Profitable Podcasting

by Stephen Woessner

  You want to have good storytelling inside your proposal. We call it “passion points” in the sponsor industry. I’ve sold sponsors because I didn’t just put in the proposal what’s called your “pretty bio.” The pretty bio is your education, and the awards you won, and your experience. All of that is nice but what you want is to be vulnerable; you need to make a human connection, because you’re not just pitching to a faceless cooperation. You are pitching to a person, a human being, and you want to show your humanity.

  In my story, I talk about how I was in the poverty trap. I talk about how I was in an abusive relationship. My story has helped me secure sponsors because you want them to see you as a real person. The emotional connection is so important. You want to put beautiful storytelling in there. If you don’t want to include your own story, put the story of someone you’ve helped through the work you do.

  Be sure to include some emotion. Business owners often make the mistake of thinking, “Oh, I’m going to impress them, and I’m going to put facts, and figures, and statistics in there.” But unfortunately, that is not going to help you rise above the competition. Be human.

  Q: Are there any other tools, any other resources you think business owners ought to study to make this process as efficient and effective as possible?

  Linda: My website is www.sponsorconcierge.com, and there are two free gifts. One is the “Number 1 Secret to Getting Corporate Sponsors.” And the second is that I do free sponsor strategy sessions with business owners so they can book a sponsor strategy session with me, and I will take a look at what they are currently doing, and together, we will develop a success strategy to get them sponsors.

  Q: Any final advice you want to share or anything you think we might have missed?

  Linda: I want business owners to know they can do this. The number one question I am asked is, “Why would a sponsor want to work with little ol’ me? I’m just getting started. I’m not a big company. I don’t have a track record. I don’t have a big following.” Please know you can do this. You have value. You have things a sponsor is going to be attracted to. You just need to package it in the right way.

  Here’s a quick story about how I got a sponsor. I live in Los Angeles, California, so when I first had the idea to do my initial event, I was driving around in my clunker car, and I’m of course stuck in a traffic jam. I look up and see a billboard for Bank of America and there’s a woman featured within the billboard design, so I think to myself, “Okay, they’re trying to get the women’s market.”

  Immediately, I start doing self-sabotaging and thinking, “Why the heck would they talk to me? I’m just working from my home from my kitchen table. I’m not a big company. What the heck am I going to offer Bank of America?”

  But my dream and mission to help people was so strong that I couldn’t get it out of my head. So I got the courage to make a call to Bank of America and finally got the person who could green-light the sponsorships. I finished my proposal, got everything done, and had an appointment at their office. Thank goodness there was a desk between him and me because my knees were knocking.

  Then he said to me, “Well, let’s see your proposal,” and I handed it to him. And he said, “Okay, well we’re going to go for this level of sponsorship,” and it was a five-figure sponsorship. I had to act like I did this all the time so I said, “Oh, great,” and I had to shake his hand, but my hand was so clammy I had to wipe it off!

  I got back in my car and did the happy dance right there in the parking lot! I drove home, and I waved to all the Bank of America branches on my way home.

  You never know what’s going to happen. It all starts with a thought. It starts with a dream. It starts with a vision. We’re taught to have these big dreams but we’re not taught how to finance the dreams, and dreams take money, and that’s where sponsors come in.

  You can do this! Hold your head up high. Know that you have quality and you bring value to your sponsors, and—you can fund your dreams.

  CHAPTER 17

  GETTING IT ALL DONE: RECRUIT ROCK STAR UNPAID INTERNS

  You will need a team of highly productive people working alongside you to help create and launch your profitable podcast. But this doesn’t mean you have to hire several full-time employees or virtual assistants. Instead, I recommend that you consider recruiting and hiring a team of A Players who are not paid members of your team, but unpaid interns. Yes, I did just recommend unpaid interns.

  At Predictive ROI, we have built an outstanding internship program that has provided twenty-four unpaid internships to students in their senior year of study at Duke University, Purdue University, The Ohio State University, University of Northern Iowa, University of Wisconsin–La Crosse, and other universities throughout the country.

  I decided to include this chapter on how to recruit rock star interns for a couple of reasons:

  Business owners tend not to have a process in place for recruiting rock star interns. They often recruit interns who are not motivated, who are looking to augment their résumés, and who did just the bare minimum during the semester. These are not the high performers you need on your team—or the type of interns you will recruit if you follow this recipe.

  Because of the less-than-stellar performance from past interns, business owners either abandon their internship programs, or they come to believe that it is unrealistic to recruit a team of unpaid interns. This is a myth. Two years ago, we recruited a team of six unpaid interns to work on a specific social media lead gen project. Katherine Bartlett on my team managed the day-to-day activity of each of the six interns. Katherine, at the time, was also an intern. She is now a member of my leadership team at Predictive ROI, where she oversees all of our agency’s content development.

  Our recipe for recruiting rock star interns is exceptional. I am going to share all of the ingredients so you can implement it into your business right away.

  But before I do, I want you to meet several rock stars from our Predictive ROI team who pull the levers to the day-to-day production behind Onward Nation.

  Let me first share more about Katherine. She is the wizard behind all of our episodes—how they sound and how they look on social media. Katherine has grown so much over the last several years that she is now our vice president of content marketing at Predictive ROI and now leads our team of content development experts. Any content produced for Predictive ROI clients is the result of Katherine and her team.

  We knew we had a high performer on our hands with Katherine because she is one of those people who raises her hand and says—“Um, I know that I am only required to do ten hours per week for this internship. But, could I do more?”

  Our response was, “Oh my. Yes, please!”

  When her internship was complete, we transitioned Katherine to what we call a “Super Intern” while she finished her final semester at the University of Northern Iowa. She received a small financial stipend while she focused on her remaining education. And when she graduated, she became a full-time member of our team. Katherine is a rock star.

  Then there is Louie Schuth. Louie is our rock star in charge of writing all our Show Notes, creating and sending email campaigns, writing blog posts, implementing our Twitter strategy, and posting our LinkedIn articles.

  We are thrilled to have Louie as a member of our team because he and Katherine are cut from the same “Can I do more?” cloth.

  We started Louie with a variety of writing projects and he quickly excelled. He then asked if he could allocate a portion of his time to WordPress and managing some of our websites. We said, “Um, yes please!”

  No surprise—Louie excelled there, too.

  He is the one who stays up late with me Tuesday nights before each solocast airs the next day to make sure the Show Notes and audio file are set correctly.

  An amazing writer and a graduate of the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse, Louie finished his internship and is now a full-time member of our team just like Katherine. We have big plans for Louie.

/>   Then there is Jessica Zickert, who, at the time of this writing, is finishing her final semester at the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse. Jessica is part of Katherine’s content marketing team and has been successfully mentored through our production process. Jessica is such a rock star that she has assumed the day-to-day editing of Onward Nation episodes from Katherine. She has followed Kat’s recipe flawlessly.

  Jessica’s level of proactivity is also off the charts. For example, when I make a mistake while recording an interview with a guest, I try to immediately loop back to Jessica to let her know so she can try to clean up my mistake in post-production editing. But, when I did that recently, she let me know that she had already found my mistake and corrected it. Bam! That’s proactive.

  Last but not least, I’d like to introduce you to Erik Jensen, our vice president of client services at Predictive ROI. Erik, who is also a member of both our leadership and ownership teams, oversees all of our operations.

  I met Erik while I was serving as a member of the academic staff at the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse. One day, the chair of our marketing department in the College of Business suggested to Erik that he should come see me regarding a business plan he and his business partner were developing for a competition at Duke University. We met, and I was blown away by Erik’s professionalism. Later that night, I said to my wife, “Wow, this guy is amazing. He and I are going to work together on something someday.”

  Several years later, Erik became our first intern at Predictive ROI. Later, he joined our team as full-time employee number three with the title of “Associate.” In less than a year, we promoted Erik to engagement manager, then to our leadership team, and then to vice president of client services.

  Erik is a rock star in the truest sense. He helped set the standard by which we evaluate and measure all interns. He invested a full-time schedule toward his internship even though it wasn’t required. That’s the type of heart you are looking for in your interns, too.

  Create a demanding internship program. Treat your unpaid interns exactly the way you treat your full-time members. Tell your candidates they are interviewing for the “Marine Corps of Internships,” and you will get a higher level of production and proactivity.

  Here’s our recipe.

  First, we accept only students in their senior year of school. While we have had positive experiences with juniors and graduates, too, we decided to recruit only seniors going forward because we found them to be the most motivated, eager to learn, and hungry to gain experience. After all, graduation is looming and so are their job searches.

  Ingredient #1

  Define your culture with your leadership team and employees and post a page on your website for candidates to study.

  On our culture page for Predictive ROI, we define with the following phrases (and more):

  We promise to provide our clients with the very best, most outstanding consulting and training services available.

  We are so committed to being outstanding that we deliver a minimum of 200 percent financial return on investment to clients. We take it further by guaranteeing each client’s ROI.

  And refund our fee if we do not deliver what we promise.

  We demand a standard of excellence of ourselves and are committed to delivering that standard to clients 100 percent of the time. No excuses or exceptions.

  We are a team. We work hard. We rise together—because as our clients succeed—we succeed.

  You can find our full culture description here: http://predictiveroi.com/culture/.

  Ingredient #2

  Write a position description that is in line with your culture and post it on your website.

  We clearly define who and what we’re looking for in our position descriptions. Here’s how we begin our description of what we do—and who exactly we are looking for:

  Predictive ROI is a growing content marketing and lead gen agency that works with an array of visionary businesses in many industries. We work with our clients to help them achieve explosive growth by reaching their digital goals. This includes increasing their ROI and enhancing their brand across many platforms/mediums. We are looking for candidates who embody our standard of excellence and our culture of teamwork, and who are enthusiastic about learning while delivering their best work. We offer the flexibility of working remotely, a robust on-boarding program, training through our Predictive ROI Institute, a team of like-minded high achievers, and opportunities for advancement.

  If you are a member of the Predictive team, or a client, you are family. We work together to achieve our goals; we care, and we go all in to get it done.

  You can find full position descriptions here: http://predictiveroi.com/digital-marketing-careers/.

  Ingredient #3

  Post testimonials/social proof on your website because “A Players” want to work with other “A Players”—or where other “A Players” have worked.

  “The team at Predictive ROI is incredible. They are so talented and passionate about this industry, and that really makes such a difference. I feel like I have learned much more through this internship than I ever expected. With every step of the way, I felt involved in the process and that my thoughts and ideas mattered. Through the help of some pretty great mentors, I was able to not only learn more about this industry, but was able to apply what I was learning first-hand.”—Whitney Puent

  “There’s one word that comes to mind when looking to describe the Predictive ROI internship: special. Predictive ROI gives you the opportunity to do great work that has an impact. But, more importantly, at Predictive ROI you work with the greatest team you could ever ask for, a team that will have your back and guide you so that you’re better prepared for the working world, and better prepared for life. If you’re willing to put in the hard work, don’t think twice about applying for an internship with Predictive ROI. You won’t regret it.”—Louie Schuth

  “Applying for an internship with Predictive ROI was the best decision I’ve made in a long time. Going into my final semester of college, I knew I wanted an internship that would allow me to hone and develop my professional skills by making impactful contributions within an organization. An internship with Predictive ROI gives you exactly that. At Predictive ROI, you are given the opportunity to work with an unbelievable team that will teach you the tools and skills needed to be successful in your career.”

  —Alex Krupski

  Ingredient #4

  Weed out B and C Players by sending a prequalifying email with challenging, thought-provoking questions to each candidate.

  We send the following email immediately after receiving someone’s application/résumé:

  [Candidate’s First Name], thank you for your interest in our internship!

  As the first step in our process, please review the following questions and email us back your thoughts for each.

  Your answers to each question will give our team an opportunity to: (1) understand how we can create the right internship experience for you and ensure that you learn everything you want to learn, (2) evaluate your written communication skills, and (3) assess your depth of interest in joining our team.

  1. Please introduce yourself (beyond what we can learn by reading your résumé) and discuss why our internship is of interest to you.

  2. Please describe the top three things you would like to learn during this internship. We encourage you to be as specific as possible.

  3. Tell us about your digital marketing experience up to this point (and if it is zero . . . that is okay).

  4. Things we cannot teach are work ethic, commitment to teammates, integrity, and excellence. Please share an example of when you consistently demonstrated excellence in your work.

  5. Please share an example of when you demonstrated integrity.

  6. What are the attributes or qualities you look for in teammates?

  7. How can we help support your growth and development during this internship?

  8. This is my direct emai
l address—please feel free to reply here.

  We look forward to talking with you.

  Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

  Sincerely Yours,

  Stephen Woessner

  Host of the Onward Nation podcast

  CEO of Predictive ROI

  Ingredient #5

  Conduct an initial call to assess cultural fit and subject matter expertise deep dive.

  If the answers provided back meet our standard of excellence, we schedule a subject matter expertise–focused phone call in order to assess:

  Cultural fit

  Depth of technical/content marketing knowledge

  The candidate’s current knowledge is not a deal breaker because we train our interns—but it is good to have a baseline. I also make a decision—along with the candidate—on whether or not there is a good enough fit to move on to Ingredient #6.

  Ingredient #6

  Conduct a team interview with the candidate.

  We then schedule and conduct team interviews with candidates. Katherine, Erik, Alex Krupski (also a former intern who is now our full-time search engine optimization and systems specialist), and I conduct each interview. Our aim during this interview is to answer any questions from the candidate about Predictive ROI, the internship, and where the company is headed. We ask a lot of questions about teamwork, proactivity, independent working, and critical thinking. It’s important to note that I have one vote of four during the debrief sessions following each interview. Making decisions as a team is part of our culture. So is giving Katherine, Erik, and Alex the same decision-making authority as me during the process. I am a firm believer that they should select their new teammates.

  Ingredient #7