479: Monetize Your Voice: How To Turn A Podcast Into A Multi 6 Figure Business With Ryan Michler

Podcast: Download (Duration: 53:11 — 61.2MB)

You turn a podcast into a multi six-figure business by treating the podcast itself as a marketing channel, not a revenue stream, and by wrapping it in an owned product (usually a paid community or course) that solves a real problem for a defined slice of your audience. That is the exact model Ryan Michler used to grow Order of Man from a $97 test cohort into a paid brotherhood called The Iron Council with 1,200+ members and multi six-figure recurring revenue.

I sat down with my friend Ryan Michler, host of the Order of Man podcast (1,050+ episodes and counting, with guests including Harvey Cruz, George Foreman, Tim Tebow, Ben Shapiro, David Goggins and Jocko Willink), to walk through how he actually monetized. Ryan does 3 shows a week, has millions of monthly downloads, a 72,000-member free Facebook group, and email as his most important asset.

Here is his full playbook: how he launched the paid community, what he charges, how he grew the podcast, and the sponsorship rules he lives by.

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Key takeaways

• Ryan’s revenue mix leads with a paid membership (The Iron Council, 1,200+ members), then merchandise, then a small number of hand-picked sponsors, then events. The podcast itself is treated as a marketing funnel, not a product.
• The Iron Council started as a $97, 12-person, 12-week course based on a viral YouTube video called “8 Skill Sets Every Man Needs to Master.” Ryan sold before he had all the material built.
• Podcast growth accelerator: interview guests bigger than you, then send them ready-to-share, high-quality assets (clips, thumbnails, copy). Bad thumbnails are the #1 reason guests do not share.
• Instagram Collaborations (invite the guest as a co-author on the post) auto-push to their full follower base with one click.
• Sponsorship rule: only accept sponsors whose products you already use and love. Ryan runs ads for Origin (boots, denim, jiu-jitsu gis) and Sorinex (fitness equipment) because he is a personal customer and friends with both founders.
• MVP a course by selling first and building it week-to-week. Ryan launched with only the outline and week 1 material ready; I launched mine with 35 students at $300 and no content built. Both worked.

How to turn a podcast into a business: the full model

You turn a podcast into a business by treating the podcast as a marketing channel that generates leads and trust, then monetizing those leads through an owned product (paid membership, course, coaching, merchandise) that you fully control. Ryan was direct on the episode: “Just because you put a podcast on the internet does not mean it is going to make money.”

His actual revenue stack, in order of importance:

1. Paid membership (The Iron Council). The bulk of revenue. Over 1,200 members paying for accountability, monthly topics, regional channels, and specialty channels (fatherhood, hunting, firearms, overcoming pornography).
2. Merchandise. Hats, shirts and other branded products. A meaningful line item once the community is large enough.
3. Sponsors and ads. Only for a handful of companies he personally uses. Not the primary revenue driver by design.
4. Events. Optional, and Ryan says he can afford to question whether to run events this year precisely because they are not the revenue backbone.

The reframe is the important part: podcasts monetize best as marketing, not as products.

How Ryan Michler launched The Iron Council (the paid community)

Ryan Michler launched The Iron Council as a 12-week, $97 course with only 12 seats after his wife pointed out that Order of Man was eating into his financial planning income and needed to make money or scale back. That constraint forced a scrappy, minimum viable launch that became the multi six-figure backbone of the business.

The step-by-step, straight from the episode:

1. Source content: a viral YouTube video called “8 Skill Sets Every Man Needs to Master.”
2. Package: a 12-week structure. Week 1 intro, weeks 2-9 one skill per week, weeks 10-12 recap and integration.
3. Value add: a dedicated Facebook group and one monthly topic Ryan delivered live.
4. Price and scarcity: $97, only 12 spots, positioned as a beta test.
5. Content build: only week 1 was fully built at launch. Ryan built week 2 while running week 1, and so on.
6. Continuation: around week 8-9, students asked “what next?” Ryan converted the 12-week cohort into a permanent membership on the spot.

First 50 to 100 members came in quickly. Mark Gubloski was member #1 outside of Ryan himself, and eight years later he is still in the community.

Sell the course before you build it (the MVP move)

Selling the course before you build it works because a paid customer creates the deadline that forces you to build the material. Ryan launched with only week 1 done. I launched my own e-commerce course with 35 people at $300 and told them straight up: “I have no material, but if you guys sign up, I promise I will deliver a good class.”

Both of us delivered because the money was in the door. The forcing function is the point.

Ryan’s rule for anyone stuck at the “I need to have it perfect first” stage: minimum viable product, 10 to 12 seats, be honest that it is a beta, and build the plane as it flies. Perfection is usually just fear of shipping.

How to grow a podcast from zero (Ryan’s actual playbook)

Ryan grew Order of Man from zero by leveraging an existing email list from his prior podcast, seeding a Facebook group aggressively, and showing up in person at a live event where the top voices in his niche were speaking. He is honest that some of his early moves worked in spite of themselves. Adding a bunch of people to his Facebook group without asking is one he flagged as something he would think twice about today.

The single highest-ROI move: at Antonio Centeno’s StyleCon (which later became Menfluential), Ryan emailed every speaker before he arrived. That put him on a first-name basis with Antonio Centeno, Aaron Marino, Brett McKay of Art of Manliness, Eric Bandholz of Beardbrand, and Tanner Guzzi.

He wrote a profile post on all of them for his own site and Aaron Marino shared it. That single share exploded the page and seeded the audience.

Aligning yourself with people who genuinely want others to win is the leverage.

Interview shows: how to get guests to actually share the episode

Guests actually share the episode when you make them look good and make sharing trivial, so send them polished clips, professional thumbnails, ready-to-copy captions, and the direct link, spread over a week or two. Ryan is emphatic on this. He turns down sharing episodes with amateurish thumbnails because they hurt his brand with his own audience.

What Ryan sends every guest:

• A polished video clip (or several), professionally cut with captions.
• A high-quality thumbnail that elevates the guest, not the host.
• Ready-to-post caption copy.
• The direct episode link so they do not have to hunt for it.
• A drip schedule (spread over 1-2 weeks) so it does not feel like a bombardment.

Instagram Collaborations are the newest lever. Instead of tagging the guest in your post, invite them as a collaborator.

If they accept, the same post publishes to their full follower base with zero extra work. That is a full audience unlock on one tap.

The 3 shows a week structure Ryan runs

Ryan runs a Tuesday-Wednesday-Friday cadence to give his audience variety without over-relying on any one format. Each show plays a different role in the funnel.

• Tuesday: Interview. Big-name guest (recent examples: George Foreman). This is the credibility and reach engine.
• Wednesday: Ask Him Anything. Questions from the audience across platforms. This is the community-building show. It also creates a reason to post and collect questions on social.
• Friday: Field Notes. A solo monologue on something Ryan learned that week. This is where his personal voice and worldview lands hardest, which is what converts casual listeners into paid Iron Council members.

Roughly 440-450 of Ryan’s 1,050+ episodes are interviews, meaning the majority are actually solo or AHA formats. That mix is worth studying if you assume interview shows have to be interview-only.

The sponsorship rule: only sell what you already use

Ryan’s sponsorship rule is that he only accepts ads for products he personally uses and companies whose founders he knows and trusts, because anything else drains the audience trust that the whole business is built on. He rejects far more sponsor pitches than he accepts.

The two brands he currently runs ads for:

• Origin (Pete Roberts): American-made boots, denim, hunt line and jiu-jitsu gis. Ryan buys their products and Pete is a personal friend.
• Sorinex (Bert Sorin): Fitness equipment. Same story. Personal customer, personal friendship, and he owns their gear.

He learned this the hard way. Early in the podcast he took a scripted ad through an ad agency for life insurance and a foam mattress. He did not care about either category, felt like he was selling out the audience, and refused to repeat it.

A recent Manscaped inbound went further than most (they asked how he would weave it in organically), and it still has not converted because the fit is not natural for him.

The frame he uses: it is like a great passing football team that suddenly starts running the ball in the playoffs. Your audience showed up for one reason. Do not blow it up to hawk something misaligned.

Solve your own problems (why niching to your own life works)

Solving your own problems is the fastest path to a viable audience because you already know the pain in detail, you can speak with real credibility, and enough other people share that same problem to make a business. Ryan’s framing on the episode: “Just offer solutions to your own problems. You are going to find enough people that have the same problems you do.”

You may not get 300 million customers. You will get 1,000 or 10,000, which in most niches is more than enough to build a real business.

Ryan tells his audience directly: “I am not trying to solve your problems. I am trying to solve my own. You just happen to think like me.”

Diversify inside the business, not just outside it

Diversifying revenue inside a single business (membership, merch, sponsors, events, ads, courses) protects the operator against any one channel dying, and gives you the option to shut off the channels you no longer enjoy. Ryan’s diversification is entirely inside Order of Man. He does not need to spin up new companies to spread risk.

The freedom this creates is downstream: because Iron Council carries the revenue, he can decide whether to run an event this year purely on whether he wants to, not whether he needs to. That is the shape of a durable creator business.

Should you start a podcast today?

You should start a podcast today only if you genuinely enjoy podcasting itself, because the medium is more crowded than it was when Ryan launched Order of Man in 2015 and the growth curve is longer. If you do not like being behind a microphone, pick the medium you do like (email, YouTube, live events, in-person community) and go all in there instead.

Ryan’s answer for himself was still podcast, because he loves it and finds it energizing. Mine is the same.

The bigger point is that the format you can maintain forever beats the format that has better nominal reach. I do not enjoy in-person events at other people’s conferences. Ryan does not either, so neither of us leans on that channel.

The other honest truth Ryan raised: the first hundreds of episodes will be bad. He tells guests not to listen to Order of Man before episode 300, and mine is the same.

If you cannot commit to being publicly bad for a couple of years, this is not the medium for you.

Frequently asked questions

How do you make money from a podcast?

You make money from a podcast by treating it as a marketing channel and monetizing through an owned product such as a paid membership, course, merchandise, events, or a small set of aligned sponsors. Sponsorship-only monetization requires massive scale; membership and course monetization work at a much smaller audience size.

How does The Iron Council make money?

The Iron Council is a paid brotherhood tied to the Order of Man podcast with over 1,200 members. Ryan Michler charges recurring monthly membership dues in exchange for accountability, monthly topics, regional in-person meetups, and specialty channels (fatherhood, firearms, hunting, and more).

How long does it take to grow a podcast?

It typically takes years, not months, to grow a podcast to meaningful revenue, and Ryan Michler is candid that his first 300 episodes were rough. Growth compounds through consistent shipping, better production, and building shareable assets that guests actually promote.

Should I do sponsored podcast ads?

You should only accept sponsored podcast ads for products you personally use and companies whose founders you trust, because misaligned ads erode the audience trust that makes the podcast valuable in the first place. Ryan runs only two sponsors (Origin and Sorinex) and both are personal customers of his.

Do I need to be on video too?

Video is optional for launching a podcast, and audio-only shows still work. Modern podcast growth increasingly runs on short-form video clips distributed across YouTube, Instagram Reels and TikTok, so recording video expands your distribution surface significantly. Ryan and I both film video for exactly this reason.

How do I get big-name guests on my new podcast?

You get big-name guests on your new podcast by warming the relationship in person or over email before you pitch, by attending events where they speak, and by showing that you can produce a professional episode and share polished assets that make the guest look good. Ryan’s initial breakthrough was showing up at StyleCon and emailing every speaker before the event.

Is it too late to start a podcast?

It is still worth starting a podcast today, though the bar for production quality, format fit and audience-building work is much higher than it was in 2015. If you enjoy the medium and can commit to years of consistency, it is one of the best trust-building channels available. If you do not enjoy it, pick a channel you do.

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