Episode 1000 - You’ve Got To Know When…

When it comes to heating up your business, it's all about making more bacon. And that requires an expert with a particular set of skills. You need a Baconologist. Building authentic connections, online networking, through social selling, relationship marketing, mindset and training.

Yeah, that's bacon. Get ready, because we're about to fry up a sizzling success strategy. This is the Bacon Podcast with your host and business baconologist, Brian Basilico. That's a lot of bees, man.

Welcome everybody. I'm your host, Brian Basilico, and this is the podcast where you learn to make your business sizzle online. So are you ready to fry up some new business? Hey, peeps.

November 1st, 2014 is a day that will live in infamy on the internet. The biggest news stories were a judge in Maine rejected a strict Ebola quarantine for nurse Cassie Hickox? I don't know. Political unrest in Burkina Faso?

A hit-and-run incident in Santa Ana, California, now that I can pronounce, killed three 13-year-old girls. and the release of a retired U.S. Marine Sergeant Andrew Tamoresi by Mexican authorities.

I can't pronounce any of that stuff. But what dominated the headline was a crash of Virgin Galactic Spaceship 2 in the Mojave Desert the day before. In other news, it was the release of the first podcast ever by Brian Basilico entitled, Welcome to the Bacon Podcast. If you listened that day, or even during the first six months, it was initially called my marketing magnet.

It was created with a little fanfare and very few listeners. My podcast mastermind folks convinced me to change the name to The Bacon Podcast to build on my brand of books. After that, the podcast relatively took off. Over the years, my audience has grown to 3,000 listeners per month, and in September 2024, there was over 1,600 listeners.

Then, in November 2024, 10 years into the journey, it dipped to only 136. I'm sure there are reasons for this decline, but I wholeheartedly believe that the content has gotten better over the years, and I had better guests and interviews, but the headwinds were strong. 184,000 new podcasts were started in 2024. As of June, there were 460,000 active podcasts on Apple podcasts The quality of podcasts has also been on the rise with larger teams and bigger budgets So here the deal This is going to be my last podcast at least on the Bacon Podcast So what a business A business is an entity that spends a dollar and makes three.

You need to make one dollar to pay for people or resources, a dollar to pay for promotions and advertising, and one to make a profit. It's very simplified, but a business can survive only making $2, but needs a capital infusion if it makes less than that. A podcast or any business activity must have an ROI. My podcast helped me speak at conferences and sell books, but that was small potatoes when it came to my overall business model and needs.

I've been an audio geek since my teen years, and I could keep my expenses low. There was some expense for web hosting and distribution, but that was minimal. Bigger podcasts have teams of people and much higher expenses and expectations to make a profit. In all honesty, I was the recording engineer, editor, producer, web developer, writer, fact checker, publicist, and more.

If I had to pay for all those people once or twice a week, I would have gone bankrupt just after a few episodes or a few months. Many podcasts are repurposed or edited version of productions with all of those teams and more. They're there to increase audience engagement and sell more advertising It's a challenge to run a business monetized on attention when you have almost 200,000 new competitors At least one-tenth of them have podcast budgets bigger than my annual business income So what's a podcast?

A podcast started out as an internet radio station without the need for a broadcast partner. It was people sharing their thoughts and knowledge in an audio format. YouTube was for video, Apple was for podcasts. Since then, the two have blended into both audio and video and are distributed on both and more, like YouTube, TikTok, Spotify, iHeartRadio, and others.

Podcasts come in two flavors, or two main reasons to exist. Most are started to help build and promote a personal brand. My original goal was to spread my personal brand and define myself as an expert in online marketing. Although I've had hundreds of expert guests in many areas, and that boosted my numbers of listeners, I only achieved that 300,000 downloads or listens in all of the 10 years that podcast was there.

Now you have people like Joe Rogan who makes around per episode I would venture to say that his guests are a little better known than mine like Donald Trump Elon Musk Dr Phil and a few other names I sure you recognize That brings us to the second reason. Podcasts can sell commercials. The larger the audience, the more the advertisers pay for placements. Joe Rogan gets over 10 million listens per episode, primarily from a consumer audience.

This means that his team and business would need to only make $0.10 per listener from advertisers to make $1 million per episode. Smaller podcasts like My Favorite, Pivot with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway, have around 400,000 monthly or 50,000 listeners per episode. Advertisers would have to pay $20 per listener per episode to make them a million dollars.

But, if you pay $20 a click on Google, you're not guaranteed to reach your target audience or make an ROI. So, for access to Pivot's B2B audience, $20 per listener could be considered a good deal for advertisers. So, why now? Over the last year, I've gone from two podcasts a week, an expert interview and a monocast, to just one monocast.

My audience has narrowed to B2B decision makers. Although my listener base, the people who still listen to the podcast, are small business owners trying to get better marketing advice and they generally don't spend a lot of money on services. They're looking for advice on how to save money and do it themselves. In the last couple of years, I shifted the focus to organic marketing and relationship marketing.

But what people really want in this attention economy is almost solely focused on how and why artificial intelligence will revolutionize business, especially in marketing. Like big shows with big audiences, making lots of money through advertising squeezes niche podcasts. The same goes for AI and marketing. The big money in AI is focused on the big guys with deep pockets and big budgets.

My audience wanted to know the DIY tools that would save them and make them more money. And there are now thousands of gurus who have days, weeks, and maybe even years of experience in this new wild, wild west of AI. While my company's customers and employees are beginning to embrace AI, my most successful ones realize that they're making more money using old time techniques, low tech options, and plain old shoe leather in relationship and organic marketing So let me leave you with these final closing thoughts I always been driven by three principles in life and in business Although I have not always been 100% successful in adhering to them, I've noticed that I'm a thousand times happier and more successful when I do.

First, life is about motion, emotion, promotion, commotion, and finally, ethical motivation. When you stop learning, you stop earning. And I've loved learning from others, and I believe that when you teach others, you learn twice as much, twice as fast. Second, it's advice from that very sage songwriter, Kenny Rogers Who said, you've got to know when to hold them Know when to fold them Know when to walk away And know when to run All that motion, emotion, promotion, commotion, and ethical motivation Will never change the cards that you're dealt Third, it's a biblical and for the birds kind of quote.

To everything, turn, turn, turn. There is a season, turn, turn, turn. And a time for every purpose under heaven. 2014 was my turn to start a podcast.

And 2024, now 2025, is my turn to explore better ways to serve you, my people, fans, and audience. There are 1,000 episodes of my podcasts. Mostly original, with some best-of repeats. But I'm proud of the consistency over the last 10 years.

I look forward to what's next, but I'm not going away, panicking or quitting. As I told people to do during the pandemic, don't panic. Pivot. And as I said, that's one of my favorite podcasts.

I want to leave you with this. Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift.

Be open and embrace what that gift brings you every time you wake up. So thank you for being the gift of a listener. I appreciate you and your time and your commitment. And I'm looking forward to what's next.

Thank you for letting us sprinkle some bacon bits into your brains. Want some more? Learn more about this podcast and our guest experts at baconpodcast.com.

Have questions? Send them to askbrian at baconpodcast.com. Until next time, keep sizzling.

And remember, it's all about the bacon.