Struggling to grow your business? If you've been considering starting a podcast, now's the time to do it! When you host a podcast AND a summit, these two platforms build on each other over and over again, giving you the opportunity to grow your audience AND your business with each new iteration.

If you want to learn more about how to start a podcast and how a podcast can work together with a summit, join me and Danny Ozment from Emerald City Productions (and a speaker on Sell With a Summit: Podcaster Edition!) on March 21st at 9 am Pacific/noon Eastern. We'll be sharing our biggest tips for summit hosts who are considering starting a podcast and we have time set aside for Q&A too! I'd love to see you there, so RSVP to save your seat at http://share.virtualsummitsearch.com/podcastSummitWebinar

Mentioned in this episode:

Evergreen Summit Audio Training

If you're ready to host a summit or have already hosted one and want to get more out of the months of work you put into your summit, jump over to evergreensummits.com. I put together a free audio training that you can take on the go in your regular podcast player!

Evergreen Summit Audio Training

Jenn: 00:00:00

Alright, in this episode, I've pulled out some of the juiciest

Jenn: 00:00:04

snippets from Danny Ozment's session at Sell With a Summit: Podcaster

Jenn: 00:00:08

Edition, where he's talking about how podcasts build successful summits.

Jenn: 00:00:12

So this is going to help illustrate some of the synergies between some

Jenn: 00:00:16

summits and podcasts and how they can work together to grow your business,

Jenn: 00:00:20

so let's go ahead and jump on in!

Jenn: 00:00:21

And I'll pop in here and there too, to kind of go a little bit more

Jenn: 00:00:24

in-depth than some of this stuff.

Danny Ozment: 00:00:26

We're going to talk about why summits are awesome

Danny Ozment: 00:00:29

for an audience that trusts you when they go into the summit.

Danny Ozment: 00:00:33

And here's some secrets that you may or may not hear from other people.

Danny Ozment: 00:00:37

First of all, summits are more effective at creating revenue.

Danny Ozment: 00:00:41

When you build a relationship and establish a bond of trust with your

Danny Ozment: 00:00:44

attendees before the actual summit starts - and podcasts happen to be the

Danny Ozment: 00:00:49

best form of content for building the level of trust within your community

Danny Ozment: 00:00:54

- that leads to successful monetization.

Now here's one of my guiding principles:

: 00:00:57

rather than thinking of podcasts as

Now here's one of my guiding principles:

: 00:01:04

content marketing, I really think of them as referral marketing on a grand scale.

Now here's one of my guiding principles:

: 00:01:09

And if you ask most business owners, they will say that most of their

Now here's one of my guiding principles:

: 00:01:14

business comes from referrals.

Now here's one of my guiding principles:

: 00:01:15

It comes from other people who have used your services, telling other

Now here's one of my guiding principles:

: 00:01:19

people about you and to go to you.

Now here's one of my guiding principles:

: 00:01:22

So podcast hosts...

Now here's one of my guiding principles:

: 00:01:24

in a way, because you're creating a level of trust with your listener,

Now here's one of my guiding principles:

: 00:01:26

because you're creating friendships with your listeners, even if they are

Now here's one of my guiding principles:

: 00:01:30

one way, you are essentially referring yourself to your listeners and they

Now here's one of my guiding principles:

: 00:01:36

will come back to you as if a friend referred them to you, so they are

Now here's one of my guiding principles:

: 00:01:42

referral marketing on a grand scale.

Now here's one of my guiding principles:

: 00:01:45

First of all, they're high value-add for your community at low cost of good will.

Now here's one of my guiding principles:

: 00:01:50

You know, people trust you, they don't want you to just

Now here's one of my guiding principles:

: 00:01:52

sell and sell and sell to them.

Now here's one of my guiding principles:

: 00:01:53

So this is a lot of curated info for not a lot of cost,

Now here's one of my guiding principles:

: 00:01:57

which is really nice for them.

Now here's one of my guiding principles:

: 00:02:00

They maintain that bond and trust because it's not a salesy webinar.

Now here's one of my guiding principles:

: 00:02:03

It's not another funnel.

Now here's one of my guiding principles:

: 00:02:05

It's not you selling another course or asking them to join another mastermind.

Now here's one of my guiding principles:

: 00:02:08

It's something really of substance that doesn't require a lot of buy-in from them.

Jenn: 00:02:14

Okay, so I love this point that Danny makes here because summits really

Jenn: 00:02:18

give you a way to sell without selling.

Jenn: 00:02:21

It's because of the community builds the excitement and it builds trust generally,

Jenn: 00:02:25

for both trust in you, trust in the speakers, trust in the other attendees.

Jenn: 00:02:29

So if you position your summit right, it really can build into your podcast, and

Jenn: 00:02:33

your podcast, if you do it right, can build into your summit, so they can just

Jenn: 00:02:36

keep building on each other as they grow.

Danny Ozment: 00:02:40

It grows your email list in general - a virtual summit does - because

Danny Ozment: 00:02:43

you're bringing together a group of experts who are usually working together

Danny Ozment: 00:02:47

to get an audience and then your email list grows from those registrations.

Danny Ozment: 00:02:52

It's also a big marketing rock because you're getting all these people together.

Danny Ozment: 00:02:57

There's buzz that's created around it, and your email list

Danny Ozment: 00:03:01

will grow simply from that.

Jenn: 00:03:03

This email list growth is a big part of why so many people run summits.

Jenn: 00:03:06

And if you've run a summit, it may be a big part of why you ran a summit!

Jenn: 00:03:10

But the bringing together of a group of experts is something that

Jenn: 00:03:13

I really want to highlight here, because that is a big part of this.

Jenn: 00:03:16

This isn't just for the email list growth, but this is for your business growth.

Jenn: 00:03:19

Having a really solid network of people around you can be huge when it comes

Jenn: 00:03:24

to your business and your podcast growth, whether you're just launching

Jenn: 00:03:27

a podcast or you have been running one and you're trying to grow it.

Danny Ozment: 00:03:31

You can also monetize them.

Danny Ozment: 00:03:33

So whether it's selling the tickets, the registrations upgrades, bonuses,

Danny Ozment: 00:03:37

products that grow out of the summit - it's a way for you to make money.

Jenn: 00:03:42

And this part can be huge!

Jenn: 00:03:43

If you are a podcaster or you're thinking about podcasting, monetizing your podcast

Jenn: 00:03:48

is one of the hardest things to do.

Jenn: 00:03:51

But when you use a summit to monetize the podcast, it can really change a

Jenn: 00:03:55

lot of things about how you run your business and how you run your podcast.

Jenn: 00:04:00

So if you're thinking about starting a podcast, a summit is a great way to

Jenn: 00:04:04

do that and then to go and continue monetizing it in the long run.

Danny Ozment: 00:04:09

And then finally, it's also a way for you to repurpose content.

Danny Ozment: 00:04:13

Especially if you're a podcaster, you think of it this way: if you curate

Danny Ozment: 00:04:17

maybe a few of your video interviews from your podcast together and then

Danny Ozment: 00:04:21

record a few more, that can easily be packaged as a summit that people will

Danny Ozment: 00:04:27

buy simply because they don't have to go searching for that information;

Danny Ozment: 00:04:31

it's brought together for them.

Danny Ozment: 00:04:33

Ease of use.

Jenn: 00:04:35

This is possibly one of my favorite things about summits because

let's face it: 00:04:38

you're listening to me repurpose content right now!

let's face it: 00:04:41

I took Danny's presentation from Sell With a Summit: Podcaster Edition, and

let's face it: 00:04:45

you're listening to parts of it and I've turned it into new types of content.

let's face it: 00:04:49

So if you're thinking about how to really maximize your efforts, putting

let's face it: 00:04:55

together a podcast and a summit is a really, really great way to do that.

let's face it: 00:04:59

It means that you can take the audio from the summit, put it onto your

let's face it: 00:05:03

podcasts - like, take clips of it...

let's face it: 00:05:04

I wouldn't recommend doing the entire thing, but you could, I guess - so

let's face it: 00:05:08

take clips of the episodes or the sessions, make them into episodes

let's face it: 00:05:12

and make audiograms out of them.

let's face it: 00:05:14

Take clips of the videos from their presentations and turn those

let's face it: 00:05:18

into social media and just...

let's face it: 00:05:20

there's so many things that you can do with it.

let's face it: 00:05:22

If podcasting is something you've thought about, but you don't think you'll have

let's face it: 00:05:25

the time, this is a great way to do it, when you pair it with a summit.

Danny Ozment: 00:05:30

Now this is what I want you to take away from this

presentation: 00:05:34

podcasts are the most powerful tool for building relationships

presentation: 00:05:39

and creating successful summits.

presentation: 00:05:43

Podcast listeners are a very desirable demographic, but here's some

presentation: 00:05:46

stats that really stick out to me.

presentation: 00:05:49

There's so many people listening to podcasts now - over 50% of

presentation: 00:05:52

Americans are listening to a podcast.

presentation: 00:05:54

You've got 40% of 35-54 year olds, adults with disposable income.

presentation: 00:06:00

You've got almost half of 12-34 year olds listening to podcasts, so if those are

presentation: 00:06:06

your audience, you should look at them.

presentation: 00:06:08

They have household income, they're educated.

presentation: 00:06:11

They're full-time employed.

And here's the huge one: 00:06:14

93% of podcast listeners listen to more

And here's the huge one: 00:06:19

than half or all of each episode.

And here's the huge one: 00:06:22

That means if you did a 30-minute episode each week, you're guaranteed

And here's the huge one: 00:06:26

to have almost all your listeners listening to 15 minutes, 20 minutes.

And here's the huge one: 00:06:30

Compare that to the amount of time that people spend watching a

And here's the huge one: 00:06:33

YouTube video or reading a blog and you'll see how significant that is.

And here's the huge one: 00:06:38

Here's the significance for you from a blogger.

And here's the huge one: 00:06:41

This is one of my clients, Ernie the Attorney.

And here's the huge one: 00:06:43

Ernie was one of the first law bloggers way back, started in 2004, 2005.

And here's the huge one: 00:06:49

Former lawyer, wanted to help other lawyers go paperless, automate,

And here's the huge one: 00:06:54

use systems to be able to leave large firms and start their

And here's the huge one: 00:06:57

own practices, their own firms.

And here's the huge one: 00:07:01

And Ernie over 10-15 years now has built a very successful business

And here's the huge one: 00:07:06

- online business - from his blog.

And here's the huge one: 00:07:09

Now, a couple of years ago, he started his podcast cause we had met at a

And here's the huge one: 00:07:13

conference and we'd been talking about it.

And here's the huge one: 00:07:15

He started his podcast and I will tell you, he's told me multiple times

And here's the huge one: 00:07:18

now within the first three to four months of doing his podcast, he said

And here's the huge one: 00:07:22

to me, "Danny, if I had to do this all over again, I would have started

And here's the huge one: 00:07:27

my business with a podcast because the engagement I've seen in just

And here's the huge one: 00:07:31

these few months has been higher than anything I've seen from my blog ever."

And here's the huge one: 00:07:37

Here's an example of that from Mike that I mentioned earlier.

And here's the huge one: 00:07:40

This is his episode 41 all the way back in 2015, where he shared some business

And here's the huge one: 00:07:46

templates that help him out - a sales call script, onboarding questionnaire, things

And here's the huge one: 00:07:51

like that - and he sold them for $40, $50.

And here's the huge one: 00:07:55

Well, he still sees three to five purchases a month.

And here's the huge one: 00:07:58

It's almost six years later.

And here's the huge one: 00:08:00

That's his electric bill covered every month from some seed he

And here's the huge one: 00:08:03

planted almost six years ago.

JennSo there, you have it:: 00:08:07

some of the top reasons that you really want to start

JennSo there, you have it:: 00:08:11

a podcast if you are hosting a summit or you've hosted a summit in the past.

JennSo there, you have it:: 00:08:15

Podcasting is going to help you grow your business in so many ways.

JennSo there, you have it:: 00:08:18

It can also honestly save you time if you repurpose your content.

JennSo there, you have it:: 00:08:22

So if you are considering starting a podcast and you're a summit

JennSo there, you have it:: 00:08:26

host, it really might be the perfect combination for you.