#172 - Indie Businesses Making Millions, Advice to Young Entreprenuers & How to Grow a Podcast

**Shaan Puri** (0:00)
All right, there's this amazing book called Getting Everything You Can Out of All You've Got. I read it a few years ago and it changed my life.
And the reason I loved it was because it basically talks about how to get and make more money using things that you already have.
Coincidentally, today's podcast is brought to you by Business Made Simple. It's a podcast by Donald Miller, who I'm gonna tell you about in a second, but he has this amazing episode that's all related to this book and the things that I learned in this book. It's called How to Make Money With What You Already Have. It's an incredible episode. Talks about all the stuff that I learned in this book. The host is Donald Miller. I didn't know who Donald Miller was up until recently, but over the last 12 months, this is totally by coincidence. It was all separate people. They said, you have to check out Donald Miller. He's amazing. So I'm happy that he's part of HubSpot's Podcast Network. You can check it out, Business Made Simple Podcast. It's where he coaches you on how to build your business like an airplane, where the cockpit is your leadership, the body is your overhead, the right engine is your marketing, the left engine is your sales.
You have to check it out. This guy's amazing. It's called Business Made Simple with Donald Miller.

**Sam Parr** (1:03)
I used to chase money a lot. Like how do I make money? Maybe this will make us money. Maybe this will make some money.
And that was good because I like learned skills about how to make money. But the things that actually paid off, none of those really paid off with a big dollar amount.

**Shaan Puri** (1:26)
All right, before we actually get to the content, a few things.
We've been making a ton of changes to this podcast. The numbers are working. I think the last month was our highest ever. Right, Abreu?

**Abreu** (1:36)
I believe so, yeah.

**Sam Parr** (1:38)
So I think we should start saying the numbers. I think we should start saying the numbers. I think we should say what it is, say what we're gonna do and say what happens, whether it works or it doesn't.

**Shaan Puri** (1:47)
Yeah, so the trailing 30 days was, I think, 350,000 listens.
Which if it's not the highest ever, it's one of, like type one or two. But the trajectory is really what matters and that is great. So we're getting around an average episode, I think is 20,000 downloads an episode, which is, I think, a 60% increase from the year before. Is that right, Abreu? Am I getting all these?

**Sam Parr** (2:12)
Yes.

**Shaan Puri** (2:12)
22,000, 23,000.

**Sam Parr** (2:15)
Right.
So let's say we're at 22,000.
It used to be 15, of course, it used to be zero. So, you know, whatever, it's growing. And our goal is 100,000 per episode. One Rose Bowl Stadium per episode is what I want to be doing, something like that. And so we're not far. 4X is, you know, it's not far. I think naturally that would happen in a couple of years. And what we're going to do is just accelerate it so it happens in one.

**Shaan Puri** (2:42)
Yeah, I feel quite confident that if we do the same thing, but more, it would happen with time, but I don't want to do that. I'm impatient. I want it to happen immediately. So the changes we've made is we've prepared more for every podcast, which I think is very clearly working.

**Abreu** (2:57)
Yes.

**Shaan Puri** (2:58)
We now have these videos going, which I also think is clearly working and that it makes me feel good. Is it driving downloads? I don't actually, I'm not convinced, but it's worth it.

**Sam Parr** (3:10)
You know what it does do is there's a whole group of people that like either A, just don't listen to podcasts or don't listen much. So they're like kind of like, otherwise they would only hop in once in a while. They didn't build a habit with us and they follow just through the clip. So there's actually just like another audience that's like, oh, good.
I watch those clips every time cause they're good. And I always get messages about them.

**Shaan Puri** (3:29)
Yeah, and I'm in that category as well. I've never, I don't think I've ever listened to a Joe Rogan podcast, but I watch a lot of clips.

**Sam Parr** (3:35)
Right.

**Shaan Puri** (3:36)
And we're putting our clips on YouTube, which is not working. That is not working well at all for us. Right. Maybe we're putting the full episodes on in a handful, have 20 to 30,000 views, maybe even more. A couple of them have a few more.