580: Is Starting A Podcast Worth It In 2025? Here’s Our Take

00:00
Welcome back to the podcast, the show where I cover all of the latest strategies and current events related to e-commerce and online business. this episode, Tony and I debate whether it’s still worth it to start a podcast today, given how saturated this medium has become. But before we begin, I wanted to let you know that tickets are now on sale for Seller Summit 2025 over at sellersummit.com. The Seller Summit is the conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e-commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online.

00:29
Unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high-level advice, mine is a curriculum-based conference where you will leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an e-commerce business. Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches of their 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. I personally hate large events, so the seller’s summit is always small and intimate.

00:58
Every year we cut off ticket sales at around 200 people, so tickets sell out fast, and we’ve sold out every single year for the past eight years. If you are an e-commerce entrepreneur making more than $250,000 or $1 million per year, we also offer an exclusive mastermind experience with other top sellers. The Seller’s Summit is going to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 6th to May 8th. Right now, this is the cheapest the tickets will ever be. So head on over to sellerssummit.com and grab your ticket.

01:28
Now onto the show.

01:35
Welcome to the My Wife Quitter Job podcast. Today we’re gonna be talking about whether starting a podcast is still worth it today. And I think the last time I checked, there were like a million podcasts out there. And I think to be in like the top, I think it was like top 10%, you only needed like a couple hundred downloads. It was surprisingly small to be in the top.

02:04
Also, it’s top in your niche, right? I think you have a better chance because you can break it down by category. I wish I had that stat. I should have been prepared with that stat, but it was something shockingly low. Yes. It was like, I want to say less than 1,000. Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. What do you think? In the course, we have several lessons on podcasting. We talk about it sometimes in the webinar. It depends which webinar we’re doing.

02:33
We tend to, I want to say we don’t not recommend it for people, but it’s definitely not our first choice for people. Actually, I’ve been a little down on podcasting over the years ever since everyone just flooded in on it because there’s only so many channels and each podcast tends to be pretty long, 30, 40 minutes or maybe even longer like Joe Rogan, it’s like three hours. Yes.

03:01
There really isn’t as much time and as much room for a podcast as per se like a YouTube channel where the videos are much shorter. Yes. You brought me down. Oh, I did? Yes, on the podcasting train. Sorry. I’m just like a Debbie Downer these days. I know. You’re a Debbie Downer this year. 2024, Debbie Downer Steve. The podcast we just released today was the blogging episode, by the way. You’re down in that one.

03:28
So I, you brought me down, but I started thinking about this maybe, well, I have an idea for a podcast, which I don’t want to talk about on this episode, because it’s still, it involves my kids. And so I don’t like to announce things unless, you know, I’ve got their buy-in on stuff. But I’ve been, so I’ve been thinking about this a lot for probably the past like four or five weeks. And I actually think podcasting is still a pretty good idea.

03:55
and for a variety of reasons. The first reason, and we’ve talked about this before, pretty low barrier to entry as far as we know lots of people who try to set up a WordPress website and get very, very frustrated very quickly. And that doesn’t look exactly how they want it to. And most people, when they try to set up a website, they have this idea of what they think it should look like in their mind. And then they have the capability of what they can build with zero WordPress experience.

04:23
And those two are never the same. And so they immediately get frustrated not realizing that initially no one’s gonna read your website anyway. And by the time you have an audience, you’ll have money to pay someone on Upwork to make the tweaks to your website and get it looking more like you like it, or you’ll have enough experience to do it yourself. So I think with podcasting, there’s very little technology involved, right? As far as…

04:46
creating it and there are lots of good tutorials on the web. In fact, you have one on my wife, quit her job. We did. I don’t know if it’s still on there. You might have deleted it. still there. And your SEO and your SEO purge. You have a great tutorial on how to set it up. There are several other people that have great tutorials on the basics of podcasting and will take you from like, here’s what you need to record to here’s how you get it published on iTunes. So I think technology wise.

05:14
Low barrier. People can figure this out on their own. They’re never going to need to hire anyone to help them. I would agree with that. Actually, you can just sign up for a service now, not even have a website or anything and have a podcast. Right? So easy peasy. That therein kind of lies the problem, though. Because anyone can do it. Anyone can do it. And there’s not really a good discovery mechanism. Although I think my views of podcasting might have changed a little bit relatively recently, like in the past year or so.

05:41
because I think YouTube is a great way to proliferate your podcast ironically. Okay, so this was my next point is that what has changed my mind about this is the increase of either full podcast or snippets of podcasts on TikTok and YouTube. Yes. No, mean, that’s a consideration. That’s why it’s on my list to get another video editor just to do the podcast. But again, that takes resources.

06:10
Editing a podcast is a lot different than editing a YouTube video. Yes. Because you need to edit something that’s 40 minutes long. You have to find someone that’s really good at spotting something that’s catchy so you can move it to the beginning and attract the attention and then move on. Then you can’t just have two talking heads in the video the entire time. Correct. It seems like it’s pretty significant resources. Yes, to edit them in a fancy way.

06:39
for YouTube or TikTok. Not even fancy, but just like the basics, not just two talking heads. Well, I think if you’re publishing the entire podcast on like a long form video, absolutely. But what I tend to see is clips of podcasts, especially on TikTok, right? And that I believe is far less editing than editing a full length 40 minute podcast. So I would disagree because you to find someone who can spot those clips in a conversation.

07:08
Very difficult. I was trying to do that. So I published six podcasts, I want to say, on my channel. And they’ve all done reasonably well. Like the highest one has like 60,000 views. And we’re talking like a 40 minute episode here. But to go through and pick a clip that’s interesting, it kind of takes some skill. Like you can’t just hire Joe Schmo to go in and pick like interesting quotes or interesting clips to put on TikTok or YouTube.

07:38
So here’s how I would do it. If I was doing this, I would be as I was recording the podcast, I’d have a pad of paper next to me. And when something interesting was said, I would just write down the timestamp of the podcast. And so that would make it easy to clip it out. And I think you could like I’m saying this is not where you’re even hiring someone to help you. You’re doing this all on your own, because also if you’re just getting started, right, and you don’t have any audience, then you don’t have a huge YouTube channel like you do where you want like better editing for

08:08
putting it on YouTube. I think if you just want to put clips on TikTok or clips on YouTube shorts, pretty simple to timestamp on a piece of paper and then grab it. I think that’s actually pretty low effort. I would agree with that. In practice, I noticed you don’t have your pad out for this episode. Because we’re not putting anything up. Well, no. I already told you that I’m going to. Yes. If you want me to, I can. Not today because I’m not sitting by any pins. I’m at the wrong desk.

08:38
I’m just trying to think if that would ruin my flow, like if I had a guest on the show. I was like, oh, good one. And then jot it down. So I used to do this with our podcasts years ago when we were taught, when we first were like, oh, we should put these on YouTube. I used to do that. then we didn’t. And yes. And then so I don’t think it really ruins your flow because it’s literally just I look up 730. That’s where we are right now. I would just write 730.

09:05
So I think it’s, so here’s why I think this is good though, because I have found myself discovering a lot of new podcasts from TikTok specifically. Cause I watch YouTube for long form, I watch TikTok for shorts. So I’m not really watching short videos on YouTube very often. So for me, like I’ve discovered several podcasts. In fact, when Joe Rogan interviewed, so he interviewed what Trump and JD Vance

09:34
before the election and actually the Minnesota Waltz. I think he came on too, right? Did he do Joe Rogan? did not. He did not. Oh, he must have done a different podcast. think anyone from her campaign went on Rogan. I found myself watching clips of those. I never watched or listened to the full three hours because I don’t have that kind of time. I found myself watching multiple clips of that interview with Joe Rogan and

10:01
like my boys who are 20 and 24 listen to Joe Rogan like full length, right? Like they’ll just put it on in there. Yeah. And so I think one it’s TikTok and YouTube have become a discovery engine for, and it’s interesting because I think the TikTok algorithm is so good that I get served like right now. So I watched the Golden Bachelor. I think we’ve talked about this before. It just ended, but.

10:28
all throughout the time that I was watching the Golden Bachelor, I was seeing a lot of TikToks about the Golden Bachelor. I was also getting hit with the podcasts about the Golden Bachelor. So there are like podcasts dedicated towards either to either like reality TV or the Golden Bachelor specifically or Bachelorette. And so those were being put in my feed. And there were several times where I was like, oh, I would listen to this podcast, like during the Golden Bachelorette, right? would, so it was like, I would never have known that that even existed.

10:57
had I not been on TikTok, been seeing other things in my feed, and then that got served to me. So discovering new podcasts just from the TikTok feed. No, I agree with you 100%. I’m just trying to think though, like that’s Joe Rogan or someone famous coming on in a clip. If you see like a random Chinese guy and like a random person that you’ve never heard of, unless that clip starts really well with a decent hook,

11:26
it’s probably not even gonna do well, right? If you’re not known at all. Correct, except for I didn’t know these two people do in The Golden Bachelorette. I had no idea who they were. Bachelorette is a very popular show, right? Correct, but it’s also something that like you would never stop and scroll, stop your scroll for that. Because you don’t care about The Golden Bachelorette. However, if you are on TikTok and you see someone breaking down Warriors clips,

11:53
Right? Like plays in the Warriors. I know there’s a guy on YouTube that does this really well, but like if you saw someone talking about basketball plays or something in that niche, you would probably stop because that’s something you’re interested in and TikTok will feed you that because you’re watching other creators. I mean, that’s happened. That’s happened many times. I’m just trying to think though. I mean, it’s all in the execution, right? Yeah. I’m pretty sure that the basketball clips that I see on TikTok

12:22
They have really good hooks. It’ll say something like, Yannis is gonna get traded. That’s the start. And then there’s basketball clips of people dunking and whatnot. So it’s all in the execution. If you can make your podcast clip that good, then yeah, it’s gonna work. Well, so last night, this is totally current events. So by the time this publishes, this will be a little bit old. But last night, Cavs played the Celtics. Cavs were undefeated. Only undefeated team in the NBA.

12:51
chasing the Warriors record of what did they go 24 wins in a row. It’s like a big deal because Celtics are the NBA champions. It’s like all this hype. If someone did a podcast last night or this morning where it broke down the game and they had a good hook,

13:12
If I didn’t know this person was, I’d never heard of their podcast before, but they sort of break down big games in the NBA, I would probably give that podcast a couple of listens based on seeing it in my feed. I 100 % agree, but it’s the NBA that attracts me. But if you’re just teaching e-commerce, for example, and then you just bring up two random people that doesn’t have a good hook and whatnot, or anything that’s popular. Yeah, I guess if you’re talking about something popular, you can probably make it work.

13:40
I don’t think it has to be popular though. It only has to be popular with your people. Another example just from this week, our friend Lars sent me a business that was for sale. He was like, you should buy this. I’m like, I don’t know Lars, coming from you. It’s like down on e-commerce. You should buy an e-commerce business.

14:00
But I’ve never really thought about buying a business before. It’s always been in the back of my mind, but it’s never been something I’ve seriously considered. Well, over the past couple of days, I’ve spent a decent amount of time looking into buying a business, right? What would it take? What do I need? What should I look for? Just kind of doing some research. So of course, now my feed is starting to show some business type, business acquisition type.

14:29
pieces of information because that’s what I’ve been focused on for the last couple of days. So if I were to see some random Chinese guy talking about pitfalls of buying a business or things that you need to look out for or things that they won’t tell you or whatever the hook is, right? I would probably watch it because that’s what I’m interested in right now. That’s what I’m looking for. So I don’t think you have to, like obviously like doing a podcast about reality TV.

14:54
is really, a lot of people are doing that, right? It’s got the popularity of the reality TV. But I think as long as it’s like, once you get in someone’s algorithm and you’re in that niche of what they’re already looking for, you’ve just opened the opportunity for them to find you and listen. So they’re in law. I mean, I agree with you, but what you said is if it has a hook and if you’re just recording a podcast and you’re taking a clip out of it, chances are it’s not going to have a hook. It’s like you got to do, you got to make the hook. So, right. You got to do something or record it and

15:24
It’s let’s just say I’ve tried this before. just takes effort. can be done. It just takes a lot more effort than you think for a full length podcast. At least I haven’t really tried to break it apart into clips. Actually, I take that back. I did use Opus once on one of my podcasts. So Opus is a AI tool that will try to extract out interesting clips from whatever you give it. And I tried it on one of my podcast episodes and it was

15:51
It just didn’t work for me. I would have to record something in the front end, I think, and then lead into it, which is doable. Which is doable. But I may as well just record the clip from scratch, I think, at that point, was what I was thinking. Well, I think there’s something about when you see the video and there’s a person or two people with the podcast mics. Yeah.

16:12
I think there’s something about that because in my mind, it’s immediately like, that’s podcast. me see. Let me look down and see whose podcast it is. Right. Because usually the title of the channel is the title of the podcast. And so I think and here’s the other thing I’m realizing that like so many people listen to podcasts, especially like we were. So my grandkids had their final soccer game of the season.

16:38
on Saturday, went to the thing and you see all these like parents at the game, right? And it’s like rec soccer. So none of the kids are actually that good. And there’s a lot of dads walking around with like one air pod in, right? And so we bumped into someone that like, I didn’t know that well, but my daughter knew him and my son-in-law was like, Hey, what are you listening to? He’s like, Oh, Tim Ferriss podcast, right? Like all these dads are at soccer listening to podcasts while their kids are like not playing or what, you know, they’re like,

17:08
double duty kind of thing. So I just think the amount of people listening and wanting that information and wanting to be infotained, right? Whatever it is, is still like, that’s not waned. That’s just continuing to increase. % agree. I 100 % agree. I’m just talking about in terms of proliferation. So every time I do one of my workshops and I just happened to be doing one today, first question I asked is how’d you guys discover me? Yeah.

17:36
The last two workshops, it has been nine out of 10 YouTube. Then the remaining one is the podcast. Think about it. I don’t know how many downloads you get a month, but your YouTube channel gets more views a month than your podcast gets downloads. I actually think based on the numbers that I know, it’s probably to scale. It probably is. To a certain extent, the podcast people are much more loyal.

18:06
Yes. And that’s the advantage, right? Yeah. So it’s hard to say. I think it’s really hard to grow a podcast. Yes. But I think that now that you can sort of market your podcast on YouTube or TikTok or Instagram, I think the ability to grow your podcast just got easier. Not the actual, like it is hard to like edit and create the hook and things like that, but like just sitting on

18:32
on iTunes and hoping that someone finds you is tough. That’ll never happen. Yeah, no, I agree. It’s really YouTube that’s making podcasts attractive. Like platforms like Spotify and Apple Podcasts is like the worst. There’s no discovery. No, so I was searching for

18:53
So I take my daughter to school every day, which is I haven’t had to drive to school in a really long time. So I was like, well, let me be productive and listen to some sort of educational podcast on the way to the drive. Plus, hopefully she’ll learn something, which I’m sure she’s just loving this. She probably has her own AirPods in, actually. But I searched for, I went on iTunes and I searched for, I think, email marketing like Black Friday or something like that. This was a couple of months ago. And people are putting that of content out in October.

19:23
And like two podcasts came up. I’m like, well, I know, like, I know there’s more, like, I couldn’t even get, remember we were talking about Chase and Jimmy’s new podcast, Send It? Oh yeah, yeah. That didn’t even come up. And I knew they had an episode about that because I’d gotten their email and that didn’t even come up in my search. So the search on iTunes is so garbage. And this has happened to me multiple times, like,

19:50
I’ve tried to search for, hey, I want a podcast on Pinterest ads. Nothing comes up. I know for a fact there’s podcasts on this. So that stinks. I think now there’s other ways to market a podcast, which to me reopens the door to why this might be a good idea for your business. I mean, really, I think it’s YouTube if we just put it down. Because YouTube has a great proliferation engine. And you’re right, TikTok is good too.

20:19
if you can break it apart into clips that have a good hook. when I think about it though, effort wise, I almost think starting a YouTube channel is less effort.

20:34
I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that I offer on my website that you may not be aware of. If you are interested in starting your own online store, I put together a comprehensive six-day mini course on how to get started in ecommerce that you should all check out. It contains both video and text-based tutorials that go over the entire process of finding products to sell all the way to getting your first sales online. Now this course is free and can be attained at mywifequitterjob.com slash free.

21:03
just sign up right there on the front page via email and I’ll send you the course right away. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Now back to the show.

21:14
Right, because okay, let’s say you start a podcast, you gotta record either by yourself or with someone else, right? And then to edit that sucker, provided it’s like 30 minutes, 40 minutes long, and do a decent job to get decent retention on YouTube, quite a bit of effort, it takes my editor longer to edit a podcast without annotations and everything than it does a 10 minute episode on my YouTube channel.

21:42
Because it’s also a lot longer, right? You’re talking 40 minutes versus 10. But the hard part that I’ve always had is finding that clip and maybe using your method, it’s better. Although when I’m interviewing someone, I’m so focused on listening to them and coming up with a follow-up question that I think jotting down even a timestamp would mess me up, honestly. You can do it, but I don’t know if I can do it. I definitely think it’s a lot of work to edit it to put on

22:13
video. But I think that

22:18
Obviously, I would say that interviewing people on a podcast is easier than just talking by yourself. Yes, I would agree with that. I think for some people, and we know these people, this is not an abnormal thing, the thought of creating a script, talking, looking at a camera for 12 minutes, that’s pretty intimidating. It is. Or if I said, you get to interview this person and they are like,

22:48
they used to be on The Bachelor, right? So you get to interview this person that you see, you do Bachelorette content, you get to, found a bachelor person that wants to come on and be on your podcast. That seems easier as far as like the mental hurdle, right? You come up with a couple of questions, you do a little background research about that person, hopefully, you know, a little bit, right? And then you kind of let the interview take it from there. So I think for people who are just intimidated by the thought of,

23:17
creating a script, getting on a teleprompter, doing all those things. That for a lot of people, it doesn’t seem hard for us, but we do it all the time. I think for some people just interviewing someone is a lot easier. What’s funny about that statement is I once had a conversation with Andrew Udarian. He runs the E-commerce Fuel podcast and he feels the absolute opposite. He says it’s much more work to have someone on the show than it is for him to just do a solo Because he does so much more prep than us.

23:43
He says he’s got to do prep on the person. He wants to make sure he asks proven questions. He wants to make sure that he’s not asking the same questions that all these other interviews have already asked him. So I can see that. When I had Cialdini on the show, which is someone that I really admire, I spent a hell of a lot of time listening to a whole bunch of his interviews, making sure I could extract out different nuggets that weren’t covered yet. So it just depends.

24:11
I mean, everything requires work and I guess it just depends on your skill set, right? If your skill set just happens to be interviewing, you still have to do the research, but I can see it being easier. Like for me, it’s much easier to interview someone than it is for me to come up with the script. If you asked me to talk 40 minutes about something, I think I would die. Well, and I think, so I listen to Shalina a lot and she does primarily solo podcasts. Right. And I know like just you…

24:36
When you follow her, understand that she records podcasts in the back of Ubers while she’s on her walks. She probably doesn’t have a ton of notes, although I think she definitely has an outline. She probably has an outline, but she can talk for 40 minutes straight. She can. That’d be interesting. I feel like I could probably talk for 40 minutes with an outline and not struggle.

25:01
So I do think there is like not just probably an innate ability to have an easier time with that. However, I do think like when you do a solo podcast, you have to at least have those talking points. You at least have to say, want to cover these five things because I’ve listened to podcasts where it doesn’t seem like someone had those and they’re really like, you have to be really funny.

25:26
or just really engaging to keep people on your rabbit trails. Whereas like Shalene, I find her funny and she’s engaging, but she clearly has like six things she wants to get through. And sometimes she’ll trail off, right? Because she’s in an Uber, so she has to get out of the Uber and whatever, but she always comes back to the point. you know you’re gonna get all that in the 30 minutes or however long the podcast is. Yeah. No, Shalene has got a gift. Yeah.

25:55
of being just funny. I’m sure she has an outline. Yes, absolutely. And eventually covers all of it. But then she tells these funny stories in between, like off the top of her head, right? Yes, yes. I don’t have that gift, unfortunately. So I don’t think I could pull it off. I think you could. If that’s your gift, then sure, you can do it. So I think that there’s something.

26:20
I don’t wanna say safe because I think that word’s a little overused right now, but I think there’s something about thinking, oh, this is just a podcast. then like, cause we video every podcast that we record, but I never care that we’re videoing the podcast. You know what I mean? Like I’m not super worried about the video or like, obviously we have lights on, we’re dressed.

26:44
But it’s not like a video where I feel like the pressure is like, okay, I gotta get ready, I gotta do this, I gotta do that with the podcast. It’s so much to me more informational than visual. So even if it was going on YouTube or TikTok, I don’t think I would care.

27:04
I think you’re lying. As soon as this goes up on YouTube, you’re going to do Rent the Runway again. You’re going to show up in some dress with your hair done. Remember, you used to do that for office hours. used to always be in a different dress. And then I realized I didn’t care, and it wasn’t worth it. Also, I’ve been working on my house for like six months, so I’m constantly in work clothes. I think that would change. If every episode started getting, let’s say, even 10,000 views on YouTube, I’m pretty sure you would change.

27:33
Hell, I might even comb my hair. You might bust out that collared shirt. On YouTube, I’m presentable. Usually, I’ll shower.

27:48
This is totally off topic, but I don’t know if I would. I don’t know if I would because I tend to now consume content from people who are like, especially podcasters who are sitting on a couch, Indian style in what looks like their pajamas recording. If I was at an event speaking, absolutely, that’s a different game.

28:17
Yeah, I’ve kind of softened my stance, I think, on some of that. Because once upon a time, we had this conversation. Yes, we did. We did. Yeah. It might be the fact that I’m in the attic like every four hours. So it’s just like the level of inconvenience is really high. All right. So back to podcasting. You know, I do think that the podcast has had a tremendous effect on my life.

28:47
Yes, I wanted to get to this. Well, let me hear what you have to say first and then I’ll say my piece. What I think the benefit of the podcast, and we’ve seen this with some of our students, like David Crabill, who we talk about pretty frequently, has a podcast. The opportunities, and it’s not a hugely popular podcast. One, it’s about the cottage food business. There’s going to be a limited audience to begin with. How many people are there in the world that are doing this?

29:16
under 100,000 probably or something like that. I have no idea. Yeah. It’s not a huge number. We’re not talking about like the NBA or the Golden Bachelorette where people, you know, we’re getting millions of people who are like keyed into these things. So the amount of opportunities that I’ve just seen for him of meeting people, getting invited to speak at events, getting invited on other podcasts, and then using the podcast as a way to get introductions to people that you

29:45
probably would not be able to get just with a website. Yeah. I mean, that’s certainly happened to our students. It’s happened to me. Yeah. I think it just takes even more patience to get a podcast up and running than any other medium. Yeah. Well, let’s talk about for you. mean, started this. When did you start this podcast? I started in 2014. So this is my, actually, it’s my 10 year anniversary of the podcast. Look at that.

30:15
It was at a time when podcasting was just kind of getting popular, I want to say. Yeah. And to prove my point, I hit the number two overall at one point when I first launched. That’s how, you know, yeah, that’s how not competitive it was back then. I mean, I was only there for like two days, but still, you know, but you made it. But I made it and I have a screenshot to prove it. And so during that time, I think

30:44
It was really easy to build or much easier, I would say, to build. Sure, I was promoting it alongside of the blog and everything, which again, that was the blogging heyday too. That’s how I was able to grow it pretty large. Today, I think if I started from scratch, assuming I had nothing else, I think it’d be very difficult. I don’t know about very difficult because I think you can leverage video, but it would be harder than it was 10 years ago, that’s for sure.

31:14
What I mean by that is, so you’re trying to promote a podcast on YouTube, and even though YouTube is becoming more podcast friendly, you still need a set of skills to… The video has to be in a certain way so that people want to watch it for a long time. Right. At that point, I think I would just start with a pure YouTube video designed for YouTube to build up that audience first, and then maybe later start a podcast. Yes. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad idea.

31:43
What I remember is that when you, cause I met you like right when you were starting the podcast. I think I was on one of your earlier episodes. You were definitely in the top 50, I think. And look where I am today. So anyway, when I met you, you know, we met in 2014 and then we were attending the same events, probably 2015, 2016, 2017. And I can remember

32:12
specifically being in San Diego, and I don’t know what event we were at, whether it was FinCon or traffic and conversion or something like that, social media marketing world, and having numerous people come up to you and say, recognize you from the podcast. Which I think now, for you, YouTube sort of taken. Yeah, it’s taken over for sure. But I think what it did is that I remember walking the halls with you of these conferences and

32:42
introducing yourself to people, people realizing that you had the podcast, like having, even if they’d never listened to it, knowing that you had it and it giving you an immediate end with people that you might not have been able to have a conversation with or like continue to interact with without the podcast. No, yeah, no, no question. No question. I was just I was just talking about it from the standpoint of starting from scratch. Yeah. Much.

33:11
You know what, the reason why I started the podcast was to actually meet people. Yeah. Because I’m stuck in this office all day by myself. And for a long time, it was actually a really good way to do it. And today, to a certain extent, it’s pretty easy to do because I can get people to come on. But I think over the years, people coming on podcasts has become just so flooded. Like you should see my inbox. Actually, you do see my inbox. Yes. How many people want it? You get a lot of those. Like multiple a day.

33:40
want to come on the podcast. And it’s gotten to this point now where like even when people ask me to join on their podcast, I’ve been saying no to everyone. Right. Because, know, there’s, it’s an hour of my day. And this podcast, unless they quote some readership or listenership, should say, yeah, I’m not gonna go on because it’s been so jaded. Whereas back in the day, I probably would have gone on anyone’s podcast. Yeah. Right. So that’s changed a little bit over the years, too.

34:08
What I also noticed was that last year at Seller Summit, which this was definitely the highlight of my Seller Summit, is that people didn’t know who you were. They’re like, who’s Steve Chu? I was like, the Chinese guy on the main stage. Actually, how did those people find out about the Seller Summit? I went on a bunch of podcasts last year to promote Seller Summit. I don’t know if you remember this. I went on Ecommerce Fuel podcast and I went on one more. I don’t remember which one it was.

34:38
And so several people heard those podcasts and came to Seller Summit because they heard me on these other podcasts. So they didn’t know who I was or you were. They just heard about it from a podcast. And this is where I think the podcast becomes impactful. Like it’s not cheap to come to Seller Summit, right? Tickets are anywhere between 800 and $1,500, depending on what kind of ticket you buy. If you don’t live in Fort Lauderdale or South Florida, you’ve got to pay for transportation, hotel, like

35:07
this is a pretty big investment and not knowing who either of us are, right? And hearing a podcast for 40 minutes of me yapping, right? They made a decision to come to Seller Summit based on, think one, whatever. I mean, I was talking about like e-commerce and email marketing. So it was obviously related to what Seller Summit’s about. But also the trust in whoever I did the podcast with, like obviously Andrew’s got a very loyal following, a lot of trust.

35:34
And so like if Andrew endorses this, right, if he says go to sell or someone on the podcast, people will make a buying decision just based on that because the loyalty runs so deep. Whereas I don’t think the loyalty runs as deep in other places. So I think that that loyalty that you build with the podcast, because someone’s listening to you for 40 minutes a day or 40 minutes a week, I think that does really affect the ability to like drive conversions on things.

36:02
The way I think about events is you don’t go to an event because of the host, right? Like think of all the events that I go to or have gone to over the years. It has nothing to do with the hosts at all, actually, right? You go for like who the sessions are or the people that you might meet. So I wouldn’t be surprised if there are lot more people that come to Seller Summit that didn’t come or had never heard of me or you before. It’s just a fact, I think.

36:30
We might get a bunch this year because Andrea just went to an event and promoted the heck out of seller summit. Oh, is that right? To some disgruntled attendees. She’s like, if you don’t like this event, I’ll tell you an event you’ll love. Most people don’t attend events for the person who owns the event. That’s silly.

36:54
It is a little different because with Seller Summit, because you and I are both so involved. We’re speaking, it’s not like we’re just in the background. I noticed Trafficking Conversion was shutting down their event. Did you see that? No, I didn’t. Yes, they’re shutting down their event. permanently? Yes. Wow. We’ve gone to a couple of Trafficking Conversions. We didn’t go there to hang out with Ryan Dice because you don’t want to ever see him.

37:21
I do think events like ours and e-commerce fuel are different, right? In that it’s more of a community-based event versus a come meet the speaker and hang out. Although we hang out, but it’s not the same. Anyway, just think that the podcast, you can build such a loyal following with the podcast if you do it right.

37:49
So I’ve been kind of playing devil’s advocate this entire episode. Yes, have. Debbie Downer again. Well, no, I’m just trying to be realistic. Like if I have a finite amount of time and I want to start something, I think I’m still going YouTube first. We know. We know. Can I just buy you a shirt for Christmas that says YouTube first? And you can just wear it. Like if you went back to 2014 today, I would start the channel.

38:15
over the podcast. Well, yes, because then you would have 10 million followers. Yes, I would. And it has it’s nothing to do with podcasting itself. It has to do with proliferation. I agree. And the amount of exposure versus the effort. Right. If you want to meet people and you want to like Joe Rogan, he kept going on when he had no listenership. Mm And then, you know,

38:42
good things started happening when they discovered that he was having these great conversations with people. Also, you think about the fact that it’s a three-hour podcast. Yes, which was ridiculous back in the day. Absolutely. Especially when you consider the attention span of people is 15 seconds. The fact that he’s been able to basically create these hours and hours long content, it’s pretty phenomenal.

39:11
And he was just doing it for fun, to hang out with people, which ironically was my first impetus. Like I never thought I’d make money with the podcast, to be honest with you. It was my way of meeting people and chatting with people that were inaccessible. And if that’s one of your goals, that still works today. Hope you enjoyed this episode. If you plan on starting a podcast this year, let us know in the comments. For more information and resources, go to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 580.

39:41
Once again, tickets to the Seller Summit 2025 are now on sale over at sellersummit.com. If you wanna hang out in person in a small intimate setting, develop real relationships with like-minded entrepreneurs and learn a ton, then come to my event. Go to sellersummit.com. And if you’re interested in starting your own e-commerce store, head on over to my wife quitherjob.com and sign up for my free six-day mini course. Just type in your email and I’ll send the course right away via email.