🎙️Turn Your Podcast Into A Profitable Business With Tony Guarnaccia 🎧
Having trouble making your podcast profitable? We've got your back! Growth guru Tony Guarnaccia, who's empowered countless businesses, joins us to reveal the secrets of podcasting profitability. Today, you'll learn why most podcasts fail (and how to avoid it!), the qualities podcast hosts crave in guests (beyond expertise!), crafting a killer "podcast one-sheet" to land more interviews, monetizing your podcast appearances, and so much more. Tune in to this insightful conversation and discover how to leverage podcasting as a powerful tool to amplify your reach and achieve your business goals.
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🎙️Turn Your Podcast Into A Profitable Business With Tony Guarnaccia 🎧
We are here with the one and only Tony Guarnaccia. He's grown over 10,000 small businesses and a dozen Fortune 500 companies, including ADP, Ford and AutoNation. He even became the Google Partner of the Year. Later, Tony returned to his entrepreneurship roots, bringing in the strategy, tactics, and resources normally reserved for large companies to small businesses like yours. Now he's focused on bringing that same vision to podcast hosts and guests to make podcasting profitable. In this episode, he's here to talk to us about the podcast profit system. Tony, we're super excited that you're here with us, and you can't wait to geek out on the show. Welcome.
Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Tony’s Entrepreneurial Journey
I know everyone is super excited to dig into podcasting and get more deeply ingrained in that space. Before we jump into the good stuff, in case anyone in the audience is meeting you for the first time, do you want to tell us a little bit about you, your entrepreneurial story and how you found yourself owning this niche of profitable podcasts?
I grew up in a small business when I was twelve. My parents had an Italian bakery. They were fantastic bakers, but unfortunately, they didn't know what they knew about growing up business. We lost everything. We lost the house, car and even had to give up my dog. It was a challenging time. What I find looking back is to set the foundation of who I wanted to become and the journey I took. Years later, I went to college and studied Entrepreneurship. Looking back now, I'm realizing rectify the past. I started a business in college. It was one of the first online bakeries. I’m going back to what my parents did in a way. They did a bakery. I did an online bakery. What we're able to do is take a photo, and put it on a cake, which a lot of people have, but we were way ahead of the curve back then.
What was unusual is we were able to mail it anywhere in the United States. With that, I won The Best New Product at the New York Incentive Show. I ended up doing a cake for Jennifer Lopez, Jay-Z and big corporate clients. Here I am in my mid to late twenties thinking, “I'm pretty hot stuff. I must know my stuff. How did my parents screw up?” Unfortunately, I found out the hard way that I didn't know what I didn't know and lost everything a second time. Unfortunately, this time I was newly married with a baby on the way. I was like, “This is not good. Clearly, I'm missing something. How do I figure out what I'm missing?” That's when I went on over a decade journey purposely working with the best companies I possibly could.
Years later, I ended up working with a dozen Fortune 500 companies and 10,000 small businesses and became Google's Partner a year, spending $400 million in Google Ads. I had an interesting journey. My thought process was to be the best. I need to work with the best, and that's what I did. After that, I then started my own agency a decade and I said, “I want to document my journey, write my story and share what the best companies are doing as opposed to everyone else.” That's when I did a book. You do a book. What do you do when you do a book? You do a podcast book tour.
That's when I realized, “The podcasters I'm working with are exactly who I want to serve because there are many podcasters, but most of them don't last very long. Eighty-five percent fail before eight episodes, and most of them aren't making any money. I'm going to take everything I learned and now zero in on this specific niche.” That's how I got to my mission today. I'm making podcasting profitable.
Here's the big takeaway that I'm loving. Raiders, he's seen the lowest of the lows, not just once but twice and then the highest of the highs in multiple ways. If you're truly wanting to learn someone who's like the best person to learn from you guys is someone who's struggled and gotten out of struggle because if you are struggling, who do you think is going to be able to help you? Tony will. I love that. You've gotten in the trenches. You've done the hard work. You've been on both sides of that coin. What a crazy story you have. That's interesting. Everything from bakery to podcasting.
Who would've thought? I've never imagined that.
What Podcast Hosts Look For In A Guest
Working with the biggest companies to now working with the small podcasters. It’s super cool. I know tons of people are into podcasting because it's become super popular, and its popularity has accelerated since COVID happened. Tons of people are actively listening to podcasts. It's a great way to grow your audience grow your base, but like you said, 85% of new podcasters fail within the first 6 to 8 episodes. That's crazy. Clearly, we need to unpack this a little bit for anyone in the audience who's been thinking like, I want to start a podcast, but how do I not be one of those 85%? Podcasting is all about interviewing someone, talking to someone, and sharing your message in an audio form. In terms of people looking for guests, I know before you start your own podcast, it's great to be a guest on other people's feel it out a little. What are the most important qualities that podcast hosts look for in a guest?
There are so many podcasters, but few last very long. 85% fail before reaching eight episodes, and financial success remains elusive for most.
They want someone that's going to add value at the end of the day. That's the most important thing, but then the question becomes, “How do they know if they're going to add value?” This goes back to the basics. I'm sure you've heard of Are you known, “Are you liked? Are you trusted?” Those are all foundational elements. In addition to that, for a podcaster, they're going to want to know what value we're going to provide. This might be in the form of the questions you're going to address and the topics you're going to do, your biography is a big one, and more podcasters are looking for opportunities to collaborate. What offer you have is a proven offer. To vet all this stuff, this is where One Sheet comes into your podcast.
I like to think of it as a resume, but for getting booked on podcasts. Even if they don't ask for One Sheet, you still want to go through the exercise of creating one because it makes you think, “How does the podcast know what's your social media following? What website do you have? Do you look professional? Are you liked? What stories can you share?” Going through that process of saying, “How can I be known? How can I be liked? How can I be trusted?” Trust is a form of social proof. What other shows have you been on? What case studies do you have results for others? Going through that mental process is very helpful regardless if you use it to get booked. It's helpful for when you're doing the interview, which is the most important part because you need to have this repository of stories, proof and everything else.
Your Backend Offer
It totally makes sense because whoever's about to be featuring, interviewing, and talking with you wants to know, “Why is my audience going to fall in love with you? Why is my audience going to want to tune in and just not drop off after the first five minutes? Why are they going to want to listen to the entire podcast? What have you got to offer? Why is my audience going to be intrigued?” I love something else. You said that I would love to tease apart a little bit. You said it's not just about the front-end value you can offer. It's also the backend offer that you can make to people. Tell us a little bit more about that. Break that apart. Why would a podcast host want to know about your backend offer, and what happens when you have that conversation?
There are a couple of reasons. 1) There are revenue opportunities for the hosts that you can share. Before I even unpack that, let's look at the purpose of being on the show in the first place and what the audience is looking for because you want to start with them as opposed to what I want or the host wants. At the end of the day, everybody's looking for some transformation. People don't understand how important that is but also how to break that down into pieces. If you look at someone, essentially they're on a journey, like I shared and opened up about my journey, and none of us are finished yet. We're still breathing, so we're still going. You want to look at, “What's the journey someone that's listening to this wants to take and how can you help them get there?”
There's always an exchange right now there's an exchange with your audience. I'm giving hopefully valuable content. In exchange, they receive and listen to it. I'm getting a level of attention and hopefully growing some level of trust with your audience. The next stage from that is maybe I have an offer at the end. Typically, that offer is exchanging their contact information for even more valuable information, getting down the rabbit hole a little bit further. They're getting closer to getting to where they want to go in their journey. The last stage is usually a transformation where they get their end result, what they're looking for, or at least that stage in exchange, typically for money.
You have to always think about, “What's the exchange?” Attention for value, better value for contact information and then money typically for end transformation. Where this comes into play is you always have to think, “How am I helping the audience at whatever stage I'm at?” When you get to the money part, a lot of times this is where hosts want to do what's called a joint venture. We coordinate and collaborate on an offer. You get a benefit because you're exposing me to your audience. Maybe you get a percentage, and then I get the benefit of not having to spend all this money in hours or Facebook to acquire it. I'd rather give you the money. That's how it works, the full spectrum of the audience, the hosts and the guests how they all play along.
For all of you wanting to get booked for more speaking gigs, the host, if you say, “If people continue through my funnel, they'll find offer X, Y, Z. If you embed not just a link to my lead magnet but an affiliate link to my lead magnet, if they go down that rabbit hole and make a purchase, you'll get a kickback,” what host isn't going to want that?
That's more where things are going, like more hosts are looking for that because I see it all the time, lots of people are having guests on their show. They might be great content, but it's not driving the needle for them to monetize to cover their costs. Those are the two areas more hosts have to focus on is, “How am I monetizing? How am I growing that audience?” That's where I find people falling short. They're not marketing, they're not growing, and they're not monetizing. They're not sustaining themselves.
What I love about that is it's a win-win on both sides. The host gets a win because they have a high-value speaker that their audience is going to love. The second win for them is that they could profit from some extra revenue flowing in. Then for the person being interviewed, it's a win because you're being exposed to a brand new audience and it's another win because you can get a whole bunch of leads flowing into your funnel. It's a win-win twice over for both parties.
The most important ones, the audience and the listeners win because they get closer to where they want to go. It's that trio. It's important.
Common Mistakes When Pitching Podcasts
It's a win-win. I love that. That's super smart, and it completely makes sense. As people then are going out and they're trying to get featured on podcasts, lineups and speaking gigs, what's the most common mistake you see them making when they're pitching podcasts?
They're not leading with value. Always look at value, and always start with relationships. There are templates and everything else on how you can cold pitch, which you can do that. The most effective way is to connect with the people that are already on that show and ask for a referral. Connect with these people in person, go to events, add value to them. From a pitching perspective, it's almost like you don't want to pitch. You're better off leveraging relationships to get to where you want to be, because that's going to be the easier way by far.
Monetizing Your Podcast: Leveraging relationships is the far easier way to get where you want to be.
Go out there, network and make friends. You'll naturally start getting invited to stuff, and you won't have to pitch everyone. It's still important, as you're networking, and making those friends. If you have your pitch One Sheet in the back of your mind and someone asks you, “What do you do?” It'll be that much easier to tell them what you do, know what to say and know how to introduce yourself with value first.
I spent literally years developing my messaging, “What I'm going to say? How am I going to say it?” It wasn't by chance. These stories I've thought about, I've written out. You want to have a clear, concise message because you can't persuade or influence anyone if you don't even know your own story. You need to start with the messaging. That's where the One Sheet comes into play because this forces you to think about, “Who am I? What am I trying to do? Why am I doing it?” All that is super important.
How Guests Can Monetize Their Podcast Interviews
One way or the other, you're building a brand. You're either doing it intentionally or you're doing it accidentally. Let's go with intentional. It's something as simple as One Sheet can help you get your thoughts in order and not feel like you're swirling or going in circles. It's like with everything, if you bring it back to the basics and do the basics well, it's going to serve you. As a guest then, you're not the one hosting. You're the one being interviewed. You're the guest of the day. How can guests monetize their podcast interviews? Is there any way for them to do that?
There are lots of ways to do it. We talked about one of them already, which is do a joint venture with the the host. The other thing you want to think about is, “How do I leverage that interview for social proof?” At the very least, you want to make sure you take that interview and put it on your website because that's a great form of proof. If you have a sales process, let’s say you're a consultant or a coach, and when someone is first introduced to you, you want to do what's called an indoctrination sequence. You want to let them know who you are and get familiar with you. One of the most important components of that is social proof, leveraging those snippets of the interviews in that process is a great way to do it. You can also use the interviews for your own marketing.
You can do what's called code marketing. When you're on a show, you do a good job, you want to promote them. All you do is basically promote your interview to your audience, which will help build loyalty and help you stay top of mind with them. You can also run Facebook campaigns against that and expose yourself to new audiences. There are a lot of ways to think about it. You have to think about, “How can I use it to help convert so people are already in my funnel to push them over the edge? How do I use it to get in front of new audiences by marketing it to people you don't know?” Co-marketing is one of the best ways to do that, and it's free. Also, how do you leverage it on your own assets?
The thing I think about a lot where I find a lot of businesses missing is not building their own assets. It's very important. What do I mean by an asset? A property is an asset. A property is basically like a container for content. A podcast is a container, it has episodes. A blog is a container, it has a blog post. A book is a container. It's got chapters. Your growth is going to be a function of how many properties you have and how much content are you filling in those properties. The third leg is your email list. Leveraging those properties to grow your email list. The nice thing about this strategy, whether you're sitting in the host chair or the guest chair, is you can leverage these to create all those three assets.
Monetizing Your Podcast: Where we find a lot of businesses fail is not billing their own assets.
It’s super smart it totally makes sense. As a podcast host myself, I can tell you for sure if I feature someone and they drive tons of traffic to the podcast, I'm far more likely to reach back and be like, “Let's collaborate on some other stuff. You're great to work with,” then it opens the door to other relationship. You might find that that podcast host is recommending you to other podcasters and other people with shows and things like that. It's the adult version of making friends, which super good tips. Even as a guest, you can monetize, you can make a good amount of money even if you're not the host.
One thing I did mention, which ties into the line with everything else, be thoughtful of exactly what that offer is. You want to have an offer, but you want an offer that converts. People don't spend enough time with that. A lot of times they'll go on a show and they'll say, “To reach me, why don't you go on one of my assessments, audits or whatever?” I think everyone knows that's a pitch. It's like, “Who wants that?” When you have an offer, you want to make sure it's something that's transformative, but in a very short period of time. What does that mean? It gives a quick result that doesn't take a lot of effort from the audience that's getting it, that adds immediate value.
It’s something like a quick hit of value. The best way to do that that I found is usually some tool, a template, a cheat sheet, a checklist or something very quick, because the other thing people do, if they're not being salesy and saying, “Go on a consulting call with me so I can pitch you,” which is the worst idea ever. The other bad idea is saying, “Read my book.” How many books do you have on your shelf that you've never read? Something condensed that gives value as quickly as possible propels them to the next stage. That's the other huge mistake people tend to make.
The Most Critical Skill To Develop As A Podcast Guest
They want to be offering a quick win that's easy to digest and easy to say yes to. If those reading is wanting to like, “This is my year. I'm going to get featured in lots of podcasts and shows,” they want to make sure that they're a good guest speaker. What's the most critical skill that they would want to develop as a guest speaker in a podcast?
The most important thing is your messaging. You have to have a clear message because of your impact. Most of us do this for three reasons. You want to grow your audience, your income, but you also want to grow your impact. To grow your impact, that's a function of your ability to persuade and have people take action. The key to that is being able to clearly communicate a message that impacts people. You might have the cure for cancer, but if you can't communicate it properly, it's not going anywhere. Having this message down the path is the key to communicating your value proposition so that people will want to take action. Because you might have an amazing message, but people aren't acting on it. You're wasting your time and their time to host time. You need to be thinking about, “How do I drive them to take action?”
It completely makes sense. I know working with a lot of clients who are brand new in the business world and they're getting their business started, the minute you start asking questions like, “What is your marketing message? What is it that you stand for? How do you help people?” They go, “It's this, that, but it's this other thing.” It can be hard to clean that up and button it up. Sometimes it's a process. It happens over many weeks, months or, God forbid, years. You started with a bakery, and now you're doing podcasting. It's a journey of exploration.
I've always found a common theme. A lot of my theme has been about the democratization of marketing. It's accessible to everybody, which is what I'm doing today in a sense, but now it's more of like democratizing people's voice because I think everyone should have a voice, and podcasting's the greatest way to communicate that, even if they disagree with me. I hate the idea of things being shut down. I totally have a disagreement in a different stance, but you shouldn't be silent. I think that's the powerful thing about podcasting. I think it gives everyone a voice. That's very much aligned with over the past years, that's been a steady theme.
I'm sure those reading are like, “I can completely grow my audience this way. I can monetize it even as a guest, but I need to clean up my message.” There are probably a lot of people recognizing, “I'm one of those people that's like this, that and all over,” but I know you have a free gift that can help the audience to clean up their message. Figure out exactly how to have everything buttoned up and tidy. Do you want to tell us about that gift?
Following my own principles, you want to have something that's very easy to consume and gives a quick win. One of the best ways to do that, which not everyone can do, but unfortunately, to know how to program. One of the best things to do is have some software, or even if you can't do software, it could be an Excel spreadsheet or a tool. My tool helps people create a Podcast One Sheet that gets them booked on podcasts so that they can grow their audience income and impact. It's a powerful tool and it's completely free to your audience. It's going to add a lot of value. They nail their messaging, nail their offer and identify where they're going to be a great guest.
VIP Gift
Readers, if you're watching this and this is hitting you in the right place where you're like, “This is the message I needed. Podcasting is what I'm going to tackle this year. This is my jam, but I got to get started.” Grab that Podcast One Sheet that's going to help you get a great start to cleaning up your message because you don't want to come across as a hot mess to all these podcast hosts. Grab that gift. Get your message all buttoned up and tidy so that you know exactly the value that you're bringing and why people would want to book you in and watch what happens. You guys scoop that up if you don't have it yet. I also know that you have a VIP gift for those who are VIP ticket holders. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that one?
With VIP ticket holders, I have a workshop I did. I gave you the tool now, which is the free tool, but it's even more powerful if you know what to put in it. The tool is only as good as what goes in it, “ Garbage in, garbage out,” as I used to say. I walk you through all those elements of exactly what you have to do to have a compelling one-sheet. It starts with things like, “How do you write a compelling biography? How do you create a compelling podcast intro, which is how the host will introduce you? How you could develop the topics you'd like to discuss? How do you develop the questions you want to do?” It goes through step by step exactly how to go through all those.
One of the things too for your regular offer, not the VIP, one thing I did forget to mention, is another principle of mine is you always want to go above and beyond. With your audience, you can get the Podcast One Sheet and the basic briefs in is for free. One thing I added to yours is an extra level what's called the podcast binder. This is what enables you to find all the podcasts you'd want to be a guest on based on plenty of your topics. That's usually $500 that you can only get through buying the software. What I always try to do is give a little extra. For your audience, anyone can get this, it's completely free to your group if you follow the link that you have. That's the baseline. For the VIP, I'm going to show you how to enter all the information for your One Sheet. Just to be clear on what the difference is.
You always want to go above and beyond. Give a little extra.
Readers, I hope you're doing a happy dance because how nice that he layered in that extra level of not only giving you the Podcast One Sheet but giving you the podcast finder so that you can go out and find all the perfect podcasts that you should be speaking on, like hello, easy button. Grab that thing. Thank you so much for adding that in. That is amazing. For the VIP ticket holders, the workshop that is basically like a guided tour, helping you to fill out that One Sheet because if you're struggling to fill it in, you need some guided help. Why not get some guided help from Tony? Who doesn't want a tour through the worksheet? That's always a bonus.
If you're not a VIP ticket holder yet, what are you doing? Grab that VIP ticket. You can be getting booked out in podcasts quicker than you would imagine. You'd be surprised how many people are not prepared like to speak. Imagine if you are one of the few guests that these hosts have that you're prepared, your things are buttoned up, you come across professionally, and you're going to get a lot of referrals. This is a valuable gift because it creates this virtuous cycle of not just getting out there and doing the thing, but doing it well and then having the referrals flow in, and that's where the magic's at.
Referrals are a huge part of what I do. If you do it correctly, you can 3X the number of interviews you do. If you go on one, you are usually able to get 2 or 3 referrals for every interview you do.
Who doesn't want that?
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About Tony Guarnaccia
Tony has grown over 10,000 small businesses and a dozen Fortune 500 companies, including ADP, Ford, and AutoNation and became the Google Partner of the Year. Later, Tony returned to his entrepreneurship roots to bring the strategy, tactics and resources normally reserved for large enterprises to small businesses. Today, he is focused on bringing that same vision to podcast hosts and guests – to make Podcasting profitable.