Your podcast doesn’t need to be perfect to be profitable, but it does need clarity and intention.

This reflective wrap-up explores how podcast finances, visibility, and aligned growth are deeply connected. Through real examples and practical insight, this conversation reframes downloads, stats, and monetization in a grounded, supportive way.

When awareness replaces avoidance, your podcast becomes an asset that supports both your energy and your business.

Connect with Stephanie Smith, New Light Financial Solutions:

https://newlightfs.com/drivers/

Lisa's We're All Psychic Podcast: https://pod.link/1473829537

Join my Newsletter: https://kpcreativemedia.com/podnews

Mentioned in this episode:

Creative Permission Slip: https://pod.link/1845331984

Hello there, beautiful listeners.

It is Kim Parkinson with podcasting for your spiritual business.

And this is the last episode of January, so we are going to do a little wrap up of what we talked about.

And this month we really tried to focus a little bit more on the financial health of your podcast.

Over the last couple of episodes, we've talked about money from two very different angles.

One of them from the lens of Stephanie Smith, a cfo, and the other one that has lived an experience of a long time podcaster and is looking to monetize it in some way and actually does have a sponsor for it already.

And what I realized is that this is really the same conversation, right?

It's all wrapped up in one because the financial health of your podcast is really tied to your business very closely, right?

You are going to be spending something on your podcast, whether that is energetically.

And we talked about how to kind of move that needle as well in episode 43 about financial clarity and podcast growth.

And then we also talked about how to keep those books, how to make that needle move in your business a little bit there.

And that was with Stephanie Smith, episode 4:44, Where We Are understanding your cash flow and your financial leadership, right?

This, these are important things to note.

And of course we talked to Lisa from the We're All Psychics podcast about how you can monetize your show and how maybe that isn't always a clear cut decision on things to do.

There's other pieces out there and sometimes they're not as easy as one may want them to be.

So this is kind of a little bit of a wrap up about this because I really want to stress that you need visibility for sure and you don't need perfection.

You really don't need a sponsor as long as you're having people come in through your podcast or come into your business.

And as long as you are talking about your podcast in your newsletters or on your social media or maybe just in your everyday life, if you are sharing those and maybe sharing individual episodes that really resonated with that person, then that is going to bring the leads in.

Now, one of the things that I like to do when I've had a guest on is I like to do a little bit of an integration where I talk about that person's free offering.

And in this case, Stephanie did send us a free offering.

And you can find that again in her episode, episode 44.

And her offer is the 16 parts of your business that drive revenue, profit and cash flow.

And if you haven't picked this up.

I'm gonna drop it in the show notes again because I've been really looking over these and I'm super impressed.

Now, not all of them, not all of these 16 are going to be something that works in my business for sure.

But the very first one, the very first one that she leads with, driver number leads, how many of us are looking for those?

And that is what your podcast should be bringing in.

You should be getting leads from your podcast.

You should be moving the needle by showcasing your expertise, by showcasing your knowledge, by showcasing the things that you know with your spoken voice, with your voice, with, with knowing and sharing that knowledge and that wisdom.

And then she goes on, there's many, there's obviously 16 drivers.

Here I am, I'm going to tell you, I absolutely loved this and I've looked at it several times.

If you have not picked it up, please do pick it up again.

There are some pieces that may or may not fall into your category, or it may not fall into your category yet.

You know, for instance, when I spoke to Stephanie, the driver number eight for payroll was actually not on my list.

I did have a team before and I had just kind of gone into a one woman, one woman show.

And within the last week or so, I hired one of them back.

So driver number eight is back in my sphere again.

So you just never know when you might need some additional pieces of this amazing freebie.

Just, it really is, it really is such a great, great reflection of some of the things that you should be looking at and some of the things that you really need to pay attention to in your business.

And then of course, if you are looking for more help, she obviously does offer that, and there is a, there's a little link there for a call at the end of that as well.

But here's the thing that you are wanting to always make sure that you're looking at.

You want to look at your podcast stats on a monthly basis.

Now we are going over podcast stats in my 28 day podcast growth activation series this month.

And this is such an important thing because if you do not know where you've come from, you can't see how far you've gone, right?

So you really need to be able to see those numbers.

Like starting off, a lot of times people think, I just started a podcast and you know what?

I've only gotten 50 downloads.

What is going on?

But it doesn't matter how many downloads you've gotten.

If you're getting people into your newsletter or into your world, you could have 50 downloads and you've got five people that walked into your program.

That's still a win.

Right?

You would not consider that to be something that would be a failure.

You would, you would say, you know what, that was great.

That's, that's 10%.

That's 10% of the people just walked into my world based on that one episode.

So there are different factors, but you wouldn't know this if you didn't look at the stats, if you didn't ask them when they do book a call with you, where'd you come from?

Where you know, how did you find me?

And, and then maybe on your little recon sheet, on your lead sheet, you have a little box that says from the podcast and you can click that off.

And that way when you run your reports or you take a look at where people come from, if you're using just a spreadsheet or something like that, you can say, you know what, this is working because I got this lead and this lead and this lead from the podcast.

And now, now that you've gotten these leads, hopefully, if you, if you're looking at that, looking at that freebie, hopefully they are retention clients and you are making them turn into even more revenue because they're staying with you longer.

It's easier to, easier to sell an offer to a client that already knows you, loves you, and likes you than it is to a brand new person.

Right.

It just, it just is so always something to keep in mind when you're doing that.

And then, you know, from, from Lisa's episode, I just wanted to kind of touch upon the fact that, you know, she's got a podcast with years of consistency, and here she is, she's kind of struggling a little bit with trying to make some money off of it, but she doesn't really have a great avenue for people to get into her world now.

She's doing what she loves to do.

She said she loves doing the podcast the way it is.

She has a sponsor and she really wasn't willing to kind of move into a different sponsor without, you know, releasing the old sponsor.

But with not having a way for leads to get into a newsletter or, or without having a leads get into a way of, like, reaching out to her other than through her sponsor.

She doesn't have any quantifiable way of knowing how well the podcast is doing to bring her more money to bring her in.

And she's not advertising that.

Right.

So she's not saying anything about, you know, if you want to find out more information about me, you know, you can reach out to me here or she's, she's not doing that.

And so this is a big factor when you're looking at trying to make sure that your podcast is monetarily giving you the leads that you want for your business.

It's a huge difference from somebody that, like myself.

I'm mentioning that I have podcast growth audits.

I'm mentioning my 28 day activation.

I'm mentioning that I do podcast guest guesting.

Yes, podcast guesting.

I mentioned that I do podcast growth sessions and I'm a podcast growth coach and I have all these other things and I put my newsletter link in every single episode.

So you can always go and join.

Now if you don't have that, you need to direct your listeners to someplace where they can stay in your world.

So whether or not that is to your Patreon, or whether or not that is to your social media, you want them to do something when they get to that next step, whether or not that is give you their email address, follow you, subscribe to your Patreon, whatever that next step is, that's really what you are looking for.

You're looking to convert them from listener to the next step so that they can go on to be clients.

They can go on to be leads for your business.

Does it happen where you have people that listen to the podcast and then immediately jump into being a client?

Yes, it has happened to me.

It has happened to a couple of my clients as well.

And it's an easy, it can be an easy jump, especially if they've binged your episodes and they love you.

They can hear your authenticity, they can hear your, you know, your excitement, your, you know, vivaciousness, all of that.

They may say, this is the person I want to, I want to work with and absolutely, I'm going to go talk to her.

And they'll just make that, that nice, clear jump from one to the other.

So there are different ways to monetize this.

There are different ways to keep within this sphere of making sure that your podcast is not a financial drain and not a financial drainage burden and not an energetic burden or energetic drain.

You know, for again, for instance, just mention an old episode.

Send people back to that episode over and over again.

You already put all of your love and energy into that episode.

Now start sending people to that episode.

And if you are seeing that an episode doesn't get the love that it needs and you know that it's a great episode, why not Change the title of it just a little bit.

Just change it.

Just tweak the name just a little bit.

You're not going to lose people and realistically it's just going to be found by more people.

So I always, I always.

That's one tip I love to offer to people all the time because it's easy.

It's an easy, easy fix.

It's just, you know what, that episode, because I've done my stats, that episode is only growing by, you know, 1%.

And I really want it to grow more than that because I want it to reach more people, because the more people I reach, the more leads I'm going to get.

It's an ever growing circle podcast episode in the center as the nucleus.

Then they.

More people listen to it.

Those people are now in your world.

They get into your newsletter, they get into your social media, and on and on and on it grows.

So in order for them to go from listening to being the next step, you need to invite them to that next step and then once they're there at that next step, you need to nurture them there.

So, and you can, you can certainly nurture them by sending them back to the podcast.

That's absolutely a great way to do it.

Now, sometimes you'll notice that people might have questions if they send you questions, just like I did a couple of weeks ago, I did an episode.

It is episode 42, your podcast growth questions answered.

And if I get a lot of questions like that, I just do a little episode because it makes it so much easier.

So energetically, I'm not individualizing it, sending it out to the world and then I'm answering it for everyone.

So it's an energetic exchange here.

Now, financially, again, there's a couple of things here.

If you have a podcast, there's going to be some sort of financial drain from your business to have that podcast, whether or not that is hosting platform, which I highly recommend.

I highly recommend that you pay for a hosting platform if you are editing on your own.

You can do this for free using Audacity.

Absolutely.

You can absolutely do this for free using Audacity.

You can do this with a paid program.

I use Descript.

I mean, I actually, I use Audacity too, but I use Descript for the most part.

And I actually am just releasing this week a Descript course, a course on how to use Descript.

So if you are interested in that, please go check out the show notes because I was asked to do a little video about it.

I've been doing it multiple times.

Six years.

So I'm pretty well versed in it.

And I.

And I do like the program, but I pay for a descript.

But you don't have to.

You could go back to Audacity and get that for free.

That would be your editing software and editing.

You don't even have to do heavy editing.

It could just be light, what I consider light editing.

So you could do that and then that's really all you need to do.

That really is all you need.

You could use a transcription service if you want.

Now you could get Otter Think has a couple of free options if you needed to do that.

I do use something called Cast Magic.

You'll find that it's just an amazing program that I like to use and I use it for my coaching calls and everything too.

But I paid for it way back when when it was on Appsumo, so I don't pay for it any longer.

So I understand that it could be a financial burden to continue with that particular program.

So I don't often recommend it.

If people are telling me that they need something that's not quite so, so expensive while they're getting started, until they're getting those regular leads into their programs, into their funnels.

And then realistically, the other thing that I really need you to have is a spreadsheet that has the names of the people on it that you find are coming from your podcast.

And I need you to also use that spreadsheet to use and find the stats for each one of your episodes.

So you know that that episode is growing and you know that episode is reaching more and more people every week, every month, every quarter, every year.

Because when you see that grow, and you know the growth of that, you're then going to be able to make tiny little tweaks in order for your episodes to really call in people into your programs.

And without that information, you're kind of just flying it blind, right?

You maybe are getting the leads, but then you can't turn them over to paying customers.

Or maybe you're just not getting the leads because something else is not right.

Maybe your links are broken.

Check that too.

It could be a lot of different choices there, a lot of different reasons there.

I just wanted to kind of give like a little bit of a reflection over the last couple of weeks, what we've talked about.

This is a real.

In my opinion, I feel like finances are a real sticky subject.

People want to have a really good understanding of them, but people don't want to look at them.

Same with stats.

People want to have a really good understanding of what the stats are, where they're going, how they're doing, but they don't really want to record them, they don't want to take care of them.

And so that ends up being really.

It makes it really difficult to know where you have been and how you're growing.

So I do recommend that if you don't have.

If you are not collecting your stats right now, perhaps you just hire a VA for an hour a month to do that, because realistically, that's really all they're going to need.

They're not even going to need an hour once they've started it.

It's going to take them probably 10, 15 minutes.

And then when you do that, um, you can see.

You can see what's growing, what's not growing.

Maybe, maybe she does spend the hour, or they do spend the hour because they tell you what the.

The worst episodes were for the quarter or what the best episodes were for the quarter.

And you can reflect on why those happened.

And.

And then you can make sure that your podcast is being fiscally responsible for you and your business because that's what really, really matters, to move that needle.

We all want our podcast to be making us money.

And if you're not tracking how it does that, how it pulls that in, you're always going to say to me, my podcast doesn't make any money.

I need sponsors.

And you know what?

Maybe.

Maybe it really doesn't.

Maybe it is pulling people in.

You just don't realize it because you didn't.

You didn't know or you're not tracking it.

All right, if this monster had something for you, some curiosity, some disposal discomfort, some clarity, I want you to know you're not behind.

You're.

You're just becoming more aware.

And that awareness is where aligned growth begins.

So until next time, where your voice flows, your business grows, and I can't wait to see you next week.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Podcasting for Spiritual Women.

If you would like more strategy and tips and some tricks on how to make your podcast better, I recommend that you join my newsletter list.

You can find that@kpcreativemedia.com newsletter until next time.