399: How Podcasters Are Getting Rich And The Secret To Growing An Audience With Joe Saul Sehy

00:00
You’re listening to the My Wife Could Her Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and dig deep into what strategies they use to grow their businesses. Today, I’m thrilled to have my longtime friend Joe Saul-Siehey on the show. And Joe runs one of the top personal finance podcasts in the world over at Stacking Benjamins. And he is a master of both building and preserving wealth. Now, he also has a book out called Stacked, Your Super Serious Guide to Money Management. And in this episode, we’re going to talk about investing and managing your money.

00:28
But before we begin, want to thank Klaviyo for sponsoring this episode. Always excited to talk about Klaviyo because they’re the email marketing platform that I personally use for my e-commerce store and it depends on them for over 30 % of my revenue. Now you’re probably wondering why Klaviyo and not another provider. Well Klaviyo is the only email platform out there that is specifically built for e-commerce stores and here’s why it’s so powerful. Klaviyo can track every single customer who’s shopped in your store and exactly what they bought. So let’s say I want to send out an email to everyone who purchased a red handkerchief in the last week. Easy.

00:57
Let’s say I want to set up a special autoresponder sequence to my customers depending on what they bought, piece of cake, and there’s full revenue tracking on every email sent. Klaviyo is the most powerful email platform that I’ve ever used, and you can try them for free over at klaviyo.com slash my wife. That’s K-L-A-V-I-Y-O dot com slash my wife. I also want to thank Postscript for sponsoring this episode. If you run an e-commerce business of any kind, you know how important it is to own your own customer contact list. And this is why I’m focusing a significant amount of my efforts on SMS marketing.

01:27
SMS, or text message marketing, is already a top five revenue source for my ecommerce store and I couldn’t have done it without Postscript, which is my text message provider. Now why did I choose Postscript? It’s because they specialize in ecommerce stores and ecommerce is their primary focus. Not only is it easy to use, but you can quickly segment your audience based on your exact sales data and implement automated flows like an abandoned cart at the push of a button. Not only that, but it’s price well too and SMS is the perfect way to engage with your customers.

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So head on over to postscript.io slash Steve and try it for free. That’s P-O-S-T-S-E-R-I-P-T dot I-O slash Steve. And then finally, I wanted to mention my other podcast that I released with my partner Tony. And unlike this podcast where I interview successful entrepreneurs in e-commerce, the Profitable Audience podcast covers all things related to content creation and building an audience. No topic is off the table and we tell it like how it is in a raw and entertaining way. So be sure to check out the Profitable Audience podcast on your favorite podcast app.

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Now onto the show.

02:31
Welcome to the My Wife, Cooder, Job podcast. Today, I’m thrilled to have my longtime friend, Joe Salsijay on the show. Now, Joe is a former financial advisor and he’s represented American Express and Ameriprise in the media. He was the money man in Detroit television. But what I know him for is the host of the ever popular Stacking Benjamins podcast. Now, Stacking Benjamins is a personal finance podcast. normally personal finance is kind of a boring subject, but Joe,

03:01
has melded his personal finance and humor perfectly into a top podcast. And he’s also the author of the bestselling book, Stacked, Your Super Serious Guide to Money Management. I brought Joe on today to talk about building wealth and for him to tell his story about entrepreneurship. And with that, welcome to the show, Joe. It’s been a long time. It has been a long time. And I was telling you before we hit record how much

03:27
conversations with Steve always changed my life. I literally was undercharging our advertisers by half. And Steve and I had a discussion a long time ago when you go, dude, you’re doing that wrong. And it made me remember when I tell people all the time, which is surround yourself with smart people, right? Surround yourself with smart people and you go much faster. So thanks a ton for having me.

03:50
You know, I actually don’t even remember that conversation. I do remember hanging out with you. We had a couple of drinks though. Maybe that’s why I don’t remember, but good times. That doesn’t sound like me at all. No. So Joe, assuming the audience doesn’t know who you are, even though you were a famous podcaster, tell us your story about just how you got started and why you actually decided to quit your job to pursue a creator’s lifestyle.

04:13
Yeah, man, that is a long story, but I come from a money, like most people where we didn’t come from a family where we didn’t talk about money. In fact, my brother and sister and I, whenever my parents were having a discussion about money, they told us we had to leave the room because it wasn’t appropriate to talk about money. So the first time I actually got a hold of money, I was at the Citadel, the military college of South Carolina. And so just to tell everybody about this, I can’t have a job and I wear a uniform, right?

04:43
So the first week they’ve got laws against this now, but I go to the student union place called Mark Clark hall. And there’s this line out the door for people that are trying to get into debt. You can’t do this anymore. Credit card companies cannot have the thing in the student union. There’s rules, but they still get to people, right? They still get to people at 18, 19 years old with, with credit. I signed up for a credit card for a t-shirt. Yes. I don’t even remember if it was a stadium Blake and a t-shirt, what it was.

05:12
I just know there was a big line. I remember when I was a financial planner, even say, man, if people were lining up out my door to get their crap together, the way that people line up to get into debt, like how great would our world be? But I get in this line and, and I sign up and I tell them the truth. I have no income. I’m 18 years old, right? I’m at this military college. I’m not going to have a job. And you know what happens, Steve, a month later, I get this cool green card member since, right? I’m super excited.

05:41
The first time we get leave, we go to North Charleston where there’s this mall. There’s six of us, me and five new buddies. I’m trying to prove to them that I’m a quality human being. We’re at this five star restaurant. I don’t know. This is a pretty exclusive place. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it before. It’s called Ruby Tuesday. Oh yeah. I love Ruby Tuesday. And they’re very, very exclusive. They have a salad bar and everything.

06:06
So of course the bill comes and me wanting to make some new friends, cause we’re only a few weeks into school. say, I’ve got this and I pay for it. We never talked about money. So it doesn’t even cross my mind. This is how naive I was that I’m have to pay this bill. And then of course I walked to the other end of the mall to Nordstrom cause I can’t go to the second most expensive store. I got to go to the most expensive store and I find this sweater that, this is, I’m an older guy. This is 1986.

06:36
And this sweater, Steve is Duran Duran, badass, awesome. Like it’s this, and I still own it to remember what an idiot I was. It’s this purple with like this paisley of V net color. And I paid a bajillion dollars for this thing. I’m in Charleston, South Carolina. Both cold days are really tough. What am I going to do with a sweater? And once again, I’m wearing a, I’m wearing a uniform every day. Like why the hell do I buy this? But I do. And so a month later.

07:05
We always got excited. This is of course, once again, old guy, sorry everybody, but there’s no email yet. So I have to walk to Mark Clark call every day and your mailbox had like this clear sheet of glass and you could see if you got mail or not. And you get so excited whenever we had mail. And sure enough, one day there’s this envelope waiting for me and I opened this thing up. I’m excited. It’s a letter from my friends at American express. These people that let me buy a sweater. They let me take my friends out to lunch and they want money.

07:34
And I have no money and I have no ability to get money. And I did what any smart person would do. I called my mom and I said, Hey mom, we’ve got a problem. And mom said, no, we don’t have anything. You’ve got a problem. within 90 days, the carb was gone. My credit was wrecked, but that was just the beginning. did not. worked all summer long then with a, with a collection agency to pay off what was probably $200 that had now become like 450 with all of the fees and overdue fees and stuff.

08:04
I worked all summer with a collection agency, but every time I had a chance to get credit, I maxed it out and I blew it. Early in my entrepreneurship journey, I owned a disc jockey company, DJing weddings and parties and whatever. I consistently used credit to buy equipment, but I never had a plan to pay it off. I kept getting worse and worse and worse into debt until I was a first-year financial planner.

08:33
I’m across town from my office and I run out of gas. I remember realizing at that moment what a sham I was. There’s a study by a group called Nonfiction. It’s a wonderful study called The Secret Financial Lives of Americans. It talks about how over 150 million people in America report that they’ve cried about their money. You’d think that this is people that are living paycheck to paycheck, but of people making $250,000 a year more,

09:02
nearly half of those people report that they cry about their money. And this was my day. This was the bottom. I’m going through the seats of this rusted out mini bank because I couldn’t get a car loan. I’d maxed out all my credit. I continually had this thought that if I just make a little more money, if I just make a little more, right? is every entrepreneur that I worked with and I was a financial planner, like at the beginning of their journey, like if I just make a little more, I can make this work. And it was a lie. It was really about getting controls. I actually found

09:30
85 cents in these, these seat cushions. I walk, once again, sounds like an old guy’s story. I walked a mile, but I did walk almost a mile to this mobile gas station where the dude did not want to give me the gas can. He wanted me to buy the gas can cause he thought I was going to steal it. And, uh, I put 80, I finally convinced him. put 85 cents worth of gas in. I somehow make it home, but I had no credit. I borrowed money from everybody I knew. And I’m a financial planner helping other people.

10:00
I’m living this complete lie. So was at that moment that not only did I cry about my money, but everything changed because I realized that now I need to do what I say, which is build your foundation, forget the get rich quick stuff. It’s not about making more money. It’s about the distance between what you make and what you keep. So lockdown, put some financial controls in place. But even more than that, start surrounding myself with better people that could help me, that could coach me.

10:29
So began working on my team. It was amazing how over the next, it took me maybe four years to get a really solid foundation. Then after that, I was building wealth. At the time, I was, and I still am shocked by how quickly it is. When people tell me stories about that, once you make that decision, you can go from it’s horrible to it’s okay in a much quicker time than you think so. I got to 40.

10:58
To answer your question the longest way possible. Well, let me ask you this. Yes. Would you say you could have gotten to the point where you are now without your web properties, your podcast and all those other things? Like what’s your day job of taking you there? My day job totally, my day job totally would have taken me there. Yeah. Okay. Oh yeah. Being a financial planner was paying oodles more money than being a podcaster pace. The thing for me, Steve, was that what was the quality of life was not there.

11:26
I was getting ready to turn 40 and this is when I changed. A mentor of mine, guy named Chris, a letter that he was leaving the firm. I owned a franchise, many of us at the firm owned franchises. This is the type of firm, by the way, that you don’t leave and write a two-weeks notice letter. This is more like, you ever see the movie, Jerry Maguire? Of course. Yeah. This is type of firm where you leave at midnight with the client files and at 4 a.m. you’re calling people, waking them up, trying to get the client to come with you.

11:55
And he writes this letter saying that being a financial planner is good, but it’s not great. And he works so many hours helping other people get what they want that he has no idea what he wants. And he said that he felt lucky that he had built himself a nice base and I had built myself a nice base. And he said, you know, I need time to figure out what I really value, what I want for myself. And the phrase he used was he said, I think I have other mountains to climb. And I thought that was a metaphor. He went and climbed Everest twice. He climbed.

12:24
No, he’s an adventure traveler now and he’s climbed almost all the tall peaks in the world. And that changed my world because here I am, I’ve got a family. I’m doing very well financially now. Like my practice is humming. But I didn’t feel at all fulfilled. I was spending so much time in the future helping other people plan. I wasn’t living in the present. So I decided to sell my business at 40 and become a high school teacher.

12:52
I wasn’t worried about making money. know this stuff about you, Joe. This is fascinating. Okay. So you quit everything and then you took a job as a school teacher, which I would imagine pays like 10 X less. Well, what’s funny is I never actually made it, Steve. I never made it. I enrolled at Texas A &M, Texarkana branch where I lived. And I took two semesters worth of classes. And as I was transitioning out, even before that, my clients that were teachers were telling me they’re like, you’ll be a great teacher. Cause I never get passionate about anything. Right.

13:21
you’ll be a fantastic teacher, but you’re going to find yourself fighting administration.” And I’m like, yeah, whatever. I take all the tests to go into this post-bachelors teaching program. get accepted. go and both semesters, every professor I had taught me that I was going to be fighting administrators. And all I was going to do is be teaching tests, which all the teachers out there listening in public schools know. And it’s so frustrating. so, and I met some brilliant teachers during that year. got to

13:50
follow some people around and they found these wonderful workarounds. But at the same time, I had been doing PR for American Express. I was one of 12 advisors in the country that spoke as subject matter experts on behalf of the company. So I was doing all the major media stuff. And now I was writing my friends’ client newsletters. I was writing their scripts when they went on TV, when they did stuff. I was doing all this freelancing. And very quickly, I was making as much as a first year teacher.

14:19
My kids were in high school and I’m in shorts and a t-shirt and I’m having a blast and I’m learning about how bad my life is going to stink if I become a teacher. So then I transitioned into let’s teach money people about money. And that became a blog that became a podcast, 10 years of podcasting, 1200 episodes. I finally get on Steve’s podcast. The highlight you haven’t been on before. I never have. It’s a highlight of my life. This is it. So it’s a funny story. I just saw you were, you had a book on Facebook and I was like, Hey Joe, cause I hadn’t.

14:49
I mean, we don’t hang out. It’s been a while since I’ve been to FinCon. it has been. Yes. And now you have like this posse around you all the time. It’s really hard to get to you. So I listen to you all the time. You don’t know this, but you go running with me. So you and I have run together. I’m a runner. We’ve run together a ton. But so I saw you working on a book. was like, hey, why don’t you come on, man? We can catch up because I literally don’t remember having a conversation with you for at least five years. It’s been a long time. Yeah. Yeah.

15:17
So, okay, walk me through your blog. When did you start this? Yeah, 2011. Okay, we started around the same time. Yeah. What was the purpose? That was just to teach people about personal finance? It completely was. Okay. And a friend of mine who’s now OG, my co-host on the show, he is a working certified financial planner. He and I decided to make this blog.

15:40
was interested in SEO. I was interested in financial literacy and just more people being along for the ride. I was writing to people and he was focused on the algorithms. we chose a URL called the Free Financial Advisor because it had a high SEO value. And it’s the worst name ever. I actually think the opposite of that. You get what you pay for often.

16:08
And if it’s free, you are the product, right? But it was a very attractive way to get to people. And we tried to write stuff initially that was very much, we were the only people giving financial advice on the internet. it was, these two experts. And we quickly learned that that does not help people with financial literacy. People get intimidated by money. They get frustrated by the fact that

16:36
these experts, do we have an agenda? Do we not have an agenda? Like, what’s the thing? So we very quickly learned to become storytellers instead. And it was usually stories about how much we’ve messed up with our money. And that resonated far, far more. when we created the podcast, the reason we were in my mom’s basement, which podcast is live from my mom’s basement, the reason we have my mom’s neighbor, Doug,

17:02
The reason why our listeners all the time joke that if you learn anything, keep it to yourself because you’ll ruin our reputation was, was Steve to lower the temperature, right? To get rid of some of these heavy duty wind conditions that people feel we get so nervous about it. So we didn’t want to be two experts. wanted to be two guys that might know something about what we’re talking about, but make it very approachable so that more people come along for the ride.

17:30
If you sell on Amazon or run any online business for that matter, the most important aspect of your long-term success will be your brand. And this is why I work with Steven Weigler and his team from Emerge Council to protect my brand over at Bumblebee Linens. Now what’s unique about Emerge Council is that Steve focuses his legal practice on e-commerce and provides strategic and legal representation to entrepreneurs to protect their IP. So for example, if you’ve ever been ripped off or knocked off on Amazon, then Steve can help you fight back and protect yourself.

17:58
Now, first and foremost, protecting our IP starts with a solid trademark and Emerge Council provides attorney-advised strategic trademark prosecution, both in the United States and abroad for a very low price. And furthermore, the students in my course have used Steve for copyrighting their designs, policing against counterfeits and knockoffs, agreements with co-founders and employees, website and social media policies, privacy policies, vendor agreements, brand registry, you name it. So if you need IP protection services, go to EmergeCouncil.com and get a free consult.

18:28
And if you tell Steve that I sent you, you’ll get a hundred dollar discount. That’s E M E R G E C O U N S E L.com. Now back to the show. You know, what’s funny is I have this conflict almost every single week with my blog. On one hand, you want to write in such a way for Google, which is why you guys chose that URL. Yeah. On the other hand, you want to tell stories, but actually stories, ironically can hurt your Google rankings. I know. Isn’t it crazy? Right. So how did you.

18:57
kind of, you know, balance the two with. We didn’t. OK, we just went all in on the storytelling. We did. We did. I mean, we still tried to use SEO whenever possible, but we were much more storytellers because we found that we were finding our way much better with people. However, the blog wasn’t really growing, Steve. And and and when we podcasted, when we started the podcast, that that even didn’t take off at first. It was actually three years into the podcast. We’ve been podcasting for a decade now.

19:25
But three years into the podcast, when we pivoted, we realized that the blog had to go bye-bye and we had to be all in then on podcasting because that’s really where we were finding our wheelhouse. Joe, how do you grow a podcast? You make a podcast that you would want to listen to. You make a podcast that is for, I think, one listener and that’s you, which means I think you have to listen to a lot of podcasts.

19:53
I get frustrated when I hear people that say, well, I really don’t listen to podcasts and I have one. I totally think you have to be a fan of the genre because of the fact that to know your niche and to know what people are doing well and where you fit, I think you have to have to know a lot. So I had listened to a bunch of personal finance podcasts that first year that we had the blog before we started the podcast. People kept telling me from the beginning, they’re like, you listened to lots of podcasts. You should totally have one.

20:22
I’m like, I do not want to be Susie Ormond or Dave Ramsey. Cause it was really, if you remember back 2011, was Susie Dave, you know, that we’re doing the TV stuff. Clark Howard didn’t have a podcast yet. Harlan Landis, our friend Harlan had a podcast, but his was also very serious, very matter of fact. And there weren’t many, many people doing podcasts. And one day I was mowing my lawn and I have my headphones in and I’m listening not to a podcast on this day. I’m listening to the show called car talk.

20:52
And Car Talk was this big show on NPR. Have you ever listened to Car Talk? I’ve heard of it actually. I’ve never listened to it though. So that was these guys. One guy died a couple years ago, but their shows are still evergreen enough that they still play them because they’re hilarious. And it’s these two brothers that call himself Click and Clack and they take questions about cars. And you know, instead of asking you if the alternator belt is broken, they’ll go, your car making this noise? And it’s hilarious. And I’m a guy that even though I’m from Detroit, I didn’t know a lot about cars.

21:22
And I found myself Steve cracking up at this show and I listened to, wanted to listen to it all the time. There was no pressure to know a lot about cars. was a fun approach to cars. And I went this particular day, I went, holy crap. That’s what I want to do when it comes to money. I really want to make the show where I don’t really care about educating you as much as I want to get you just interested. And instead of being Dave or Susie will be like an airport.

21:49
where there’s a bunch of planes that we have curated and I’m going to show you all these different voices and you pick which plane that you want. And as a guy who knows what I’m doing with money, instead of being the know all be all, I’m going to be the guy that knows enough to know that these are planes that I can point you toward. And that was great. This all comes by the way, if people want a really good book on this topic and really approachable book, Austin Kleon, Steel Like an Artist.

22:18
is a fantastic book. it’s just a little, I don’t know if you’ve read this, Steve, but it’s just a little tiny book. Yeah. You can open it up to almost any page. the gist of the book is if you think you’re not creative, just go find stuff that really turns you on. Don’t rip it off because there’s no joy in ripping it off for you. And it also demeans everybody, demeans the process, but remix it, pay homage to it. Like we do car talk. I tell everybody that car talk was my inspiration and make it your own in a way that

22:47
Anybody listening to this that’s heard stacking, Benjamin’s will have no idea that car talk was it. Cause we’ve remixed it enough that it really is more about Joe than about that. love steel, like an artist, Austin Cleon. He’s got another book out. That’s great for creators called show your work where he says that back in the days of Walt Disney, you know, Disney wanted to make sure that the public doesn’t see what’s going on behind the scenes.

23:11
But for people like you and I think your whole podcast is based on your whole brand. A lot of it is show your work. You’re showing what you guys did. And there’s so many people that want to know how you work that show it as much as you can now use your social media channels to show people how you do this stuff. And people will follow you because you’re the trusted voice. Joe, when you started all your podcast, were you already kind of financially set? Cause I know my podcast didn’t make any money for a while. Yes. So, okay.

23:39
Yeah. When I sold my business, I got a huge pile of money for this business. was managing $65 million, which isn’t a tiny practice, but not a huge one. So a mid-size practice, I got a mid to high six figure number. So I had a nice on-ramp that I could swim a moat where I didn’t need the money right away. I would tell most people that if you have an idea for a podcast, keep another job.

24:08
definitely keep another job. Get into podcasting because you have something to say. Learn how to monetize it from the beginning. And we can talk about that, Steve, because this is, think, one place where I disagree with a lot of common advice, which is don’t monetize right away. I completely disagree with that. Actually, I’m of that advice too. I’m curious what your thoughts are on that. Yeah. So I’ve listening to podcasts for a long time and I’m your average listener. And I really

24:38
that some shows, and I got this big aha because some shows I listened to already had ads before I started listening. Other shows had no ads. And then partway through me listening, maybe a year or two into me listening, they decide it’s time to monetize. And I’m running down the road like, you know, these shows have to have two or three episodes where they apologize to their listeners because they’re getting so much hate mail, right? They have to say, hey man, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. And

25:05
And I realized that I was one of those listeners. There’s a video game podcast called giant bomb that did this huge podcast. Great, great podcast. And I remember I’m running down the road and all of sudden I hear a Casper mattress says ad and I’m like, these sellouts, these jerks, like how are they all of sudden doing this crappy stuff? But then I realized later, I only thought that Steve, because they hadn’t had it from the beginning. If I was conditioned from the time that I started listening,

25:34
that this show has ads? I don’t care. I don’t care if it’s from the beginning. I’m like, lots of podcasts have ads. This one does. But if you change already, so that was my thought going in. We obviously had no listeners. So I, being a blogger, went to Commission Junction, you know, and you can go to lots of these places. And I signed up and I had to make sure in the fine print that you could have it on a podcast. And I got a proof for hotels.com. And I thought, what does it say about my brand? Even if I have no listeners?

26:03
this podcast is brought to you by hotels.com. Like, wow, they must be big. They must be huge. And so we didn’t really get paid much by hotels.com because it was CPA revenue stream. So we didn’t get much money. But my thought process was I want to add there before you start so that when I get real advertisers that we can, you know, people aren’t going to get upset. Can I tell you one more quick story? absolutely. I love these stories. Super funny about this. So I’m at a FinCon.

26:33
where you and I met, not the same FinCon, but I’m at FinCon and I’m walking by these booths in the vendor area and I see Fidelity Investments. And at this point, our show has maybe 1200 listeners. And I see Fidelity and my first thought is, man, how great would it just sound?

26:56
be able to say, Stacking Vengeance is brought to you by Fidelity Investments. All of our listeners are going to think that we’re way bigger than we are and that we’re a respectable brand because Fidelity is respectable. And if they endorse us enough that they’ll be our advertisers, it’s going to be huge. But then, course, like every creator I know, the voice in between my ears starts talking and goes, Fidelity Investments. There’s no way in hell these guys are going to sponsor your podcast. But I’m like,

27:24
the hell I’m here. And I never do this by the way, Steve, because I’m afraid of everything. am totally afraid of everything. Okay. Oh, I completely am. I, but, but I decide to get some courage and I walk up to this guy and I met him earlier in the day and I go, Hey, Ben, you know, I got this podcast called stacking, Benjamin’s. goes, really tell me a little bit about it. And I immediately go, okay. He didn’t shut me down right away. So then I try to build a bridge between stacking, Benjamin’s and fidelity. like, Hey, we’re a financial on-ramp.

27:53
We try to have a lot of different voices, a lot of diverse voices on our shows. And we talk about wealth, we talk about beginning. And so I think we have a lot in common with Fidelity. And I’m totally selling it. And how my little thing is a lot like this huge monster corporation. And he keeps listening. And I said, so I think it’d be great if you sponsored our show. And he goes, so how much money are you looking for?

28:18
I go, oh my goodness. so in my head, here’s what happens. I’m like, fidelity investments, chop fricking chin. I can charge them a bajillion dollars because they’re huge. then I thought, so what’s my real ROI here? Is my ROI sucking money out of fidelity or is my true ROI going, stacking vegmas brought to you by fidelity investments? And all of a sudden my mindset flips and I’m like, how little money can I

28:47
and I say that makes me not look stupid because all I really want to do is say fidelity investments. So I said $200. And he said $200 over what period? Like an episode a month or what? And in my head, go, yeah, Joe, $200 over what? Like I didn’t even thought of it. I’m like $200 over what? And I said, well, yeah, a month, a month.

29:13
And all I’m thinking about then is paying our Libsyn bill, right? Paying whatever, whatever, whatever small fees we have, we’ll get that. And he goes, deal, let’s do it. So for three months, I got to say when our podcast was, not that big an audience, Stacking Benjamin’s brought to you by Fidelity Investments. At the end of three months, I’m like, Hey, you want to renew? He’s like, no, we’re good.

29:43
but I had them for three months, which was phenomenal. What’s the going rate on advertising now actually? The way I run my pod is like, as long as someone re-ups, I actually keep the same price. And I’ve had people with me for years now. So I’m curious. I’ve had two that we did by herself a long time ago and they’ve grown with me. And so I’ve grown their number in some cases, 100X.

30:09
what they were paying at first. Yeah. Magnify Money and Haven Life had been with me for a long time. they’ve, but, but, it’s because our, our podcast has grown by tens of thousands of people. So we have about 180,000 downloads a week. And, um, and they’ve grown with me, they’ve stayed with us because it’s been a good marriage. But by the way, that takes a lot of communication and I really consistently communicate with them about what their messaging is. And I have to really like the brands, which I do.

30:39
But we charge, and this is where the conversation that you and I had made a ton of difference. I learned early on that CPM is the dumbest way to charge because it’s often the minimum that you’ll get. really, especially if you have a core audience that loves what you do and they’re passionate and they’re going to believe you when you say that you love a product and you completely do, charge a flat fee that’s way higher than a CPM number. But I’ve always thought.

31:07
If I have to revert to worst case scenario, I was told by everybody CPM is worst case scenario. So then I learned CPM, but I learned it the wrong way. And Steve taught me the right way. And that was the wrong way was our CPM number is still 25. So, so 25 per thousand is our CPM number, which is about average. could probably, I could probably get more than, than 25. We’re with the network now. So I don’t even do the marketing for it anymore.

31:37
But my goal with 25 was I like the communication with current advertisers. I don’t like the mill of having to constantly get new ones. So I’d rather have somebody where I’m making enough money that I’m happy and they’re getting a good enough deal with us that they want to stay on board for a long time. we’ve had Navy Federal now forever. some of the brands on our show that people here have been with us for a long time, but where you helped me was at CPM per mention.

32:07
So with Magdifi Money, one of our early brands, I was charging them 25 CPM. And because I advertisers do a pre-roll and a mid-roll, I was just doing it. And I have this conversation with Steve, you’re like 25 and you’re mentioning them twice. You need to charge 50. And then I found out because I was violating my own rule and not talking about this with enough people, I found out that was Steve told me that I need to double my rate.

32:35
And so I doubled it to fifth. I went to magnify money and I actually was, and this is always good by the way, if there’s bad news, make sure your advertiser hears it from you first. there was a time that Libsyn, our hosting platform had this huge mess up where they were showing us far more downloads than we had. And I was charging magnify money and Haven life and others for phantom downloads that weren’t happening. I called my advertisers immediately and told them that I’ve been inadvertently ripping them off.

33:05
And that here’s what I want to do to make it right. The second, I, cause they’re going to find out later and you, you want to be the person that gives that to them. But anyway, they, they, and they’re still with me, but I had to go to Nick and say, Hey, I’ve been charging you half rate. So congratulations, which I think also made it better when I told them that we were ripping them off. Cause we had this honesty back and forth, you know, that resonated. it came to growing your podcast though, did you ever pay for marketing or is it just been organic for the most?

33:35
Uh, we only started the past couple of years paying for marketing. when, when we hit, when we hit about 28, 29,000 downloads and it was just South of 30,000 downloads, we just, we didn’t skid to a stop. was this just hard break where, where the organic marketing that we were doing was not enough. We needed to go find our audience. this per episode or per week or 30,000?

34:05
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Per episode. I’m sorry. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And we do three times a week in the way that we, the way that we get, cause we still, if you add up the numbers that we’re at for three episodes, we’re still only in the 40, 45,000 range. But remember new listeners are going back and doing the back catalog as well, which, is the difference, the Delta between the three episode number and the weekly number of around 180. We, geez, what type are we talking about? That’s all talking about paid marketing. Yes.

34:33
Yeah, we started a couple of years ago and a mutual friend of ours, Jordan Harbinger, I watched what he does with his show that is beautiful and amazing the way that he markets. I realized from him and I realized I was driving down the road one day and I saw Dave Ramsey, who’s the bajillion pound gorilla in our space. Dave Ramsey has marketing. And I realized that if there people out there that need Dave Ramsey’s marketing,

34:58
They certainly don’t know who Josel Sehi is. So I’m going to need a marketing budget where we didn’t have one in the past.

35:06
I just wanted to let you know that tickets for the 2022 Seller Summit are now on sale over at Sellersummit.com. Now, what is the Seller Summit? It is the conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e-commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online. And unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high-level BS, mine is a curriculum-based conference where you will leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an e-commerce business. And in fact, every speaker that I invite

35:33
is deep in the trenches of their own e-commerce business. Entrepreneurs who are importing large quantities of physical goods and not some high-level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000 feet. The other thing I can assure you is that the seller summit will be small and intimate. Every year we cut out ticket sales at around 200 people, so tickets will sell out fast and in fact we sell out every single year many months in advance. Now if you’re an e-commerce entrepreneur making over 250k or $1 million per year in revenue,

36:00
We are also offering an exclusive mastermind experience with other top sellers. Now the Seller Summit is going to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 4th to May 6th. And as of right now, we’re almost already sold out of mastermind tickets and we’ll be raising the price every month leading up to the event after Cyber Monday. For more information, go to sellerssummit.com. Once again, that’s sellerssummit.com or just Google it. Now back to the show.

36:26
So you’re just paying to be mentioned in other podcasts then? That’s what Jordan does. Yeah. Yeah. Well, no, we do that, but we also do, we also do marketing, uh, social media marketing where, where we have paid advertising. We started off with Facebook. It’s flipping horrible. We’ll do, we’ll do Instagram ads. We had what looked like great success with Twitter, believe it or not, doing paid Twitter ads, the numbers, the clicks were really good.

36:52
It turned out though that we didn’t really see any good follow through from Twitter. So even though it looked, the numbers initially looked good. There was no real follow through where we finding people. Instagram seems to be for us where our audience is. So we do some paid Instagram advertising. Interesting. Does it balance out though? Like it’s hard to calculate ROI on, on advertising for a podcast, right? It totally is. And I, I seriously don’t know if it pays.

37:21
what we, if we get a great ROI, but I’ll tell you this, that, you know, I love guerrilla marketing, the book, Guerrilla Marketing. And I believe that when you commit to a platform, you have to commit to it long enough for people to get past that inevitable, you know, they have to see you over and over and over. Like whenever we get a new advertiser that wants to be on only two or three episodes, Steve, you’ve had this happen. I go back and tell them, you should just burn your money. Cause there’s no way in three episodes when I publish three times a week that anybody’s going to hear you.

37:50
You have to consistently be in the same place for anybody to notice that you’re there. So at this point, we’re committed to it. But we also are committed to it in a different way. I took a social media marketing course last year through MIT, which was fantastic. A coach told me, you should always ask who, not how. Don’t ask how to do something. Ask who knows how to do this. And so then you don’t get lost in the weeds.

38:18
You you don’t take hours and hours or days and days or months and months. And I realized that I did need to know how social media works. I’ve been doing it for a decade and I had no flipping idea. And as you know, there’s so many, so there’s so many slimy people in that realm that try to tell us what’s right. And I thought the who that I need is an academic who that I’m going to believe. So I paid a bunch of money for two of us to take this course and I got a backbone. And that’s when we really started last year.

38:48
doing our advertising because I had a much bigger backbone of how it works, what we need to do, what our strategy is going to be. So are your main income sources just advertising from the pot or do you have other income streams coming in? We do have other income streams, but they’re minuscule and we’re way behind. And we did so many things wrong. am, I am very quickly trying to grow my, email list.

39:10
My email list is horrible with the number of people that listen to our podcast. We have 8,000 people on our email list, way, way, way, way too small. And I always rolled my eyes. like, I’m a podcaster. I don’t really care about email campaign. We now have a woman named Brooke Miller, who’s a former financial planner, a CFP. And she writes 90 % of this phenomenal email we have now that I’ll put up against anybody’s. We call it the 201 because stacking Benjamin’s is kind of the one-on-one, the on-ramp.

39:39
And we tell people that if you really want to dive into these topics, you don’t even have to listen to the show. Originally, we made it a guide to the show, which was a mistake because we found out that people were missing. You know, we publish so much that people, people were missing episodes like, well, I really don’t want to get the 201 because I didn’t even listen to the 101. So we reframed it as you don’t even have to listen to the show. We’re going to just go into deep dives on the same topic. So if you like the topics, but you really want to read and do deeper stuff.

40:07
we’re going to give you tons and tons of links that we’ve curated to take you to sources that we trust to go deeper on these topics. when we did that the last six months, we’ve added a thousand people in the last three months. So yeah. It’s generally hard to get people from a podcast to actually sign up for an email though. yeah, totally is.

40:31
Well, and what I saw yesterday, because I always want to look at what successful advertisers are doing. I learned this from MIT as well. When you see a great ad on social media, stop and really examine it and see how they did it. Did they move their camera? Was it the fact that I was connecting with them as a person? Was it the visuals they were showing? How do they cut it? What do they do that really makes this resonate with me?

41:01
I noticed yesterday a woman with a money newsletter that she’s paying for advertising just for her newsletter. And I now have this idea. I’m wondering if, if like morning brew, which is, or, or the hustle, you know, some of these great newsletters out there, if, what the ROI would be if we start doing sponsored. Oh, it’s a lot. It’s like 120 CPM.

41:28
You have ads in your emails, right? No, no, I’m talking about if, if, if, if I just market my email instead of market my podcast, what if I market my email? This, this great email. Gotcha. Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. That works too. Because I know that it’s good enough. Now we have very few unsubscribes. have very few unsubscribes, which makes me very happy. By the way, to get to this point, it took us a long time. We had, when I started emailing people consistently, even though was a great email newsletter, there’s these people that been on my email list for six, seven years going, what the hell?

41:58
All of a sudden I’m getting three emails a week. And we were turning people over quickly for about four months. And then you saw it dry up as the people that didn’t want that left and new people started coming in. And then now we’re climbing this great mountain, but I think we can make it climb faster. Oh yeah. Because to your point, I do think this is a big revenue source as well. I mean, you have a huge audience. Let’s switch gears and talk about this book. So why write a book?

42:24
I’m working on one right now. have my own reasons, but I’m curious what yours are. Cause I know you’re on this crazy road trip right now. 40 cities, Yeah. 40 cities. If you want to come hang out, I’m 10 cities in, as we record this stacking, vegamins.com slash stack, by the way, to see the, just hang out with other money nerds. Cause it is fun. Other entrepreneurs as well. California already? I did. Okay. It was actually on, you know, it’s funny, Steve, on that thread where I said I was coming to the Bay area was when you said you want to come on the pod.

42:54
Oh man. Okay. I would totally come out and hung out. Good Lord. Chris Hutchins was there. It was fun. had Bobby. Bobby Lee was there. was cool. I haven’t seen Bobby in ages. Me neither. Jordan said, no, I got the little one at home. He goes, I’m an hour away and that’s just too far with the kid at home. So he’s got two little ones now. Yes. Yeah. He’s pulling that little stubby hair that he’s got out. But he, but yeah, I saw a lot of nice people in San Francisco, but, the reason

43:23
The reason for the book is that I think that for any creator, what I’ve noticed is I’m the same guy, Steve, that I was six months ago. people have been telling me this for 10 years. People do treat you differently when you write a book. They do treat you differently and they think of you more as a thought leader instead of just a podcast host. And it’s really surprising on that end. For me, it kind of dovetails into your last question, which is, you have other streams and other ways that people find you?

43:52
And the podcast is really the only way people find us. So I thought that bringing a book into the world, that’s a book that I would want to read that I’m really proud of, may also bring more listeners to the podcast as well. And I also thought it was an outlet for some of this good work that we do. So the end of every chapter of our book, our book is designed very campy, like our show into achievements. Cause I did the Austin Kleon thing and I took the

44:21
I took the Cub Scout Wolf guide that I’d found. My mom actually gave me the stuff out of her attic when she, when I was 51, I’m 51 years old. She finally trusts me with this crap in the attic, but I saw this thing and these guys were gamifying stuff way before, you know, these great app creators may turn things into a game. so our book has been gamified, but at the end of every chapter, steal like an artist. I was on vacation at this place, Amelia Island near Jacksonville.

44:50
gorgeous Island. And I was in this little bookstore and I saw Howard Stern had a book that was totally transcripts of his interviews. And then I think about Tim Ferriss, know, his last, yeah, yeah. Tools of Titans, right? Titans. Yep. Yep. Are totally just books where he’s taken his interviews and he turns them into books. And I didn’t want to do that, but I did want to fuse.

45:18
reading with what we do on the podcast. at the end of every chapter, we have somebody who’s a subject matter expert that had come on our show. And we have a transcription from Gene Chatsky from the Today Show or Jill Schlesinger from CBS News or Phil Town on investing or Tiffany Aliche, the budget Nista talking about building your budget. some good people at the end of each one of those. I thought there was some fusion there and I thought it was a good way to become more of a thought leader.

45:48
Number one, are seen as a thought leader, which I totally think I am to Brad. Definitely are no question. That’s number one. Number two, number two is to have a different way for people to approach this. And number three, really it was kind of about this tour about having a reason to go and connect with people. Cause as you know, you and I do this and you’re in a room by yourself. I’m in a hotel room by myself. You don’t get.

46:17
this great thing that I’m getting right now, which is this gratitude that anybody listens to what we do. I am, I don’t care about the, about the big numbers. I care about one person who comes up and says, you know what? I changed the way I manage money because of what you do. And oh my, you know, when you can put a face to that, it’s pretty, it’s pretty inspiring for me. if I may say a couple of things about the book, uh, when you’ve, when you sent it to me, I was like, okay, great. Another

46:46
personal finance book in my collection, but I read it and it is a very amusing read. Like it’s very entertaining. Like of all the personal finance books I’ve read, I mean, it’s like talking to you actually. It’s funny. You got puns. I like the interviews, you know, that you’ve had with, cause I, we’re all friends too, but I mean, you’ve, you’ve taken out excerpts of interviews that are just very valuable and that support the thesis for whatever chapter that you’re writing.

47:15
But it’s a very amusing read. actually like reading a, it’s like reading a novel, like a story. It’s all stories and it teaches a lesson. So I highly recommend anyone out there listening to this, go pick it up. Especially if you’re in debt, but it’s not really about getting out of debt book. It’s about just building wealth. Well, and I’ll tell you the last quarter, if you’re a serious money nerd, the last quarter of it is stuff you haven’t heard of before. The worst reviews that we get, and there are not many, but they all have the same theme.

47:44
which is I read a lot of money management books and I didn’t like it. And to your point, this is not like other books because somebody that reads a lot of money management books is not my audience. My audience is that person who’s being left behind who doesn’t have an on-ramp that really wants an easy way to get into this topic that we all need. Yeah, it’s not intimidating is the best word actually. Thank you.

48:11
I think in like the first chapter you fall and say, I’m not an expert. I’m not, you know, trying to be your guru or whatnot, just telling you how it is and stories to support it. I’m, in a very lucky place. I’ve, I’ve seen hundreds of people retire over the 16 years. was a financial planner. I haven’t been a financial planner in 13 years, 12, 13 years. And, um, but I’ve seen a lot of people do stuff that people are messing up or people are getting right. And not many people out there, you know, have been able to sit where I have, where you.

48:41
You’ve seen a lot of people do a lot of cool things with their money because of the number of meetings I was in. But at the same time, be in financial media now to help other people with that. So, So Joe, where can people find you, your podcast and your book? Yeah. Stacking Benjamins is the name of the podcast. We call it the greatest money show on earth. Cause as Steve knows, it’s a total circus. It is a variety show. It’s a ton of fun.

49:07
And you’ll find everything about the book and our tour at stacking vegans.com slash stacked, or just going to say hi to me on Twitter. hang out on Twitter a fair amount average Joe money on Twitter. Awesome. And by the way, the podcast highly recommend it’s actually a lot like this interview. mean, Joe is just, you got a podcasters voice. You know I’m saying? People tell you that they do, but it’s the one thing is, you know, you can’t do anything with Steve. You’re like, well, thank my mom.

49:34
Like my mom did it, not me. I have no idea. Yeah. But Joe is great catching up today, man. Thanks a lot for coming on. Thanks for having me, Steve.

49:45
Hope you enjoyed that episode, and if you love listening to Joe talk, his book is even better, so be sure to check out Stack, your super serious guide to money management at your favorite bookstore. For more information about this episode, go to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 399. And once again, I’m going to thank Postscript, which is my SMS marketing platform of choice for e-commerce. With a few clicks of a button, you can easily segment and send targeted text messages to your client base. SMS is the next big own marketing platform, and you can sign up for free over at postscript.io slash Steve.

50:15
That’s P-O-S-T-S-E-R-I-P-T dot I-O slash Steve. I also want to thank Clavio, which is my email marketing platform of choice for eCommerce merchants. You can easily put together automated flows like an abandoned card sequence, a post purchase flow, a win back campaign, basically all these sequences that will make you money on autopilot. So head on over to mywifequitterjob.com slash K-L-A-V-I-Y-O. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash K-L-A-V-I-Y-O. Now I talk about how I use these tools in my blog, and if you were interested in starting your own eCommerce store,

50:44
Head on over to mywifequitterjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.