How my podcast made over a million dollars in under 12 months

Back in 2016, I launched my podcast Future Squared.

It was initially focused on corporate innovation, and was a marketing tool for my innovation consultancy.

After interviewing a few small names to get comfortable behind the mic, I booked my first big name.

The name? Steve Blank — a SIlicon Valley icon who was becoming vocal about using startup methodologies in the corporate world.

I shared the episode with a hundred people in my target market on LinkedIn — local corporate innovation executives, CTOs, CIOs, and so on.

A few months passed, and one of those executives got in touch.

“Love your podcast Steve. Would like to chat about a potential opportunity to work together”.

That potential opportunity lead to my company’s first corporate accelerator program, the Mills Oakley Legaltech Accelerator, worth $500,000.

The resulting media coverage in the Australian Financial Review got the attention of other corporate executives, and we quickly did deals to run accelerator programs for commercial real estate company Charter Hall, Microsoft and Village Roadshow.

We generated over a million dollars in less than 12 months from launch date.

This is the power of podcasting.

It creates an intimate connection with your target audience.

It creates trust.

And it creates brand awareness.

“But everybody has a podcast, these days.”

Sure, and almost everybody quits before episode 10 because they have no strategy or direction, are expecting to make money on ads immediately (good luck!), and get overwhelmed by the work involved.

But here’s the thing.

You don’t need a large audience for podcasting to be worthwhile, you just need the right audience.

While Future Squared has grown to generate over a million downloads and feature tons of big name guests, it was generating only a few hundred downloads an episode when we scored our first few accelerator programs.

If you run a venture capital firm, you just need the right potential LPs or founders to listen.

If you run a startup, you just need the right potential clients, partners or investors to listen.

And there are smart ways to get your podcast in front of the right people so that you can start building that intimacy, trust, and brand awareness with your target audience and start doing more deals.

Keen to learn more about launching your own show to help your reach your own business goals?

Simply email me to organize a short chat with me.

Remember, if you’re not putting out relevant content in the relevant places, it’s almost like you don’t exist.

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