit extra time in the pre -planning phase, right? So the way that I do it is now I still do the cold open and the separate intro because I want to give people the top three takeaways and I'm not...

Joseph Smalzer (55:24)
Mm -hmm.

Joe Casabona (55:44)
I'm not going to know that at all before the interview. Well, I'm going to know it a little bit before the interview, but, you know, I can't just say something and then if we don't talk about it, that doesn't make sense, right? But what I do do is I have a document automatically created when someone books on Calendly and that Google document has pre -show notes and then it has act one, act two and act three. And so if I'm talking to you,

about the impact that students just out of college can make through nonprofit organizations. I might say Act 1 might be what opportunities are there for college students or recent graduates for nonprofit organizations, right? This is called the setup. So I'm setting up the problem. Act 2.

is a conflict or confrontation, right? So it could be, I'm just out of college. I don't have any money and I work all the time. How can I possibly contribute to nonprofit organizations, right? And then you would say like, well, yes, you know, you are, you're finding a job, but you do have, you're probably more rich in time than some guy who has a mortgage and three kids and a family to support, right?

So you could find little ways to do this, right? And then act three is the hopefully satisfying resolution. We're not looking at like Dexter or Game of Thrones here. We're looking at like friends or scrubs. Or Breaking Bad, I guess that was satisfying for a lot of people. But that's okay. You have convinced me what, and we started a little bit late so we can go a little bit over.

What are my next steps? What's the actionable advice here? Right? So that's what's structured in the document. So for you, what I might do in the pre -interview is say like, hey, tell me some of the highlights from like donors and volunteers, right? What are your favorite moments in your time at your nonprofit? And then you could craft something that creates a hook without you having to like record it and add it in later.

if that makes sense. And so, or you could always just like tee up the guests to say something good and just like edit yourself out, right? So that you get the effect of a cold open without actually really doing a cold open. But I think like that first question especially should really hook people, right? So, you know, again, it could be like our hospital was gonna shut down and then blah, blah, donated.

however much money to keep one wing of it open or whatever, right? Like, yeah, so, and then tell a couple of those stories, get people feeling good, and then ask, okay, so tell us a little bit more about your nonprofit organization. What are you looking for specifically? If people were inspired by your story earlier on, how can they be a part of it?

Joseph Smalzer (58:44)
Got it.

Joe Casabona (59:09)
I think that that structure lends itself better to, again, it's always hooking the listener by answering the question, what's in it for them?

Joseph Smalzer (59:23)
Yep, okay.

All right, sorry I'm taking a lot of notes here.

Joe Casabona (59:28)
No, no, this is great. And I'll send you, you know, Riverside does like the AI summary. So I'll get that. I'll review it to make sure it didn't hallucinate anything super weird. And I'll send that over to you as well.

Joseph Smalzer (59:34)
Yep. Awesome.

All right, Kelsey, any questions on your end before you wrap up here?

Kelsey (59:45)
I don't think so. You kind of took everything like that I had in my mind and just answered it already. So that was amazing. Thank you.

Joe Casabona (59:52)
Awesome. And is there anything I didn't cover, Joseph, that you were hoping I'd cover?

Joseph Smalzer (1:00:02)
Not that I documented here. So yeah, nothing off the top of my head. We're all set.

Joe Casabona (1:00:07)
Great. So for the sake of the AI summarizer and for you and your notes, I think the homework that I would give you after this call is look at the title of your podcast and see how you can make it clearer to the people that you're talking to. Do the same thing with the description. I would say try to make it like a movie synopsis. The framework I've been thinking a lot about lately here is

pain dream fix. So what's the pain? What's the dream? Right? So like, you know, for my listeners, right, my pain for my audience, the pain is I spend too much time on my podcast. It takes me four hours to edit it. I'm always running behind and I don't have time to try to make money with it. And then the dream, right. So what happens if you didn't have that pain?

What if you didn't have to edit your podcast and instead you could spend time creating a great story and reaching out to potential sponsors? And then the fix, how do you make that dream a reality? If you hire me for coaching, I can help you create automations and delegate affordably so that you can spend your time on your podcast in the right place or however you want to spend your time, right? So what does that pain dream fix look like?

for you and your audience, which again, I think we narrowed it. This is like a huge suggestion maybe, but I think we narrowed it down to people who are looking to make an impact beyond themselves, right? Like maybe that's the thing for people of the podcast where you're indirectly serving nonprofits by putting a spotlight on them and getting more.

Joseph Smalzer (1:01:44)
Yeah.

Joe Casabona (1:02:03)
trying to get more people involved in those nonprofits. So I think if you look at it through that lens, like how can you position your podcast and each episode to serve those people?

Joseph Smalzer (1:02:07)
Mm -hmm.

Got it. Awesome. All right, well thank you so much for your time, Joe. I appreciate it.

Joe Casabona (1:02:18)
My pleasure. Thanks for doing the call. I will follow up after this. And yeah, if you have any other questions, feel free to reach out. All right. Thanks. Bye.

Kelsey (1:02:20)
Thank you, Joe.

Joseph Smalzer (1:02:30)
All right, thank you so much. Have a good rest of your day.

Kelsey (1:02:32)
Thank you.