006: Podcasting for Profit: Strategic Steps to Revenue Growth

Week 5 of Blueprint to Breakthrough is HERE! In this session of Money Maker Monday, Sarah Beth Herman, shares strategies for leveraging podcasts and leadership to drive revenue growth. The episode includes an announcement of a special upcoming session with Amy Bartko, CEO of Chatterbox PR and Marketing, who will cover effective branding and PR tactics. The main content is split into two parts: podcasting and leadership. For podcasting, Sarah discusses her personal experiences and outlines strategies such as generating leads, securing sponsorships, using affiliate marketing, creating paid memberships, and incorporating direct offers. For leadership, the emphasis is on building brand visibility, establishing accountability systems, and delegating tasks for scalable growth. The episode encourages listeners to take immediate action and offers continuous support through the Blueprint to Breakthrough® program.

This podcast episode is exclusively for members and accountability partners of Blueprint to Breakthrough®. All content provided is for educational and motivational purposes only. Results may vary based on individual effort and application.

For more information and resources, visit www.sarahbethherman.com.

If you have any questions or need support, reach out through the cohort connection channel in Microsoft Teams. Let’s keep growing together!

Chapters

• 1:11 Special Guest Announcement: Amy Bartko
• 4:58 Why Podcasting is a Game-Changer in 2025
• 6:09 Five Ways to Monetize Your Podcast
• 14:26 Leadership & Scaling for Financial Growth
• 15:28 Three Leadership Action Steps for This Week

Transcript

  📍  Welcome to another Money Maker Monday, where we don't just talk about making money, we take action, we implement strategies, and we build momentum towards success. If you're here, it means you are ready to step into your power, create opportunities, and take control of your growth. Before we get into today's session, I want to highlight something awesome happening this week.

We are bringing in someone incredible, Amy Barkow, CEO of Chatterbox PR and Marketing. Amy is an expert in branding, PR, and getting your name out there. She has built brands that have been featured on Good Morning America, Parents Magazine, and countless other top tier outlets. So mark your calendars, Tuesday at 7pm Mountain Standard Time, Amy will be teaching for 45 minutes, followed by a 15 minute Q& A and a 30 minute round table discussion where we are going to talk about our weekly wins and goals.

This will be a powerful 90 minute live session designed to help you elevate your brand and get visible in a way that makes you some money. So if you've ever wondered how to get featured how pr really works or how to build credibility that leads to more sales This session is going to be for you. Amy is giving us the inside scoop So come prepared to take notes and leave feeling inspired about where to take your brand next You can follow amy on instagram at amy bartco.

She's also  here at blueprint to breakthrough So i'm sure you guys have chatted and connected with her already. Now. Let's get into today's money maker monday Where we're talking about two key topics, podcasting and leadership for revenue growth. You don't have to wait for Tuesday's session to start taking action today.

We're setting you up for success. And by the end of this episode, you'll have tangible steps to implement immediately. I'm breaking this episode into two separate parts. One will be all about podcasting. The second all about leadership. I'm going to start with what you didn't know about podcasting in 2025. 

Podcasting is one of the most underutilized and most powerful tools for building authority, credibility, and revenue. Yes, revenue. If you're not podcasting yet, you are missing out on a massive opportunity. And if you already have a podcast, I'm about to show you how to make it work for you. Just to give myself a little bit of street cred.

I want to let you know about my podcast now Did I do everything perfect? Am I the perfect podcast host with the perfect podcast the perfect content the perfect words? Absolutely not, but I have done a few very strategic things and preparing to have my podcast  now one mistake I did make was hem and hawing for it over three years Just deciding if I was going to have it having three different artworks created I think I did two or three different intros and outros before I found the perfect one.

And then I even recorded a couple of episodes and tried to edit them using AI. They turned out terrible and it just didn't work overall. So what I'm telling you is that we don't want to make those mistakes anymore. We're just going to get right to it. With my podcast, I launched it January 31st of 2024.

It is just over a year old. I have generated almost a half a million dollars in revenue and I have over 21, 000 downloads since I released it. Now, is that fabulous? No. Is it the best? Absolutely not. But I'm pretty proud of it. And I did a lot of strategic things to get me where it is now. I've got some big goals, big dreams, and high to do lists.

Maybe it's long to do lists. And I just want to share with you guys why and how we've done it this way. I want to first start off with a few statistics that you probably didn't know about podcasting. First of all, podcasting is exploding. There are now 4. 36 million active podcasts worldwide and 546. 7 million podcast listeners globally.

Podcast listeners are committed. The average listener spends seven hours a week consuming podcasts, seven hours. I mean, that's more than the time that's dedicated to this mastermind that everyone's paying for. Just think about that money is pouring into podcasting podcast ad revenue is set to exceed 4 billion in 2025. 

That literally blows my mind. 4 billion. People are acting on podcast ads. They are literally acting on it. 63 percent of listeners have purchased something based on a podcast ad. 71 percent have visited a sponsored website after hearing about it on a podcast. And 62 percent consider buying a product just from hearing it on a show.

The truth is you don't need millions of downloads. Brands are investing in smaller podcasts with highly engaged audiences because trust converts, right? So here's what I want you to take from this. If you are not already using a podcast to build authority, drive leads, or create revenue, you are missing out.

But that stops today. So I'm going to teach you how to monetize your podcast right now. So buckle up and take some notes, because this is all going to lead you to your next steps this week. Number one, leads equal sales. Your podcast is a trust building machine. It should be leading people into your programs, services, or products.

No one ever just does something for fun. So why do you have a podcast? Why do you want to have a podcast? What is the purpose of it? It should be generating you revenue unless of course you are just a quadrillionaire And you have all of this money sitting around that you're laying in you don't need to generate revenue for yourself Which I don't know if that's you but if it is More power to you.

 Unless you are a kajillionaire  I think that you should be generating revenue because again, nobody does anything for free. Number two, sponsorships and partnerships. Brands will pay to be in front of your audience, even if you have a small but engaged group.

So consider that affiliate marketing, share things you love and earn commission. Now I know that there are a few different categories of people when it comes to sponsorships, partnerships, affiliate marketing, sharing links, all that good stuff. I have been in all of these categories at one point until I realized what it meant.

Now, the truth of the matter is, there are many different ways we hear about products, brands, websites, services, many different ways we hear about them. But there is one way we get closed, just one. It's one decision made off of one scenario. Whatever that scenario that closed you, that's the one, right? So there was a time that I thought affiliate marketing and sharing links was so ridiculous.

Like, I wanted something that someone had, but I wasn't going to click their link. Instead, I was going to find what it was, search it on my own, and then go buy it. Because I didn't want to pay them for it. I didn't want them to make money off of me.  But then I started to realize that nobody works for free, right?

Like, you wouldn't just go market for a window cleaning company for no reason. Like, you wouldn't just do that and not get paid. You wouldn't go answer the phones for a cleaning company just to go answer phones for them and schedule appointments. You would want to be paid an hourly wage. Affiliate marketing, sharing links, right?

It's I'm working for someone, helping them generate revenue, and I should be paid for that if I'm the reason someone takes action.  Let's just say it's a Hershey candy bar. You have seen Hershey candy bars a million times in your life, but this one day you see someone eating a Hershey candy bar, and now you can't stop thinking about that Hershey candy bar. 

They are the reason you are going to buy that Hershey candy bar. It isn't because you saw it 20 years ago, and now all of a sudden you decided you wanted a Hershey candy bar. Yes, you may have already known about it, but the person you just saw eating one is the reason you're buying it. Now, do you think they should get a couple pennies for you buying a Hershey candy bar?

Sure, absolutely they should. Because they were in front of you, they're the reason that you're buying. Now, I'll tell you this. You can make money tons of ways in this world. And you're not going to make billions of dollars on affiliate marketing. But you are going to make some money. And you should be paid for your time.

And if someone would like to advertise with you or if you are going to share your expert opinion on something, whether it's a product or a service, or a website or whatever it might be, if you're going to share your expert opinion on that, you should be compensated. And it is a way that you can generate revenue.

Number four paid memberships and exclusive content. You should be creating a vip community that pays for extra value so whether that is a Slack channel a microsoft teams channel whether that is a subscription on instagram a subscription through your podcast channel Whatever that looks like You should be creating that because that is a way that you can connect further with your audience and keep the momentum going Now I have a lot of different avenues of ways.

I connect with people through my podcast. I have free trainings I have channels I have the way you can actually text me and I'll text you right back through my podcasts I have co hosts  So many different avenues of ways I stay connected. I have different email campaigns that I have. People that are on email lists.

Digital download offers. Lots of different things that's exclusive to certain people that are part of certain subscription channels. You can choose the one that's best for you. Number five. Direct offers every episode should include a clear call to action or CTA To an offer so I don't want you to be afraid to sell people on your podcast Now even though all five of these things sound like a lot of information.

I'm giving you I want you to just take some action steps this week. I'm going to give you three ideas Pick one and we're going to go with that one  first plan your next three episodes or your first three if you're new here now If you've already written out your SOPs for how you write your podcast episodes fabulous Do you have your scripts written out or your agendas or your outlines written out?

Whatever it is Consider what you have in those episodes. Do you have one of the five things I've talked about? Do you have all of the five things? Does it make sense for all five things, or does it make sense for one of the things? I want you to think about that and work on your first three episodes. Or, number two, revamp your intro and outro.

Make sure they include a clear CTA. If you don't have an intro and outro, I'm going to encourage you to have one. Now, some people say, you don't need an intro and outro. Don't worry about it. Just ad lib it whenever you start. There are two ways to look at this. One is you want to build memorization of you, how people remember what it sounds like to listen to you.

You're ingraining yourself in their mind and they are learning to remember you over and over and over and over. They're hearing different things. You're selling them in the intro and the outro repeatedly. Now they may not take action immediately, but they are hearing you. And what you offer.  I have a friend of mine who sells a product that has a scent and I've talked about this in another Money Maker episode.

She's never described the scents. I bought five different scents from her. All five of them I love and I wish I had bought all of her scents because they came in the mail last week and I was like, Oh my gosh. This brand is actually stinking, amazing, stinking. I guess that doesn't quite make sense, but anyways, it's amazing.

Like the quality is so next level. The smell is absolutely fabulous. The names of the smells. are terrible. They make no sense, but I love the product. Literally. I love it. Like I could advertise for this product, but the packaging's terrible. The name of it is terrible. And the name of the sense is terrible.

I want you to think about what people are knowing about what your podcast is. Like, what do they know? How do they understand what you stand for? Does it make sense?  Or number three, decide on your monetization strategy. Pick one of these. Maybe you've already designed your episodes. Maybe you've already revamped your intro and outro.

Maybe you just need to look at these five ways you can monetize your podcast and start building it out. If you want your podcast to make money, you start today. That's it. We start today. Part two, leadership. We're going to talk scaling for financial growth. Now Amy Barkow is going to be part of our live session this week, but I'm going to give you a little bit of an intro on what to expect.

First, I want you to know that  building brand awareness equals more revenue. You can't make money if people don't know that you exist. So Amy's going to talk to us all about what that looks like. But that visibility leads to trust.

The more you show up, the more credibility you build.  Authority in anything converts. When people see you as a leader, they buy from you. If you have a business where you have a website and your face isn't on there, there isn't a way to personally connect with someone it's hard to know who the leader is.

McDonald's or Nike, they don't need to have their CEO on the front page. They are a brand, a worldwide brand. You're not a worldwide brand yet. People need to connect with you. How are they connecting with you?

This week, I'm going to give you a few action steps for your leadership. First, I want you to define your leadership framework. What do you stand for? Two, create an accountability system. How do you measure your success weekly?  For me and one of my companies that I own, we know that 16 sales calls equals four closed sales and 50 percent of those sales calls will close in 90 days.

So ultimately, 16 calls equals 12 sales. We know exactly how to get those 16 calls so that we can convert and grow at a steady, scalable pace. How are you measuring your success weekly? Is it by happenstance? Is it by prayer alone? What is it? Number three, set one task to delegate this week so you can focus on high ROI tasks. 

Leadership isn't just about running a business. It is about running a brand that people trust and want to buy from.

This week I want to share a story about a time I almost quit my very first mastermind that I was ever in. I want to take a minute to talk about it and just be real with you all because I actually know what it's like to feel behind. I know what it's like to sign up for something and be so excited about it.

Like, Oh my gosh, this is the dream scenario. Exactly what I always wanted to do. Start strong and then suddenly it just feels like a total burden. Like it's just one more thing on your plate and there's nowhere to fit it in. My first mastermind was like that. I was really excited. It was the perfect mentor situation.

There was people in it that I knew I needed to be connected with just because I needed to have those connections. I showed up, I was taking notes. I was implementing things. I was giving feedback. I was participating. I was connecting with other members in the group and then it was like life happened.

I stopped checking in and I stopped reading emails and I stopped listening to what was going on in the group. I wasn't even looking at the training modules. I wasn't paying attention to my workbook. I had nothing going on in it. 

In fact, I had turned off my notifications in the chat system we used because it was annoying when I saw a bunch of people commenting in there and I didn't want to be distracted.

Then I started getting texts from my leader. I was eight weeks in to a 14 week program and I felt really, really bad. I was really just wanting to ignore everything because in one way I felt like I was letting her down and instead of facing it, I was just shutting down because that was easier. It was the easier route to take for me. 

But at this point, I had two choices. I could keep ignoring it and pretend that I was doing the work, or I could sit down and be real with my mentor. And honestly, I really did just want to run away from it because I hate confrontation. You see, to me, confrontation means that one of us was wrong and one of us is bad.

One of us has let someone else down and one of us isn't enough. But that isn't really what confrontation is, and it's okay to have conversations. And I think mostly for me it felt like, gosh, you know what, we're eight weeks into this and I'm so far behind, there's no way I could possibly catch up, like how am I going to catch up?

I haven't done half of what everyone else has done. My mentor kept calling me. She kept checking in. And finally I caved and I agreed to meet her for lunch. And I was really nervous, like the meeting with your boss nervous. But instead of her judging me, she really made me feel welcome. She reminded me that I was actually in this mastermind for a reason.

And that I shared with her when I first started that I was starving for community. That I needed a space where I could ask questions and not feel stupid, or not feel not enough, or feel like, gosh, someone's going to see me as not as powerful because I asked these questions. And instead of me making up for the time that I missed.

She had me just start fresh from right there. And that's what I want for you. If you're behind and you haven't gotten to weeks one through four, that's okay. We have 12 weeks left. We are starting week five right now. And this is the time where you need to dig your heels in and get ready to plant yourself because you're going to move mountains and you're going to need strength around you.

Your accountability partner is going to come in key right now. This is the time when you lean on them to say, Hey, I need you to go back through the last few moneymaker Mondays. Listen to the things we were supposed to get done, help me get them done and let's start right here.  And if we don't have time for that or it's things that aren't relevant to what we're doing, cool, let's skip it and let's keep moving forward. 

Because we are building the blueprint to your business's breakthrough. Every single week, what I'm giving you really matters. And I want you to have it so that your business can actually thrive. I'm telling you things that I've done personally that have led me to build an 8 figure business with over 600 employees in it.

It is simple to do because I started with one employee, just one. It took me six weeks to land my first four figure client that was paying me six figures a year.  You might be thinking, there's no way I can do that. There's no way with the service I offer, or what I'm doing, that that can happen. 

But I'm telling you, there is. There's a way you can do it. There are products and services you can offer everywhere, that equal you getting where you need to be. Now maybe it's a certain quantity of something you need to sell to get there, but you can do it. And I believe you can do it. I don't want you to feel like you're behind.

I don't want you to disappear because you think you're too far gone. I want you to reach out.  Message in our chats. Head over to Microsoft Teams. This community is here for you. Stay connected because you belong here.  As we close out this episode, I want to give you a few action steps to remind you of what is ahead for the week. 

First, if you're doing podcasting, you are going to order or revamp your intro and outro this week. I want you to have clear CTAs. If it's leadership you're focusing on, I want you to implement one accountability system and delegate a task.  This week, I am gifting all of you a free download of the audiobook, The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins.

If you have the hardback book, I love that you have it, but I'm telling you, Mel Robbins is an excellent storyteller and you need to listen to her. She is fabulous. If you already have the book, let me know and we'll work something else out. I want you to remember that we have Amy Barco session this Tuesday at 7 p.

m. Mountain Standard time And this is your friendly reminder that you are in the right place You are in the right season and you have everything that you need to take the next step So let's go build something amazing  📍 together. I'll see you guys on the next episode.