Last Updated on: 5th May 2025, 11:22 am
In this episode of the Simply Be Found Huddle session, hosts Rob and Dean welcomed Kevin Palmieri, founder of Next Level University, a global top 100 podcast focused on personal development. Kevin also runs Podcast Growth University, dedicated to teaching podcasting skills. The conversation covered valuable insights about podcasting, entrepreneurship, and content strategy.
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This Huddle’s Special Guest
Kevin Palmieri is the founder and host of Next Level University, a top 100 global podcast that’s all about helping people grow through personal development—with over 2,000 episodes to show for it. He’s also the creator of Podcast Growth University, where he shares real, actionable advice to help fellow podcasters build, grow, and monetize their shows.
Kevin’s journey into podcasting didn’t start with success—it started with a wake-up call. From the outside, everything looked great: he had the high-paying job, the sports car, and even won bodybuilding competitions. But on the inside, he was dealing with depression, anxiety, and a deep sense of unfulfillment. That moment of truth pushed him to walk away from the life he had built and create something more meaningful.
Since then, Kevin has turned his passion into a thriving business, helping podcasters—from brand-new voices to seasoned pros—grow their shows in ways that go far beyond chasing ad revenue. His philosophy is simple: lead with value, be authentic, and build real connection through consistent content that matters.
We appreciate Kevin taking the time to share his journey and insights with our community. His story is a great reminder that meaningful growth—personally or professionally—always starts with showing up as your true self.
John Doe
Key Takeaways From This Huddle
Kevin’s journey into entrepreneurship began at rock bottom. From the outside, he had it all—success, status, and security. But inwardly, he was struggling with deep unhappiness that led to a mental health crisis. That moment became the catalyst.
He walked away from his career and chose to pursue something that felt meaningful: launching a podcast. In the beginning, there were no profits—just passion and a willingness to stay consistent. Eventually, that commitment laid the foundation for a thriving coaching business and podcast production company.
The Reality Check on Business Timelines
One of the most honest takeaways from Kevin’s story is about time. Many entrepreneurs buy into the myth of instant results. Kevin sets the record straight: most businesses don’t turn a profit for 18 to 24 months. “If you’re not making money yet, that’s normal. And if you are? That’s extraordinary,” he says. For anyone thinking podcasting will generate revenue overnight, this insight is key.
YouTube vs. Podcasting: Platform Strengths Compared
Kevin broke down the differences between YouTube and podcasting, especially as they relate to content creators and entrepreneurs. YouTube offers clearer analytics, algorithm visibility, and easier monetization through ads. But it also demands high production value and on-camera presence.
Podcasting offers flexibility and ease of entry—people can listen on the go, and the pressure to be on camera is removed. However, podcasting lacks detailed analytics and doesn’t have built-in monetization tools. Kevin notes both platforms are evolving, with Spotify and YouTube crossing into each other’s territory. For creators, the message is clear: know your strengths and pick the platform that aligns with your goals.
Podcast Monetization: Ads Aren’t the Answer
Kevin delivers one of the strongest messages of the conversation when it comes to podcast monetization: don’t rely on ads. He’s had offers but has turned down every single one. “I don’t want someone else’s hand in my cookie jar,” he says. With typical ad rates of $25–$50 per 1,000 downloads, most podcasts would earn pennies.
Instead, Kevin encourages creators to build their own monetization strategy—one that includes solving real problems, positioning yourself as a thought leader, creating valuable offers, and including strong calls to action in every episode. His podcast brought in over $1 million in business revenue from one million downloads. Relying on ads would’ve brought in just $50,000—a fraction of the potential.
Repurposing podcast content is a core part of Kevin’s workflow and a big contributor to podcast monetization. Transcripts become blog posts. Audio clips are turned into Instagram reels and YouTube Shorts.
Podcast chapters are clipped into topic-specific videos. And intros are recorded separately to sharpen hooks. AI tools help streamline the process, but Kevin cautions against over-relying on them. Use AI to accelerate your content, not to replace your originality.
Building a Brand That Fuels Monetization
Another key to podcast monetization is personal branding. Kevin doesn’t just post when an episode drops—he builds connection through daily content across multiple areas of his life: fitness, family, and business. His belief? “You don’t promote your podcast by only promoting your podcast. You promote it by promoting you.” He follows what he calls the two Ds: discipline and dedication. That’s how he’s stayed consistent, grown an audience, and created real business opportunities from his show.
Go Beyond Podcasting For Business Growth
There’s a lot more you can do for your business other than monetizing a podcast. If you want more secrets to success, check out our membership benefits and become a part of the Simply Be Found community, and start growing your business organically today,
Transcript
- 00:00 | Welcome to the Simply Be Found Huddle
- 00:08 | Meet Kevin Palmieri – Podcasting & Entrepreneurship Journey
- 00:44 | From Depression to Podcasting: Kevin’s Mental Health Story
- 01:55 | Why External Success Doesn’t Always Fulfill You
- 03:09 | The Harsh Reality of Starting a Business
- 04:39 | The Cost of Calling Yourself an Expert Too Early
- 06:03 | The Real Challenge: Building Demand, Not Just Skills
- 07:05 | Podcasting vs YouTube – Which Platform Has More Opportunity?
- 08:46 | The Algorithm Struggle for Podcasters
- 10:12 | Is YouTube Easier to Monetize than Podcasting?
- 12:01 | Repurposing Content: Long-Form into Value Assets
- 13:15 | Podcast SEO and Unexpected Viral Episodes
- 15:04 | Will YouTube Take Over Podcasting?
- 16:48 | Listener Behavior: YouTube vs Podcasts
- 18:09 | Is Sponsorship Worth It for Podcasters?
- 19:06 | Kevin’s Strategy: Monetizing Through Value, Not Ads
- 20:27 | Should You Talk About Your Product on Your Podcast?
- 21:54 | Importance of Content Alignment and Podcast Purpose
- 23:34 | Podcast Monetization Pitfalls for Beginners
- 25:13 | Using Podcasts to Generate Original Blog Content
- 26:20 | Raw vs Polished Content – What Works Best?
- 27:39 | Creating Social Clips With Strategy
- 29:12 | Building Hooks and Intros After the Conversation
- 30:53 | Thumbnail, Title, and Short Strategy for More Watch Time
- 32:43 | The Importance of Pre-Promotion for Podcast Launch
- 34:29 | Using Chapters to Generate Targeted Clips
- 36:01 | Shorts Strategy: Pros, Cons & Channel Separation
- 37:30 | Measuring What Actually Matters: Conversions
- 38:54 | Mastery, Impact, or Profitability: What Drives You?
- 40:11 | How Podcast Goals Vary Across Creators
- 41:04 | The Danger of Relying Solely on the Algorithm
- 42:00 | Monetization Differences Between Local Biz & Creators
- 43:03 | How Often Should You Promote Your Podcast?
- 44:25 | Personal Branding Through Consistent Content
- 45:35 | The Power of Scheduling and Design for Consistency
- 46:17 | Where to Find Kevin Palmieri Online
- 47:07 | Final Thoughts and Wrap-Up
00:00 | Welcome to the Simply Be Found Huddle
00:00 Rob: Welcome to the simply be found huddle. You got Dean and Rob from simplybefound.com, and today we have our guest Kevin. Kevin, welcome.
00:08 | Meet Kevin Palmieri – Podcasting & Entrepreneurship Journey
00:08 Rob: You do a ton of stuff in the podcast world and doing a lot of stuff with just entrepreneurship and that entire world. Can you kind of give our listeners and our watchers, you know, kind of just in some insight on you and what you’re about and how they can find you and all that good stuff, and then we’ll get into a good conversation?
00:20 Kevin: Yes. First of all, I appreciate you both having me. I’m excited to chat. So yeah, I’m Kevin Palmieri. I am the founder and the host of Next Level University. That’s a global top 100 podcast that is for personal development. And then I have another podcast called Podcast Growth University that is all about podcasting. So I’m somebody who fell in love with podcasting. I just wanted to have cool conversations with cool people.
00:44 | From Depression to Podcasting: Kevin’s Mental Health Story
00:44 Kevin: Eventually I left my job after struggling with some mental health stuff. And then we figured out, well, we kind of have to find a way to make money with this. So it ended up turning into a business. It was a coaching business and ended up being a podcast production company, and now it’s both. And it’s been a very weird journey because this isn’t necessarily where I thought I was going to be. A lot of this is just a product of necessity. But as we were talking about in the green room before, I—I think I am meant to be an entrepreneur. I don’t want to work for somebody else. And I’ve had to learn all the things I’ve had to learn in order to survive here. So hopefully we can pass some of those on to the amazing audience.
01:20 Rob: When I was doing some research about you and kind of just, you know, looking at you before you came on today, um, I—I noticed something—I don’t remember all the details around it—that you almost committed suicide or were about ready to commit suicide at one point. Did you do entrepreneurism before that, or is that what kind of led you to being an entrepreneur after that?
01:37 Kevin: Yeah. So I was the stereotypical accomplish all of the external success and still be extremely unfulfilled. I had a sports car. I just won a bodybuilding show. My girlfriend was a model. I had a high income. Great. All the things.
01:55 | Why External Success Doesn’t Always Fulfill You
01:55 Kevin: But internally, I was unfulfilled. I was insecure, self-conscious, depressed, anxious, all that. So I ended up achieving way more than I ever thought I would. Ended up sitting on the edge of a bed contemplating suicide, and then realizing, well, this obviously isn’t sustainable.
I’m—I swung all the way to hell no. If there was ever a shot for me to swing to hell yes, now would be the time. Left my job three or four months later. And then, yeah, I started the—the process of trying to be a full-time podcaster. And for the first, like, two years, we didn’t make any money. Obviously, nobody cared in the beginning. So those are the—the hard yards. But yeah, the mental health thing really kicked me into entrepreneurship. It was not something I probably would have ended up doing if I didn’t have that level of necessity.
02:45 Dean: You just said something, Kevin, that really strikes with me, is, you know, when I started my business, you have to plan for 18 months to almost two years before you start to turn a profit. I think a lot of people get into entrepreneurialship, and they don’t understand that it takes time before you start to really start to turn profit. So that’s a good point. I really appreciate that.
03:03 Kevin: I appreciate—well, I—I think that we live in this weird spot. I was thinking of this the other day. Social media is—
03:09 | The Harsh Reality of Starting a Business
03:09 Kevin: Essentially you starting your own store. There’s no overhead. It’s totally free. There’s no barrier to entry. So a lot of people say some rather outlandish stuff to try to get people in the door. And we’re just in this weird time. The podcast space is a great example. People tell you that if you work with us, we can launch you as a top 100 show, and you’ll get clients on demand. And honestly, most of that is just untrue. It is just factually incorrect. I’ve worked with a lot of these people.
So I think it’s just important to level set people. Look, if you just started your business and you’re not making money, you’re not alone. That is par for the course. If you just started your business and you are making money, give yourself a pat on the back because you are in a very, very small amount of people that it actually works with. So I—I always think it’s important to lead with awareness and expectations because that—everything kind of comes from that.
04:04 Rob: Well, I think there’s a lot of that. I mean, there’s a—the barrier of entry is so cheap, and people see it. So they get—they either at their job, they hate their job, and they go into the world of digital marketing or podcasting or whatever that might be. I was talking to someone the other day. They’re like, “Well, you know, I—I know it. I—I did it for a company, so I’m going to go start a web design company.” And I’m like, “Oh.”
04:39 | The Cost of Calling Yourself an Expert Too Early
04:22 Rob: I said, “How many websites have you designed?” He goes, “I designed two. I designed one for my cousin and one for my aunt or something like that.” And I was like, “Oh.” He goes, “How hard could it be?” And you get a lot of those people that are out there, and then they want to say they’re the experts out there, and it’s like, you haven’t even seen some of the challenges that develop you and put you into where you need to be.
Like, well, what makes you—you know, he—when I was having this conversation with him, he goes, “Well, you know, it’s one of those things to where how many websites have you done?” I’m like, “I’ve done over probably over 20,000 websites now in my career. Um, and I’ve advised on a hell of a lot more than that.” And he goes, “Really?” And I’m like, “Yeah.” He goes, “Well, how’d you do that?” And I said, “Time. Been doing it for 30 plus years.”
So—and I’ve gotten my ass kicked more than once. I’ve had failures. I’ve had successes. I’ve seen what worked for the industry. I’m like, “That’s not knowledge you could ever go to school and learn.”
05:23 Kevin: Yeah, you can’t watch that from watching a YouTube video. Or you can’t learn that from watching a YouTube video.
05:30 Rob: Well, I think—go ahead, Kevin.
06:04 | The Real Challenge: Building Demand, Not Just Skills
05:30 Kevin: I was just gonna say real quick, Dean, that—that part, it’s not the easy part necessarily. The hardest part is building demand. Like, I don’t—I think one of the worst pieces of advice ever is, “If you’re miserable at your job, you should go start your own thing,” because it—it almost suggests that it’s going to be better faster, which it most likely isn’t. It’s going to get worse for a—the foreseeable future.
And being good at speaking, being good at podcasting, being good at coaching, whatever it is, that is level one. The rest of it is, how do I build demand, and how do I build an audience, and how do I build a community? And that takes—almost no matter how good you are at it, that takes a long period of time that most people just don’t talk about, right?
06:17 Dean: And, you know, in this huddle, we’re—we’re kind of in our infancy still. I mean, we—we started this just a few months ago, and we’re—we’re still developing. And we—we—anybody can come talk with us about anything because that’s what we’re all about. But—but I think we’re at 100 episodes now.
06:34 Rob: Yeah, which isn’t bad. But—but it’s no—nowhere close to your 2,000. So what I want to ask, though, is if you were—if you were to start, you know, a social channel like podcasting or whatever, I—I have heard some numbers. I just want to see if you—if you agree with them, that like there’s like 15 million YouTube channels right now, or something really crazy. There’s only like—like what—what—like one and a half million podcast channels out there.
06:59 Rob: Yes. So podcast is a better opportunity. Do you—do you agree with that? And do you think that’s a better media to get into? What—what’s your thought professionally?
07:05 | Podcasting vs YouTube – Which Platform Has More Opportunity?
07:05 Kevin: This one’s hard because nobody really knows what the podcast algorithm is. So if you came to me and said, “Hey, I want to get on the top charts,” I can tell you what are the stats and what are the numbers that they’re looking for. Yes.
In terms of the back end, though, the YouTube algorithm is fairly transparent. Like, we know what works on YouTube. You have a real—a lot easier than podcasting, 100%. And I stand corrected. We’re only at 53 episodes. I had to go look. Still, that—the vast majority of people never get to that point. So you guys are further than 90% of people get.
07:45 Kevin: Yeah, on YouTube, powerful thumbnail, first 15 seconds, you have to hook the audience, and then you have to study the data. So where—what’s the first minute? What’s the retention rate? What’s the click-through rate? Awesome. On podcasting, the stats are still relatively garbage. So you can log into Spotify for creators, and you can look. You can log into Apple Podcast Connect, and you can look at more detailed stats.
08:46 | The Algorithm Struggle for Podcasters
08:12 Kevin: They’re just not nearly as good. I would say they seem really behind the times as well because we were being—I don’t know if you remember it. I’m g—click on your age. Um, we were doing that last week some, and I—I was—I was shocked because I was like, “All right, well, how many people are listening on all the podcast networks?” And a lot of the analytical numbers, they seem like they’re also way behind times, and they haven’t updated all the way yet.
08:35 Rob: Yeah. Now, I didn’t dig any deeper into it because the squirrel popped up, but I went a different direction. But I was like, it seems like they’re not instant numbers. It’s kind of—
08:46 Rob: Like Google’s numbers are not always instant. Sometimes they’re a week behind, depends on how you’re pulling them out. Um, sometimes they could be 30 days behind. Um, so do you find that those numbers inside of the podcast networks are the same way? I’m kind of curious. Sorry.
08:58 Kevin: Yeah, no, 100%. 100—the—the podcast number—like, if you’re going to look at numbers, I would look at listens, and then I would—what I did was I created—and again, it’s not as serious as it sounds, but I created an algorithm where essentially it will categorize all your episodes, and it will compare, let’s say, episode number five to episode number four, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and we’ll figure out which one of those is the most highly performing. And then all we have to do is figure out, okay, is it highly performing because of the title? Is it the guest? Is it something that a lot of people are searching for? Okay, cool. Oh, every time we use the word “vulnerability,” we get more listens. All right, let’s test that. Cool.
I think YouTube is easier to back into with the strategy, where podcasting, there’s a lot of shooting, measuring, and then reflecting, and then shooting, measuring, and reflecting. So obviously, the hardest part on YouTube is you got to show your face for the most part, and that opens video editing, and that makes it a little bit harder. So I think podcasting is easier to start. I think YouTube is probably easier to—
10:12 | Is YouTube Easier to Monetize than Podcasting?
10:12 Kevin: Win because you can just optimize for video and then repurpose for audio. So there’s no—there’s no downside. My thought—and I’ve been saying this to clients a lot because I’ve been working with a lot of big YouTubers lately—let’s just do what’s working on YouTube on the audio. I have to imagine that the audio algorithm is very similar to YouTube’s. Let’s do that. Obviously, there’s no thumbnail, but the first 30 seconds is super valuable. We got to get people to listen throughout. So let’s test that.
And the stats so far have been pretty good. That’s how we’ve went—went through it and approached it so far.
10:45 Rob: Yeah. Is—we’ve handled it just like on YouTube because we started YouTube before we started, uh, the podcast. And I was trying to figure out how to be able to get Dean into the picture and to do some YouTube.
10:57 Rob: I think we’re sitting over—we’re sitting way over 2,000 videos on YouTube.
11:02 Kevin: Nice.
11:02 Rob: That—I mean, that’s one of those things to where YouTube is our bread and butter for a lot of that. And I kind of do—I look at the podcasting world as kind of being secondary. But I also look at when you do podcasting, video marketing, any of those types of marketing pieces, you are planting seeds. Mhm. And—or starting new—
12:01 | Repurposing Content: Long-Form into Value Assets
11:21 Rob: If you look at our tree analogy, which I don’t know if you’ve watched any of our tree analogy stuff, where you have the organic matter in the bottom, which is all your listings, your trunk is your website, and you have branches on the top. You might be starting some new branches up there under—you have a podcast branch, and underneath that, you have all your podcasts well, and you have all your video marketing. Well, all that ends up connecting together.
And I look at that as being little tiny new growths that are starting off because you don’t know when it’s going to take off. You don’t know what’s going to set off for you to go viral. It’s no different than when you put a video out or a social media—really doesn’t fit into that picture because it’s so in the face now. Yeah. But for video marketing, when you’re talking YouTube, when you’re talking podcast, or any of those aspects, it’s about letting it sit there because you might have one sit there for 6 months that got three views on it, and then all of a sudden, it has 250, 300 views, or it has thousands of views, and you have absolutely no idea what the hell just made it take off.
13:15 | Podcast SEO and Unexpected Viral Episodes
12:26 Kevin: Yeah, that happened to us recently. We had a—we had an episode—and this was on Spotify audio. We had an episode that was something along the lines of “detach from the outcome” question mark. Like, that was the title. I wanted to talk about what do people mean when they say detach from the outcome. Like, let’s have a conversation about that.
Evidently, either a very big show did an episode with a similar title. I don’t know. But there was a ton of search traffic. So it went from having 500 listens to like 6,000 listens essentially overnight. It was just because it got searched for. People were, some for some reason, searching that specific thing, right?
So that’s the other thing that I think it’s easy to lose sight of with a longtail. Everybody—all of these platforms are optimizing more and more and more and more for SEO. YouTube’s doing it. The podcast apps haven’t done a great job, but Spotify is coming for YouTube. Spotify is making a run and a push for—
13:16 Rob: YouTube. Will they get there? I don’t know. Well, YouTube’s doing their whole piece on the podcast piece. That’s going to be huge. They have a huge—they have a huge announcement that I feel coming from what I’m seeing just from everything I watch inside of the SEO world. I think they’re going to try to come and knock out and be the biggest podcasting app out there.
13:34 Kevin: It wouldn’t surprise me. I mean, they’ve been—they’ve been rolling out their little podcast tab, and they’re doing it. So it wouldn’t—it wouldn’t surprise me. I think the hard part about that is the behavior on YouTube is different. It is 100%.
15:04 | Will YouTube Take Over Podcasting?
13:54 Kevin: Right. YouTube is a—is a primary. If you’re watching YouTube, you’re most likely not always, but most likely watching it. If you’re listening to a podcast, you’re—you’re habit stacking. You’re doing the dishes. You’re doing the laundry, whatever it is. So I do think that is—that’s something. It’s a potential resistance for anybody who’s going to try to come take over with video.
14:12 Rob: I—I do that inside of u—YouTube all the time. I just don’t look at the screen.
14:18 Kevin: Same, same. I know a lot of people—I think there’s a lot of people doing that.
14:23 Rob: Yeah. Well, I also don’t have a great user experience because I pay for—I don’t know if you guys do, but I pay for premium.
14:30 Kevin: Yeah. If there were ads, I feel like that would break my—it’s like, “Oh, okay, I’m 10 feet away from the TV. Now I have to run over and skip the ad.” Would that affect it? I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.
14:37 Rob: Right. I mean, I—I—I’m—I—I never thought about that, but, yeah, I mean, I pay for the premium as well. Dean has it, but I don’t think he’s, uh…
14:44 Dean: I don’t use it all the time.
14:51 Rob: I don’t think he’s used it. But the reason I—the reason I like—algorithms are bringing the ads to different videos too. I like to see who’s advertising out there a little bit. So—but—but I—I—when I don’t want to be interrupted, Rob, I do use the premium. So…
15:04 Kevin: Okay, nice. Makes sense. Well, the other thing about YouTube is it’s easier. There’s built-in monetization, right? I mean, so with—
16:48 | Listener Behavior: YouTube vs Podcasts
15:09 Kevin: Podcasting, yeah, there kind of sort of is, but it’s not the same. YouTube makes it really easy. I upload videos for some of our clients. You click the monetize tab, it puts in the spots where the ads are going to go based on the algorithm. So it’s just a little bit easier. I think the barrier to entry is a little bit lower to monetize. Is it going to be life-changing money? No, not necessarily, but it’s a good—it’s a good start for a creator.
15:35 Rob: Well, and it depends on what kind of creator you are.
15:41 Rob: Yes. I mean, being in the B2B space like we are, it’s been hell to try to get over to the monetized piece because you don’t have that much watch hours.
15:48 Kevin: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s—it’s totally different than if I was, you know, Mr. Beast, or if I had the following at the very beginning, like, uh, Gary Vee had. I mean, and was it—if I would have pulled my head out of my ass and listened to everything that I was supposed to listen to at the very beginning, I mean, I’d probably be in a different spot, and we might even be having this conversation right now. But I mean, it’s one of those things to where you have to know where your audience is and where they are.
16:12 Kevin: Yes.
16:12 Rob: Always.
16:12 Dean: So Kevin, you were talking about monetizing, and—and I might go down the road of sponsors a little bit. You get somebody that might want to sponsor your podcast. I’ve seen some limitations from sponsors where they don’t want you to talk about certain topics. Um, do you—do you recommend—I mean, if somebody was starting a podcast, they wanted to try to monetize a little bit, do you recommend trying to get sponsors, or—or do you find that limiting, or have you been down that road?
18:09 | Is Sponsorship Worth It for Podcasters?
16:41 Kevin: No. So we have been offered, and we—I’ve never taken a dollar, nor will I ever take a dollar for sponsorship. To your point, I want to—I don’t want anybody’s hand in my cookie jar.
16:52 Dean: Exactly.
16:52 Kevin: I want to—”Oh, let me run this episode.” No, I’m not running my episodes before in front of everybody. We’re going to do what we want. We’re going to talk about what we want. I think that often times, getting ads or getting sponsorships or affiliates hypothetically—for a lot of people, it ends up being the reason to stop pushing for actual monetization. It feels good to make a little bit of money, but it never ends up getting into the amount of money that people want.
So if we were to—if we were to run numbers, most people, if they’re going to pay you based on listens, they’re going to pay you anywhere between 25 to $50 per thousand downloads for your podcast. If you’re getting a 1,000 downloads a month, which isn’t terrible—I mean, that’s not a terrible number—you’re getting 50 bucks, right? Eh, it’s just—it’s not worth it. I don’t think so.
17:41 Rob: So—so when I was a guest—I was doing a lot of guest spots for us out there—I had multiple guests tell me, “I can’t have you on the show because you go against Google. You don’t believe Google’s, you know, number one all end all be all,” or, “My sponsor says that, you know, you can’t come on to our show.” We had some of our biggest competitors start going out and talking to hosts and getting us blocked.
18:04 Kevin: Interesting. Which I—I thought was an interesting kind of play. I’ve never heard—I mean, I’ve never experienced that luckily, but it doesn’t surprise me.
19:06 | Kevin’s Strategy: Monetizing Through Value, Not Ads
18:09 Kevin: I mean, it doesn’t surprise me, but I think what you guys are doing, the way you’re doing it, the podcast that I have worked with—so I have a client, she’s—and again, she’s built a name for herself, and she has awards that literally say she’s the best in the world at what she does. I did not do that for her. That was her. But she got clients her first week of launching the show. One—she literally goes on, she does a solo episode, and helps people solve their problems.
So if I’m going to do an episode, it’s going to be five ways about blank, I can help you solve the problem in these five ways. And then you get to the end, and you have a really powerful call to action, and you say, “Hey, if this episode resonated with you, but you feel like you need a little bit of a deeper dive, I actually have blank—book, course, coming up, free breakthrough call, whatever it is.”
I think the best way to monetize your podcast is to become a thought leader and solve problems, and—
19:06 Kevin: Then have a call to action where you can solve problems in a more specific, valuable way. I think, Dean, to answer your question fully, I think when people are dependent upon monetization through ads or sponsorships, they usually die long before they get the audience to make meaningful money.
So if we think about it, we’ve made—more sense. But I did—I talk about this in our—one of our programs. We made a million dollars in our business. If—and we had a million listens. If we had a million listens and we were getting paid $50 per thousand, we would have only made $50,000, right? Yeah. We—we made a million. That’s because we didn’t do what everybody else is doing. We didn’t rely upon ads. Now, could we have done both? Yeah, but I just—I’d rather run an ad for my company. I’d rather you guys run an ad for your company than somebody else’s. The ROI is just higher.
20:02 Rob: I—I—I definitely agree with that. So—so—you just said run your own ads. We try to keep it fairly neutral. We try not to talk about our products. Do you find that detrimental? I guess I—I guess, you know, it’s kind of—let’s just kind of use us as the poster child on this, you know, kind of thing. Is that—is that something you shouldn’t do?
20:27 | Should You Talk About Your Product on Your Podcast?
20:20 Kevin: I would—no, I think it’s—I think it’s worth doing. If we look at some of the big—biggest podcasts in the world, they have three to five minutes of ads at the beginning of their show. If you got—and a lot of times, they’re—they’re just random stuff that, this—just the people that lined up to give them money.
If you guys are really adding value and you’re really helping your audience solve problems, I think it is a privilege to be able to talk about how you can help them at a deeper level. So no, as long as it’s not spammy, as long as you’re not doing 10 minutes of, “Oh, come to this, come to this.” No, I think you add value. You add value, you add value, and then you can ask, “Hey, we have a Facebook group. If you’re looking for aligned people that might have answers to questions that you don’t know you have yet, cool. Join. Hey, we have an email list.” Whatever it is, yeah, I think it’s—it’s like that in any—in any business. But add value first. There’s a reason you don’t tip before the meal. You tip at the end. There’s—there’s a reason for that.
21:19 Rob: Well, and I mean, it’s—what we did is we took the approach—I was using in 2008, I used to go rent the library out, and I’d invite all these business owners to come into the library, and we’d talk about how to get them on Facebook. And that was a huge piece back in 2008. Facebook was relatively new, and we’d bring them all in there, and then I would—I would talk to them. I wasn’t allowed to sell them inside the library. That was the agreement. So but unless they asked. Well, somebody’s going to ask.
21:54 | Importance of Content Alignment and Podcast Purpose
21:48 Rob: It’s kind of like the screen that you’re—that we’re on right now. I mean, our simply befound.com logos or—our website is on here, what—one, two, three, four times. I mean, but it’s not 100% in your face, in my opinion. And the whole reason is because it might not be what you want. We might not be a good fit. We can’t always be, you know, the right solution for you, but hopefully, we brought you some value.
22:12 Kevin: Yeah. Well, and I think the other thing too is having—one of the hardest things for me is I’m—I’ll work with a podcaster who—when I start working with them, they say, “I don’t really care about making money.” Like, cool, awesome. Love that. And the way your podcast is set up—so as an example, I was working with a contractor who is a very, very successful contract—contractor, owns his own construction company. He had a podcast that was about inspiration. Awesome. Love it. You don’t want to make money, right? Nope, don’t care at all. Awesome. Because it’s not aligned.
It would be really hard to make money. Three weeks later, he says, “You know what? I’ve been thinking about that monetization thing we were talking about. I’d like to start making money with my podcast. I’m going to coach contractors.” I said, “Look, we have to rebrand the entire—
23:34 | Podcast Monetization Pitfalls for Beginners
22:57 Kevin: Podcast.” Right now, you’re depending on a contractor tuning in and saying, “I want some inspiration,” listening to all of your stuff, and then getting to the end and saying, “Yeah, let me reach out to this person.”
So one of the reasons, going back, Dean, to the previous question, one of the reasons it’s really hard for a lot of people to monetize is because they don’t have the right audience from the beginning. If that’s—if I’m going to start a podcast about podcasts, I have to know that the way I’m going to monetize is by working with podcasters. That’s—if we have a—we have a client who has a—a pet store, pet food, pet training. She knows a ton about cats and dogs. How is she going to monetize? Products and services, merchandise, and one-on-one consultations. But we have to know that going in because that dictates so much of the strategy.
23:51 Dean: Yep. I’m not sure. I think we may have lost Rob. I—I’m not sure if he’s there.
23:58 Kevin: Yeah. No, he left. He’s gone. Well, what happened the other day, he, uh, his, uh, his, uh, line for his internet connection got spliced by accident. I wonder if they aren’t working in the area again, and he didn’t get cut out.
24:03 Dean: So it might be a one-on-one for the—that’s okay, Dean. We’re—you and I are buds.
24:11 Dean: So, you know, so one of the other things that Rob and I do, we always recommend, you know, it—because not only is the podcast got all this great content, but you can actually take this and—and put it into a transcript, create blogs for your website.
25:13 | Using Podcasts to Generate Original Blog Content
25:13 Dean: And—do—do you recommend that to your clients as well too? Because this is all, you know, it—is—an AI generated. It’s you and I talking, and we don’t know where it’s going to go. It’s great original content, and I think that helps, uh, for your business as well if you’re—if you’re using it for other things, even if you’re a podcaster. It helps to promote your—your information about your podcast. You—do you go with that same philosophy as well?
25:41 Kevin: 100%. Yeah. I—there’s so many—again, I’m very—I—I enjoy and I am appreciative of AI. I think a lot of people overdo it a little bit, but I’m back.
25:54 Rob: Okay, we—we lost—we got—we got—I—I—sorry about that. I have no idea where I ended up going on that.
26:01 Dean: No, no worries. No worries. You still—you still have no audio.
26:07 Kevin: There you go. Yeah, you got—you got some visual now.
26:07 Rob: Okay. Sorry, Kevin. So—so—so the question I just posed—Kevin was about the content that we always talk about, the original content, by using the podcast. So you’re—you’re up to speed on what his response is?
26:19 Rob: Yep. I heard everything.
26:20 | Raw vs Polished Content – What Works Best?
26:20 Kevin: Okay. Okay. Yeah, I think it’s—I think utilizing AI as a trampoline as opposed to a crutch is always a good idea. Take your transcript, throw it in a chat GBT, “Hey, give me a keyword focused blog on this, 500 words.” Cool. That goes on the website.
Awesome. Rob, we talked a little bit about this in the green room. There’s so many apps that will cut up your long form video into short form content. Most of it sucks. It—just—it’s not great. It’s—I mean, Opia—Opius does—
25:50 Rob: Okay. Um, for being able to do it, but it’s not perfect. You have to work it to be able to get it there.
26:04 Rob: Yeah. I’ve been kind of a fan of, uh, taja.ai, which is t-a-j-a.ai. Have you used that one yet?
26:09 Kevin: I haven’t. We’ve—we used Opus for a while. It was just—from the perspective of using the captions, it was just easier to run it through there, let them do the captions. But now Adobe Premiere has some really good software that does—that does—
26:20 Kevin: Captions. I’m now of the mind, and I’ve been telling my clients this for a while. I think we’re moving past the optimize everything for workflow and—
26:33 Kevin: Repurpose into understanding that social media—now you have a minute, and you have to treat that like a one minute podcast. And you’re always going to be better sitting in front of the camera and recording a minute than trying to take a minute from an episode that already exists.
27:39 | Creating Social Clips With Strategy
26:51 Kevin: So I’m huge on repurposing—transcript, blog, quotes, all that stuff. If you want to level up, I think when you record your episode, depending on whether it’s solo or guest, it makes it different. But when you record your episode, you get to the end of the episode, you know how it went, you leave your camera on, and you say, “All right, cool. I’m going to do a hook, a story, and a lesson in the next minute.” And you do that, and that—
27:16 Kevin: Becomes the social media clip for your social media. We’re competing against people who are spending hours and hours and hours and lots of money researching how to hook people. And it’s really hard to do that in the middle of an episode. Find it, make it nice, without having to edit it. So yes, huge on repurpose, huge on AI. Just don’t overdo it because I think we’re going to overswing to AI. And then—
27:42 Kevin: I think it’s going to swing back to you have to have some skill, and you have to have some understanding of how to do things and what makes it work.
27:48 Rob: So I’m going to do a little—I’m—I’m going to throw a little bit of a twist into there.
27:56 Kevin: Please. So I was looking at, um—my EA end up being out yesterday. I was looking at video, and I just could not get my head to wrap around video at all to be able to get us ahead on schedule and all that different stuff. We’re bringing on a couple new people that are going to be helping with the video side and also the content side. And I was looking at, okay, how would this actually work? And I was looking at it, going, “Okay, you could almost, at the very end of the video, after you had your conversation, you could go through, you could do your overview, you could do your intro, and do it at the very end.”
29:12 | Building Hooks and Intros After the Conversation
28:24 Rob: You could still have your basic intro that was at the very beginning, like what we did on this one, but the very end of this video, we could actually record that overview of, you know, “We talked about this, this, this, and this, how to be able to take your podcast and grow it, how to be able to do it if it makes sense” inside of the end. Now, if it’s one of those episodes where you went absolutely all over, you skip it. You call it done because you might have been all over. But if it had a point that—
28:48 Rob: Allows you to be able to create that hook at the very beginning, then you could almost then go in and be able to do a couple shorts that would be, “Hey, we want to—w—have you come in, go through and look at our full video. The link’s going to be in the description. We talked about this. Here’s—here’s everybody in there.” Then you make those shorts off of that. That would then bring value to be able to get more traction to that main—
29:12 Rob: Video. Then it’ll actually increase your watch time as well, especially when you’re looking at the YouTube algorithm. Now, I was like, I—when I was looking at that, it’s literally on my whiteboard right here. When I was—so when I heard you say that, I’m like, “It’s almost identical to what I was looking at yesterday.” So I was like, it makes sense to cut it. And then you stay to the true—to your name of, you know, staying raw, uncut, and everything in there—
29:36 Rob: Because everybody wants to feel real connection. Now there’s going to be different shorts that are going to be ones that’ll be great for using OPS and good clips, but you can almost post those in the middle of the night for someone who’s just sitting there scrolling, and you might grab somebody’s attention then.
29:49 Rob: Yeah. But post your good quality content during the day that’s more, you know, what you want to take aim for because you might have two different strategies that are going on there because now you have—you’re making the algorithm, you know, see you during the night versus ver—versus the day. There might be a whole entire piece there, but there’s my ramblness of what’s on my whiteboard.
30:14 Kevin: I dig it. I—I think even the—the quality versus quantity conversation is great because what I see a lot of people do is they start a podcast, and they just—they just do opus clip, opus clip, opus clip, opus clip, opus clip. It’s like, guys, that’s not how you grow your podcast. This is a personal brand. Everything is personal. We’re doing personal brands.
30:53 | Thumbnail, Title, and Short Strategy for More Watch Time
30:31 Kevin: To your point, Rob, what I’ve started doing for our shows and—and I’ve been talking to clients about this: if you’re a solo podcaster, let’s really work on your speaking and your delivery. I want you to be able to do your own cold open. So what happens and works really well in terms of retention is you take 15 to 30—
30:53 Kevin: Seconds of me saying something that’s fire. You throw that at the very beginning of the episode before the the branded intro. It’s the first thing they hear. Branded intro into the episode. If you’re doing a solo episode, you train yourself to do that automatically.
31:04 Kevin: Yeah. So that’s what we’ve been doing lately is we’ll sit down, and we’ll say, “All right, what are we going to talk about today? We’re going to talk about, you know, the three ways to be more consistent. All right, what—how do I want to run it? All right, cool. This is what I’m going to do. The—the hard fact of this is if you’re not consistent, you’re just not going to win. And here’s the—the other subtle truth. Consistency is no longer a strategy. It is a necessity. Boom.” There’s my cold open. And then we can get right—
31:32 Kevin: Into the episode. But yeah, I think we’re—there—just has to be more intention around everything we’re doing because just having cool conversations with cool people, it just isn’t going to work like it used to. There’s too much strategy now for people.
31:45 Rob: There is. And I—I think you have to combine both worlds because I think there’s still a need for that. And it depends on your brand as well. It depends on what kind of guest you might have had on the podcast. I mean, when we go through and we edit stuff out, I mean, we literally take it, we have to throw it into Dscript because StreamYard, we have to take in each individual file. We bring it all into one file.
32:03 Rob: Um, this will get posted out as a raw piece from StreamYard, and then we have, you know, Dscript will give us—put all three of them together and then put it in Opius, put it over into each of the AIs that are out there, gives you that content. But now you got to make sure you do all your spots that make sense. You got to make sure you write a blog about it. You got to make sure you talk about on social media. You need to be promoting it, “Hey, you know, tomorrow, we’re going to have this guest on. Make sure you check it out. It releases at this time.” Going through—
32:43 | The Importance of Pre-Promotion for Podcast Launch
32:36 Rob: And doing your pre-promotion. So where I found that we were really kind of lacking when I looked at stuff yesterday is we’re lacking on that pre-promotion piece. We’re not doing enough lives. We’re not doing enough, you know, building up—
32:48 Rob: The hype behind everything. And when I was looking at a lot of different podcasters and a lot of YouTubers, a lot are missing that—that—that whole entire piece.
32:55 Kevin: Yeah. Because you got to bring some hype to it because either that or you have no value. It’s different. Now, if I record a video about how to get your business inside of voice search and how voice search registration works, you’re going to have people natively searching for that.
33:08 Kevin: Yeah, a big hour-long podcast, chances of somebody going through and watching that whole hour podcast?
33:15 Kevin: Yeah, maybe not. I also noticed when I was going through all the analytics and going through just every single piece of the video side is there’s also the opportunity, and I’d be really curious on your opinion on this, Kevin, is you could almost clip out five—
34:29 | Using Chapters to Generate Targeted Clips
33:38 Rob: Minutes, three minute videos, and then post those that are clips from that big podcast that would be more probably in alignment to what somebody would search for, on top of putting out the whole entire podcast. Have you done that on any podcasts, by any chance?
33:56 Kevin: I don’t do that, but I think that strategy is really good. What a lot of people will do is they’ll do the whole one, and then they’ll take—it’ll be like, “Kevin Palmieri on why you’ll never monetize your podcast.” Boom. And then you just do the clip of us talking about monetization, affiliates, and ads. So I think—I think it’s really—
34:15 Kevin: Good from a—a search perspective. I also think, to use your analogy of the tree, it becomes different branches that might actually—you can only title an episode one title, right?
34:26 Rob: Correct. Right. But if you have 25 clips, that’s 25 titles. So% you—
34:33 Kevin: Almost take the whole clip analogy, and you do it on a—b—bigger scale and full form video versus being just the shorts.
34:39 Rob: Yeah. For one, that’ll get your watch time in. So my—my whole entire thought process on that is it’s going to increase your watchtime hours, which is going to help you to monetize on—on YouTube, if that’s your goal. You’re so—you’re going to have—
34:52 Rob: That piece. You’re going to have more people that are going to be searching for it. That also gives you opportunities on your blogging site to tie your blogging and social media to it because now it’s a short piece. You’re getting straight to the potato. They don’t have to figure out what chapter that is in.
35:02 Kevin: Yep. So basically, just take all of your chapters that you do and create a video off of that. Now you got a ton of freaking content.
35:13 Rob: Yeah. Well, it’s like one of my favorite shows ever—and please don’t judge me for this—was King of Queens with Kevin James. One of my favorite—
35:19 Kevin: King of Queens. I love it. Huge—huge fan of that show. On YouTube, they have the best of Doug. They have the best of Carrie. They have the best of Arthur. All these are—are clips. They just have—
35:31 Kevin: Long clips. They do the same thing for Big Bang Theory. They should do it probably for every show because it’s—it’s gonna remind you. When I came across it on YouTube, I was like, “Ah, I haven’t watched the show in a minute. Let me go check it out.” They hooked me. They—they won. They did exactly what they want to do.
One thought on YouTube shorts. And again, great. Take it with a—a grain of sand and do your thing. I’m working—I—
36:01 | Shorts Strategy: Pros, Cons & Channel Separation
35:54 Kevin: Have some pretty high level mentors who are very, very big in YouTube. YouTube shorts are good for views. They’re good for watch time. They’re good for subscribers. What—this was a couple months ago. What the data was showing as of a couple months ago is those subscribers do not watch your long form content.
And the way the algorithm is with shorts right now is it’s recommending your video with some other potentially—
36:21 Kevin: Reckless videos. So some of my clients who are doing shorts, their videos are getting recommended with like sex videos, and that is throwing off their algorithm, and everything is getting a little wonky. So we—we’re still doing shorts, but I advise to my clients that if you’re going to do shorts, you should have a separate channel because it’s a—
36:41 Kevin: Potentially dangerous game until YouTube figures it out, which I’m sure they—I mean, they know more about this than I do, for sure.
36:46 Rob: Well, and there’s—there’s a huge play to that because a lot of these videos are being recommended by different things, and it all depends on what you’re putting in.
36:58 Rob: Yeah. Um, it’s kind of like I’ve done it two different ways. I’ve put tags in the videos before. I’ve done no tags. Which one gets better results? Well, the one with tags gets better results than the one without, nine times out of ten.
37:05 Rob: Yeah. Because you’re able to direct that over, and you can tell the algorithm, “This is what that video is about.” I—and I found when I do the tags inside of my shorts and the tags inside of the long video, I’m not being recommended against videos that would not have anything to do with my topic. And I’ve seen numbers increase.
37:23 Kevin: Good. Good. Makes sense. It makes sense. Which—which I think is huge. Have—have you dove into like how many of your new subscribers—
37:30 | Measuring What Actually Matters: Conversions
37:30 Kevin: Well, I mean, the data is the—the data goes so deep in YouTube, but I mean, as long as the data is showing what you want it to show, keep hammering.
37:43 Rob: Well, and at the end of the day, I mean, I’m looking—well, we’re looking at, um, the whole piece of are you converting.
37:49 Rob: Yeah. Because if they’re not becoming members of simplybefound.com, the numbers over there really have no matter what’s out there. And we utilize it inside of our chat with different members for, “Okay, go check out this video, go do this video, go do that video.” We do that all the time.
38:01 Rob: Yeah. But it’s one of those things to where if you’re not converting and you’re not getting sales from it, then it probably isn’t working. I really don’t care if I get three to five watches on a video. If I converted three to five people, sweet.
38:20 Kevin: Yeah. Yeah. Um, I mean, because that’s going to matter to me more than what anything is there. Like awesome. I—I couldn’t have went and walked doors that fast, uh, to go, you know, cold calls would have sucked more than doing that. So I mean, you have those different pieces to where, yes, you could dive into the analytics. Yes, you could look at the analytics and—
38:38 Rob: Overanalyze the living hell out of those. But at the end of the day, if you’re not making the sales off of it, it doesn’t really matter.
38:44 Kevin: Well, I think that’s a—that’s a great conversation just overall, is you have to figure out what is your most important intention. I—there’s three that I always ask people: mastery, impact—
38:54 | Mastery, Impact, or Profitability: What Drives You?
38:54 Kevin: Or profitability. Are you looking to get like really good at what you’re doing? Mastery. Impact. “I don’t care about the money. I just want to help as many people as possible.” Okay, cool. That’s something. And then profitability. “I need to make this profitable because I’m—I’m spending money to do it.”
One of the—this is a—a newer information I got recently. One of the metrics that a lot of highlevel—and this is like in the personal development coaching space, but—
39:20 Kevin: I think it would be—you could do this anywhere where you’re solving unique problem—is the number of email optins. So going back—right—so going back to our call to action, if you have a PDF, “Hey, we talked about how to get crystal clear on who your ideal clients are. Uh, download—
39:37 Kevin: The PDF below, enter the email,” and then boom, you’re off, at least you know it converted to—to something.
39:43 Rob: Well, and it depends on your podcast. And I think that is where it gets really hard inside of the podcast world. Sorry, I didn’t hit mute. [Music] Damn allergies.
39:58 Rob: Um, that’s how I disconnected it earlier. I hit mute and hit disconnected my mic, and then everything went blank. But, um, you know what—you did—
40:11 | How Podcast Goals Vary Across Creators
40:11 Rob: But I mean, it’s what—it’s one of those thing—it’s one of those things to where you have to go through and decide what it is because I think that’s really hard for the algorithms because you might have a podcast person, all they care about is how many views they’re getting. They need views to be able to sell their sponsorships. Y—you get another person who is looking to be able to sell more products. You get another person wants to sell memberships. This person over here wants to sell courses. This person just wants to be, you know, Mr. Beast and create—
40:40 Rob: These crazy videos that make all this money off of YouTube ads. It’s so—
40:45 Rob: Different for each of those. So it’s hard to be able to aim and get themselves 100% inside of where they need to be.
40:53 Kevin: Yeah, it’s a challenge. I think if you’re purely—this is what I would say to most—
41:04 | The Danger of Relying Solely on the Algorithm
40:58 Kevin: Podcasters. If you’re purely reliant upon the algorithm to help you win, you’re probably in trouble. If—if—if the algorithm has to go in a certain way at a certain time at a certain frequency for you to win, you’re not in full—
41:05 Kevin: Control. And again, that’s why if you want sponsors and ads, awesome. They dictate how much they pay you. That’s a dangerous game. They can decide, “You know what? Instead of—instead of 50 per thousand, we’re going to do 12. That’s—that seems good. It seems more sustainable for us.” It’s so—yeah. Anytime you’re not in—
41:28 Kevin: Control, it’s dangerous.
41:34 Rob: Well, and I mean, it—it—it’s going to differ to a small business over that’s a roofer that’s doing it. Their entire goal is from that, and they shouldn’t pay attention to the algorithm at all, right? They should—if it’s working on the website, get those views, and if they happen to take off—I was talking to an irrigation guy the other day. He used to do irrigation, uh, he was doing irrigation videos of how to do it and design it, and he was—loved the design side, and he owned this irrigation company. Well, he found—
42:00 | Monetization Differences Between Local Biz & Creators
42:01 Rob: He found there’s a whole entire niche of just doing the design work. So now he doesn’t even do the irrigation installations anymore. He just designs the systems.
42:13 Rob: Right. [Music] Everything’s in—in pollen and bloom out—
42:19 Kevin: Here, right?
42:19 Rob: Right. Everything is—oh, at least you got the mute button, Rob.
42:25 Dean: That’s a—you’re ahead of your time on that, my friend.
42:25 Rob: You know, if I didn’t have the mute button and everybody just watched me do this, people would rather listen to this one than watch. Oh, you start punching yourself in the face, and we got—worry about you a little bit there, buddy.
42:39 Kevin: Turn blue. If I start going Oompa Loompa, then we got a problem.
42:39 Rob: Gotcha. But no, I know that—like what Rob was saying about everything is uniquely different for every situation.
43:03 | How Often Should You Promote Your Podcast?
42:51 Dean: If you were just—say a rule of thumb, if you will, um, how many—how much should you promote your podcast? I mean, how many times should you put something out? Do you—would you guess to—to—to start—get some traction on that? Because I—I know you’re saying you don’t depend on the algorithms. Was there something that you should do? I mean, like, you post at nine o’clock every day on—on Facebook or whatever, and you do, you know—is that what you try to do, to stay consistent and on a schedule kind of?
43:21 Kevin: Yeah, I—I think for—for my perspective, it’s always—social media is reminder marketing for—
43:26 Kevin: Us at least, more than conversion. So I’m not necessarily expecting somebody to see my clip that doesn’t listen to a podcast and then go do it. It’s more a reminder of, “Oh, yeah, I remember I used to listen to them. I haven’t listened in a minute. Let me check in.”
But yeah, I think consistency with branding—I’m very big—
44:25 | Personal Branding Through Consistent Content
43:42 Kevin: On personal branding. So if you go on my social media, my social media is not massive, but I have a ton of really good conversations going on in my DMs because I post fitness content. I post family—
43:54 Kevin: Content. I post the pillars of what our personal brand is. And you’d be mind blown how there’s only certain people that message me when I post pictures of my cats. There’s only certain people that comment on my story when it’s me in the—
44:07 Kevin: Gym flexing. That, to me, is a representation that I would never get that level of engagement from those people if it was just podcast stuff all the time. So I’m someone who suggests to people, you don’t just promote the podcast by promoting the podcast. You promote it by the personal brand and by—
44:25 Kevin: Posting about you because at the end of the day, to Rob’s point earlier, there has to be some level of connection, right? We want to connect with the audience long before they ever tune into our stuff. So yeah—
44:37 Kevin: Consistently, we usually post seven days a week. We’ve been messing up because there’s been a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes, but ideally, we post seven times a week.
44:42 Rob: Awesome. It’s great. So I mean, I know—I know a lot of people freaked out when we said we’re going to do a podcast five days a week. Now I’m like, we’ll probably go seven days a week, and we post shorts every single day. I mean, yesterday, we missed—we got the podcasted yesterday. We didn’t do any shorts, but we didn’t miss—it—algorithm didn’t miss a beat, which I thought was kind of interesting.
45:00 Rob: Yeah. Uh, but I mean, it’s one of those things to where you have to be consistent of what time you post. In my opinion, the algorithm loves that. And it—it creates a schedule—board, not just for the algorithm, but it creates a schedule for you. And it gives you that due date of, “This is the time I do it,” because if you don’t tell yourself, “I’m going to do it,” you’ll—you’ll drift off. You’ll—
45:23 Rob: Totally forget about it. You won’t be consistent at all.
45:23 Dean: So you’re trying to create habits is what you’re trying to say, right?
45:35 | The Power of Scheduling and Design for Consistency
45:29 Kevin: Yeah. Well, there’s—there’s two—there’s two D’s when it comes to consistency: there’s discipline and design. Discipline is, “I need to do it, and I’m going to do it.” Design is, “I’m going to make it a little bit easier to do it.” So that—that’s so our—my studio is—
45:43 Kevin: Always set up. I have lights on the ceiling. I flip one switch, and everything turns on. The mic’s always set up. The mixer’s always here. I never have to break anything down or set it up. We would not have gotten to 2,000 episodes if I had to set this up every time. There’s no—there’s no way. So discipline—
45:59 Kevin: Catches us when design fails. And to Rob’s point—design it—I mean, there’s a ton of places you can—you can schedule your stuff in Meta. You can schedule your stuff on a bunch of planners. Like, there’s a lot of ways to get ahead now, which makes it easier.
46:10 Rob: For sure. It does. Now, Kevin, if anybody—I know you have a hard stop—if anybody wants to find you—
46:17 | Where to Find Kevin Palmieri Online
46:17 Rob: Find and look at all your companies and do everything, where would they find you at?
46:23 Kevin: I would say just go to nextleveluniverse.com. That is our website. That has everything we do. That’s—it’s—encapsulates us fairly well. And if there’s any questions that you have that I didn’t answer or I raised based on our conversation, my email is—
46:36 Kevin: kevin@nextleveluniverse.com. I’m happy to answer any question you have for free. I’m not going to tell you you got to pay me. Like, let’s—again, I want to add value. That’s my goal at the end of the day.
46:42 Rob: Awesome. Now, at the bottom of all your stuff, do you have, “Buy me a cup of coffee?” We were joking about that the other day.
46:48 Kevin: I—do I—do not. I do not. I’m all for it. If you want to do it, I’m all for it. Is for—
46:54 Kevin: Me, I got to figure out a way to buy myself a cup of coffee. That’s my focus.
47:07 | Final Thoughts and Wrap-Up
47:01 Dean: I was like, you know, sometimes when we’re putting out that much value at—stuff, we’ve joked about putting that at the bottom just to see how many people would do it.
47:07 Kevin: I think it’s—I mean, it’s worth trying. We’ve just never—we’re stubborn. We’re weird. We—for some reason, we like making things harder on ourselves. So I don’t—do the same thing.
47:19 Rob: Yeah. So I feel like that’s why we get along. I think it’s worth trying for people. It’s just I’ve seen almost no conversion in a—
47:26 Kevin: Meaningful way for most podcasters, unfortunately.
47:33 Rob: And I agree 100%. So I bet—we might—we may try—try it and see what happens.
47:39 Dean: Try it. Thank you so much for coming on today. I really appreciate it. We’d love to have you back in the future if you ever want to.
47:39 Kevin: 100%. Thanks, Kevin. Have a great—Thank you, Dean.
