540. Private Podcasting for Training, Onboarding and Community Building

0:05 Marc Ronick: Good morning, Today is Thursday, june 18, 2026 And today, private podcasting as a product teaching tool and community builder, Sid Meadows shares lessons from launching core foundations and how you can apply the same ideas to your audience. So, if you're listening live on Clubhouse, hit the share button, top right-hand side of the screen, and share it however Clubhouse lets you. And if you're catching us via podcast, LinkedIn, etc. please podcaster. And now, give us about 30 seconds, we'll get things rolling. Thanks for being here. The podcasting morning chat is powered by Ironick Media, helping podcasters launch, polish, and grow great shows, and by Content Creators Accountant, helping creators content. Good morning again.

1:13 Podcasting morning show. Thank you so much for being here. I am your host, Mark Ronick. Currently on stage with me, my Ralph Estep, Sid Meadows, and BC And we are not streaming to YouTube today, so if you are here on Clubhouse, looking for us over on YouTube. You're not going to find us. I'm having some issues keeping Riverside and YouTube connected, and I thought I had it resolved before today, but I don't. So, my apologies.

1:54 And we'll have the video posted shortly after we finish here. So, today we're doing something I wouldn't say completely different, but it is going to be out of the ordinary, I suppose. We've got Sid Meadows as our guest today, and he's launching something called Core the top of the show, and the do is learn about private launching his private podcast, quote unquote, guest for today. So, will most of us think that the about podcasting is something public, something that we publish to Apple and Spotify and YouTube, and wherever else, but private podcasting opens up a different kind of opportunity.

2:48 It can be used for education, paid content community, and relationship building with a know most of us here who knows hosting his public podcast, The Trend Report, and now, like I said, he's launching this thing called Core Foundations. It's a what I understand based on Sid and my discussions, and we'll get into it from him in a moment, but my understanding is a private, it's a private for new and early professionals in the contract interior industry. So, today we're going to use what Sid is building to better understand private podcasting as both a format and a business tool.

3:39 So, let me officially say hello to our quote unquote guest today, Sid Meadows. Sid Meadows: Good morning, it's great to be here with all of you, and I guess I'm glad to be in the hot seat today. Marc Ronick: Yes, and I thank you for volunteering. I admittedly I was telling the crew yesterday afternoon I was racking my brain preparing for today's show, and I think it was you, Dr. who said, what about Sid, or actually talking about his ways that he's monetized his hey, you know, my private podcast is launching soon, if you want to talk about that, I'd be happy to. So here we are, and Sid, for you could you just share quickly and what the trend report is really about?

4:28 Sid Meadows: Yeah, it's a great question. Thank you, Marc. So, my name is Sid Meadows, and I started my own business in 2020 20 2017 and I've spent my entire career working in the office furniture industry, what I typically will call contract interiors started right out of college, and when I decided to start my business, I wanted to do coaching, consulting, and training in that space. It's where my network is, it's where people I know, and so that's what I did. And in 2020 I started the Trend Report podcast, and it's basically your inside look at the. People, products, and ideas shaping the future of workplace design, and my audience are people that manufacture, distribute, and sell office furniture, or they're in that space in some way, whether they're an interior designer, but predominantly my audience is people who actually either manufacture or sell actually office furniture, and so we've been doing that since 2020 On Monday, we will launch episode 191 so getting close to a really big milestone. And so I'm really proud of what my podcast has become and what it's brought to me personally and professionally, the joy that it brings me and the satisfaction that it brings me, but also the impact and the knowledge and the thought that it is providing to our, to my audience, so Marc Ronick: cool. Sid Meadows: That's who I am Marc Ronick: awesome, and I've foundations 14 times since we So, what is it, and who is it for?

5:53 And we'll get into the nitty gritty. So, just give me the broad overview. Sid Meadows: So, it is a private solution for new and young to educate them about the each episode is between 10 and it's an educational program on There are lots of reasons that I'm solving a problem, and we could talk about the problem, but basically, that's what it is. It stands for Confric, Interiors, Orientation, and Readiness for Excellence. Marc Ronick: Awesome. Okay, cool. So, now we've got a brief idea of that, and Ralph, I think you had a question for Sid. Ralph Estep Jr.: I do.

6:36 So, when you say private podcast, Sid, what does that mean in your world? Because, honestly, when before Marc had mentioned this topic yesterday, I'd heard this bantered around a little bit, that was going to apply to you. Sid Meadows: So it's a paid platform where you pay to download the episodes, the cost is $695 to enroll as a student in Core Foundations, and so it's as a private podcast, so you can't access it publicly at all unless you buy it, and when you buy it, there's a system and a process where Hello Audio, who's the platform that I'm using, is can you buy it through Kajabi, and then, which is my website platform, and then Hello Audio triggers an email to you to tell access to it. You follow it, you have access to it. Ralph Estep Jr.: So you're using little bit, that's what you're using to monetize this as a private podcast, Sid Meadows: correct?

7:40 So Kajabi is my website platform. I started using it in 2018 and out there that are probably more Kajabi. And so, yes, you go to Core foundations.co that's a Kajabi site. Down at the bottom, there's a place for you to buy it, and you click the buy, and it puts you through the through the process, and then part of that process is Hello Audio using Zap, and how to use the Zap, and so I figured that out, that was crazy. And so Hello Audio sends you an email, and the email gives you the instructions of how to actually access the podcast, the private podcast. Ralph Estep Jr.: So, Sid, what you to do that, the public you got a public podcast with a trainer, but what does this allow you to do? Sid Meadows: Well, first and foremost, it's revenue, it creates revenue into my business, and you know, I'm going to back up a minute, Ralph. Years, I mean, not years ago, last year, as I'm evaluating my business, and I'm evaluating what I want to do in 2026 and beyond what I'm lovingly referring to is my 60s, what I want my 60s to look like, because I want them to be of the things I wanted to do was more joy, do things that make me to do that, I have to say yes to things, so I've said no to podcasting, and if I'm going to lean in to being a bigger content creator, a bigger more, doing more, it's really

9:13 a solid revenue stream inside of really wasn't, and though it sponsor, but I needed to ensure if I'm going to say no to revenue stream, I have to say so podcasting brings me a lot of I want to lean into doing it more, and so I monetize the trend report. And then I started looking around at other ways I could use podcasting. On the podcasting morning show, several months ago we talked about private podcast, so we had a guest come on, I believe, and I had this idea had been noodling for a while in my head, and then I just decided to investigate and take action on it, but the biggest thing that a private podcast does is allow me to monetize to charge. For the education that I'm giving now, I tell you why. So, the listener that I'm targeting, the person that I'm targeting, is going to be average 22 to 27 years old, okay?

10:08 Young there, because so the problem that I'm solving is our industry as a whole has an age problem, and meaning the majority of the people that are in our industry look like me, they're old, gray hair, white Yeah, that's very true, right. industry, they're not a lot of that are in our industry. Part of the problem that exists with that is we are not a known entity, we have to work really hard to attract people into our industry. We're not talked about on college career day, we need to be, but we're not. What we do is pretty amazing, and the end result is providing an amazing workplace for people to work in on a daily basis, right?

10:50 But we have attraction and retention problem, and brands and organizations do a great job at training on their people, their products, their processes, and their programs. Whether I'll go to work for a manufacturer or a dealer or an independent rep, they're going to train me on all things them, which is great. What they forget is to train on the industry, and learning the industry is what's so hard, because the industry is extremely complex. There are multiple layers inside of our industry. There are multiple players. There's terminology that's not used in other places, and so most people are left on their own to go find out about the industry, and you can, yeah, Google a little bit. There's some books out there that talk around our industry, but this talks directly to our industry. So, if you're brand new and you don't know what laminate or veneer is, this program is going our acronyms are, this program's going to explain it to you.

11:51 interior designer does, this to you. So, I'm solving that problem. So, the identified a problem, and I've known this for a long time. Identified the problem, and now I'm providing a solution. The reason that it is an audio first is I want to meet them where they are. I want to be able to give them the opportunity to listen to me, educate them on their commute to work. I want, if they're cutting their grass, if they're on their morning walk, I want them to have the ability to consume content easily, and not be forced to go to log into a library, figure out which video they left off on last, and then sit down and watch a video. I'm trying to make it easy for them to consume, so they do consume all 14 episodes, because at the end we do offer a certification that says your course foundation certified, it presents a little certificate to you, and then we are in the process of creating a little sticker that, if you will, that you can actually add to your LinkedIn profile to say foundations. Marc Ronick: I love that last point that you made, it's just as far as really wanting to make sometimes we forget that with all the noise about the video hype, and how you know everybody wants us to now put our content out as video too, but I think sometimes we have to think about, is that really convenient for our audience, and sometimes it isn't, and I think, especially in private podcasting, and what you're doing, it sounds like that's

13:22 appropriate, but something you mentioned when you first shared your answer, you mentioned that this is a this is paid content, and I know you're podcasting, but I also know you, investigative work before you private podcasting always paid, or can it? Could it be used in other ways? Sid Meadows: You could use private podcasting however you want to. You could use it for bonus episodes, you could use it to do coaching, like you could and it does not have to be paid, There just has to be some type of transaction happen that triggers Hello Audio to send you the link, if you will, to get the feed, but it does not have to be paid.

14:06 There are a lot of different ways that you can use it. For me, it's about money, it's about revenue stream, right. And so I wanted to figure out how I create another revenue stream, but yeah, you can, you It does not have to be paid. Marc Ronick: Okay. Fair enough, Ralph. I think you had a question. Ralph Estep Jr.: Yeah, Sid, I on the video decision, because I strategic mistake, and the type of work you're doing, on that you can't show? Like, to me, that would seem like you're talking about laminates and veneers, you're talking about things that are very visual. I understand what you're saying with the audio, but do you feel like strategically, do you at some point pivot to video in this? Sid Meadows: So it's a great point, Ralph, remembering that it's private, not public.

14:52 If I were doing a public something, probably putting videos on YouTube would be a really good idea, but the statistics prove. and DR. probably knows this. The statistics prove that the completion rate of courses is less than 8% of the people and courses are historically You log into your library, you buy a course, you log in, and you watch the course at your convenience and at your leisure. There's specifically workbooks and all that stuff there, but there's only 8% of the people that actually that buy it actually complete it. I want my completion rate to be 100% So I'm looking at how do I meet them where they are now. I have a video recorded for every episode. I can put them in a Kajabi library. I can do all of that.

15:42 Maybe I do that as a bonus add to a little bit later, but right now I'm going to stay focused on testing this as a private podcast. But I'm also not talking about products, right? I'm not showing anything pretty. I'm not showing you what workplaces look like. I'm talking enough about them that you understand what I'm talking about. I spent a lot of time in developing the scripts on this to ensure that the scripts were good enough that people didn't need a visual, because again, I want people to complete, and I didn't want to create a traditional course. I want to take advantage of what I see as something new, and podcasting, everybody has an app on their phone, whether it's Spotify or Apple. This is available on both, so you can get it on Pod Chaser and a few other apps too.

16:29 So I wanted to stay focused on how it works. And then I'll evaluate it, get feedback, and then we'll pivot if necessary, and maybe just add the video, because I have all the videos. Marc Ronick: Makes sense, and I want to encourage anybody who has questions, wherever you're feel free to ask. And I would say just put a one in the chat if you are on Clubhouse specifically, and you're on stage and want to ask Sid a question. I see Billy Thorpe is on stage now. DR: Oh,here we go, here we go, Hold on. Marc Ronick: And just so our maybe our newer listeners know, why we're saying here we go, is because Billi and Sid have a wonderful relationship with that. It also includes a lot of jabs at one another. It's lovingly jabs, I would say. So Billi, good.

17:21 Good morning to you. Did you want to ask a question or add anything so far to the conversation? Billi: I'll be nice, and I'm not Okay, what these people say. Well, my question for you, on so I used to do a private.. I'm going to echo Marc, sorry. Okay, there he goes. So I used to do a private podcast with my fishing show, which was a great way to deliver as well, but for your audience, you said these people are kind of new to the industry. So, how are you convincing new - are they already in the industry? Are they getting their employer to pay for this access, like, how are you converting 22 year old out of college with no money and looking to live the American dream? How you convincing me I'm to buy in? Sid Meadows: Oh, this is a great enjoying the horse content, by the way.

18:21 Marc Ronick: Oh, yeah, that's Billi and his family has a new horse. Billi: Hey, no horse got brand Sid Meadows: say. So, it's a really great question, Billy. And my target is not the new person coming into the industry, that's not my target. My target is their boss. My target is the owner of the business, whether if you're an office furniture dealership, my target is the VP of sales or the CEO of the business to talk, because they understand this is a problem, and when they hear me talk about it, they're like, oh yeah, this really is a problem, and I have a solution, so I'm talking about the problem, and I have a In larger organizations, my target's going to be HR, and talking to HR about this, another strategy that I'm employing is I'm obviously going to network my friends, and my I'm creating an affiliate link for my friends to go out and actually talk about it to their net, to their network, and to their groups, and so they'll get an affiliate fee.

19:16 I haven't worked all those details out yet, and then I have recruiters? I have a list of them. There's probably 10 of them, and every time somebody pings me, or I see a post that they're moving on from that, and they're in our industry, whether The first thing I do is send recruiters, because I have it on saying, hey, sorry about your current situation. Here's a list of industry recruiters with all their contact information. I would encourage you to reach out to each one of them, and typically people love it. They thank me for it. The recruiters typically call me and thank me for referring the candidates over to them.

20:00 So have a relationship with all the industry recruiters, and I've talked to a couple of them. And about they understand the they're they're having a really hard time getting businesses to place new people because of the learning curve, and so this helps to solve the learning they will offer it, and they buy they offer it in their package service, their value adds to shareable one that this, if the recruiter buys it from me, they go in and buy it, and then they can share it to a person and gift it, if you will, to a leveraging multiple different drive revenue, I'm going to be that I know, and then the I'm working with recruiters, and affiliates, and tapping into their network, because anybody that is in any senior level position in our industry understands this is a problem. They're not creating a problem right, the problem exists. I'm just highlighting it, and I'm offering a solution rather than just talking about Marc Ronick: it. Billi, if you have any follow-ups, let me know. You're welcome to come off mic, but if not, then I'm going to go to DR. Who has a question.

21:16 So, what I was going to add, I think you answered the question I was going to ask, how do you get your the word out to these people that, who are your targets, but I think you answered it when you said that you have a list of recruiters, so Sid Meadows: yeah, that's one going to leverage my network, so you do see me on there, but it's meadows.com It is a standalone site, and I'm doing that on purpose. It is a sales website, right? My website is not a sales website. My website is an informational This website is about driving sales, so I wanted it to be separate. So, there's very.. it's a.. it's heavy SEO into certain keywords.

21:57 We have a whole blog strategy, and multiple blogs written that will go out again, very heavy keyword focus, so that if you type in not today, but if you type in office furniture training, it, we will eventually come up into that, that into that search, right, and we're doing that intentionally, but I'm also going to leverage my network, so you know, I've got 500 people on my email list, they're not my, they're not my target, right, but they're very engaged. Anytime I send an email, I get about an average of a 50% open rate and a seven to 9% click rate. So I'm going to inform them basically the title of the email, go out next week, that'll I'm going to tell them about it, share this with anybody that type of content. I'm not asking them to go over and enroll, I'm not asking them to buy, I'm not asking them to go subscribe to it. I'm just asking them to share it, and based on the engagement of my community, I can tell you it will get shared. So I'm excited about that, and I'm always going to be looking for ways to technically touch different things and different people.

23:03 I'm considering it's advertising in industry ideal customer. So, there's several out there, and I'm looking at, I've got their, I've got their media kits, and I'm breathing deep at the cost of the third page ad, but I know they have the audience, so I'm looking at working that into the budget and those kinds of things. So there are multiple ways that I can go about this. I write for an industry magazine, and I can actually weave it into a couple of articles that I'm writing as well. I can't technically promote it, but I can talk about the problem, and then I can refer you over to the website to look at it, so, and we created a couple of lead magnets too, and email sequences, man, we've done the whole nine yards, I can talk about that stuff as well.

23:49 Marc Ronick: Yeah, and yeah, I'm So, what I want to do is first say, hang tight to the audience, because I want to, I'm going to take us in a minute to really take what Sid has shared so far and tie it back to you and your podcast, so stick with me for a moment. First, I want to go to Alex Bailish, who has a question for Sid. Go ahead, Alex. Alex: I know you, you're just Is there a way that you specialize it for groups, and or are you planning on doing any updates if the industry does change in certain ways, because things do change, and you have this private platform? Is that something that you are, that you looked at, and if you did what Bethlen might look like? Sid Meadows: Yeah, that's a really great question, Alex. And yes, it's gonna, I mean, think about content that you create on a day on a regular basis. It always needs to be current, right? So we will, what I'm going to call them, bonus episodes, we will add bonus episodes.

24:49 So if there's something that emerges that I think is relevant, then I'll create a bonus episode, and we will publish it, and it'll say bonus. There's still the 14, excuse me, required one. And then we'll add bonus ones in in one of the episodes, let's say the information is way outdated because of a change in our industry, then I'll go update that script, and then I'll just re-record it, and I'll replace the audio, so Hello, audio is super easy to use, so I'll just replace the audio and update it, and then I can send a ping message to all the subscribers that says, "Hey, we've up, we've updated based on recent changes in the industry, we've updated please go into the player and version of 11. Right, another thing that we're doing, also as a bonus, is I'm tapping my friends, and this was not my idea, by the way.

25:42 This was one of my friends' ideas to tap my friends that have areas of expertise that I do not, and I'm asking them to create an episode, a 10 minute episode about their topic. So I have a list of, like, I have a friend that her focus is the dealer, the office renter dealer, interior designer, that's our community, and I'm going to ask her to create an episode about what is the role, what's the job of the office furniture interior I have a friend that's a tech person, I'm going to ask her to create one about tech. Then I have a, like, the tech that you should be focused on using. I have a friend that is government sales and state and I'm gonna ask her. I touched on it in one of the episodes as a vertical market, but I'm gonna ask her to do a deep dive in it, and I'm working on a strategy where I actually pay them - not a lot, but I pay them to create the content, because I'm being paid for the content.

26:35 I don't feel right. It doesn't feel congruent to me to ask them to do something from free when I'm being paid based on what they're producing, so I'm going to pay them a small fee. The couple that I've mentioned to have told me no, they're not going to accept my money, but that's okay. We're not done with that conversation yet, but I'm trying to stay congruent to my values, and I don't feel right asking somebody to create something for free when I'm selling it. So we will use that, and then they will all like, I can do a bonus episode about a big acquisition and share my thoughts about an acquisition. The other thing that I can do is curate a list, a playlist from my podcast, and I could add it to the feed that, hey, this is an important conversation, you should listen to this, or I can just direct them, I can go into the library and add it as a resource in their library, and I could just direct them there, because I don't want to take away from downloads on the actual podcast.

27:28 to use this group to drive podcast, so it's a little web of be trying to leverage it all. something along the way, but Alex: It's a one time fee, it's not a membership, correct. Sid Meadows: Oh, that's a really forgot to say something. So, it is a one time fee of $695 and when you purchase it, you are granted two months, which is twice a month, of office hours with me. That's a $97 a month value, you get to come in for free for two months. After your two months are over, you will be pinged to purchase office hours at $97 a month, cancel anytime that you want to, and I will go live on Zoom twice a month, I think on literally answer any question I'm not going to answer or, you know, which products That's not my job. That's not my role.

28:26 I could do that. That's not my role here. So, you know, but I'll encourage them to go talk to their leader or to their So, basically, you're getting for $97 cancel anytime you want to. So, you get it for free first, and you're granted that, and then after that expires, because it's got a 60 day expire on it. So, once it expires, you no longer have access to it. actually buy it for $97 a month. So, there is a way, Alex, to create recurring revenue with this. Marc Ronick: Junaid has a question for you, and thanks for those questions, by the way, Alex. Both really great questions. And Junaid's question in the chat here is, what if content changed and somebody already got the certificate?

29:11 Sid Meadows: I mean, you don't I've set the audio file up, or lose access to it. I could expire it after you know, 14 weeks, because that's the plan, because the plan is when you buy it, you have four episodes already there for you to listen to, and then each every seven days another episode drops, and you get ping that there's a new episode, and that should last for an additional 10 weeks, so you know, got about 1214, weeks to complete the thing, and I could make it go away. After that, I've chosen to leave it there, but if they've done the work and they've completed it, and something new happens in the industry, I'm going to share the content with them. But there's no reason that I should take away the certification, or no reason I should add another They've earned it. Every business changes, every industry changes, every industry evolves, and so I can't say, 'Oh, your certification is not valid now, because something in the industry changed when they did the work.

30:12 So I'm going to leave it in place, and then I'll just share the additional content as necessary, or as appropriate. Marc Ronick: Thank you, Junaid, for the question, and also, side note, looking forward to seeing you, Junaid, in about an hour and a half for our breakfast meeting in person, which I'm really excited about. All right, so Sid, we have a lot more questions, but I want to pause, and because for someone listening who isn't in your industry specifically, what's the lesson here so far? How should they think about turning their own knowledge into a private podcast experience? Sid Meadows: So that's exactly I turned my knowledge into a private podcast because I offered this exact course. It was called Contract Interiors and Introduction, and then the Next Level.

30:58 It was a 12 week group training session via Zoom, I had about 100 people go through it. It was $1,500 when I did it, and it was in the second year of my business, and I realized after I don't know how many sessions, this was not scalable, and I'm not scalable, and I can't keep doing all these live, and so I just kind of put it on the shelf and let it sit there until I could figure out how to scale it, so this creates scalability for me, right? Easy scalability, and like all the costs up front, there's no maintaining cost. I mean, I have the recurring fee from Hello Audio, but I mean that's they're really small recurring costs, so the heavy lifting financially is up front.

31:39 But what I would say to you is, when you're thinking about your content, look at the industry and solve a problem. the sake of creating content and So, whatever industry that you're in, look at how you can solve a problem and improve someone's life, improve someone's business, improve someone's role or their career. Look at that. So, find the problem and then problem. If you've been in an industry as long as I have, you know you should know. If you don't know, ask your audience what their problems are and favor the things they're struggling with. Yeah, Ralph Estep Jr.: Sid, I wanted to follow up on that, because something you said a few minutes ago struck with me, and I feel in your voice a passion, not so much for making money, but a passion for the industry that you're in, and I feel like that is a core component of what you're doing here, and you, I feel like the outcome is more important to you than the content. Is that a true statement?

32:40 Do you want to talk about that, Sid? Sid Meadows: So that roughly Really, because that is like a true statement. I fell into this industry by accident. Some of you may have heard my story, but when I was in college, I was working at a school supply company, and I was helping with furniture. I didn't know anything about furniture. I was keeping a library, is what I was doing, and when I graduated from college, for all the wrong reasons, which ended up being the right reasons, for all the wrong reasons, I wanted to move to Birmingham, Alabama. So they had a store in Birmingham, and I went to Birmingham. I worked, I sold office supplies, and I started selling furniture. About a year later, a friend of mine had, who had worked there, left and called me and said, "Hey, there's a job opening over here, you should apply, and I did. And then I jumped into really selling office furniture, and I got bit by this bug that has been with me for over 30 years.

33:32 I love what we do. I love the industry. I love being able to step away, though I don't sell products anymore. I love being able to step away and look at a space and go, wow, we did that. I love the impact that our industry has on the success of companies, on the success of people, and how we help people by doing what we do. And I've tried to venture out, and every time I venture out, I come right back, because to my core, I love this industry and my legacy in this industry hopefully will be having a positive impact on the success of businesses and people, and however I can use my voice for good, however you can use my platform to move our industry forward, I want to do that, and when I have people walk up to me like I got this email from this lady the other day, last Saturday. I literally was like, I mean, literally, I must, I almost sat down and just like cried about it, because she sent me this message that said, "Sid, I've been listening to your content for a long time.

34:36 After one of your episodes, I called your guests and had a long conversation with your guests, and I just wanted you to start my own business, and I am debuting at Neocon this week, and I just wanted to say, thank you. Marc Ronick: Wow, Sid Meadows: that's the impact you can't measure, right? That's the legacy that you can't It had another leader walk up to me and say, we got in a meeting in our business after I heard you say something on your podcast, I pulled my team together, we didn't do what you recommended, but we did make a change, and it's working fabulously. My job as an industry thought leader, as an industry content creator is to create conversation to spark conversation.

35:24 I've got lots of answers to questions, but I don't want you to necessarily listen to my answer. I want you to think about it, your business, and I want you to you, right. And so, yes, I love the industry, I love the people. I never want to leave this, and hopefully I'll have, you know, at least 10 more years of a very I'm doing is to help move our industry forward. And answer your question, Rob. Ralph Estep Jr.: Yeah, absolutely, and I think that's the key to this, is when there's value. It's not about selling anymore at that point, Sid, is it? It's about something that you want to see transform it, and it's your world.

36:09 And I really respect that, dude. I think that's an amazing take on what you're doing. Marc Ronick: Yeah, and and I also think it's important to pause here and recognize to your has just shared, I think this is the difference between hard work and the grind, right, because I think when we are grinding, I think that's when we are doing something that maybe we aren't as passionate about as, say, what Sid is with what his industry and his projects that he's building around his industry, right? To him, yeah. I'm sure, Sid, that what you've built so far with this private podcast has been hard work, but I am willing to bet that you don't consider it a grind, That you, that you probably are enjoying this hard work, and I think this is important for us as content creators to really pay attention to, because I think, and I'm in this in a little in certain areas of my business where it feels like a grind, and I sometimes, quite frankly, I ignore it, right, because I just either have gotten used to grinding or I have the wrong programming running in my brain, saying, well, I have to grind, I have to grind to make, to become successful, but the truth is, is like, look at what Sid is building again, he's shared this before with a quote unquote small or smaller audience, and he's still spining a lot of

37:39 success from this, Sid Meadows: so Mark, the I appreciate what you're saying, because the way I framed it last year, as I was coming into this year, was, do it brings me joy, if it's a grind, if it feels heavy, that's like, that's that's not bringing you joy, that's not bringing you happiness, and you know what, I've done a lot of that nonsense, and I felt the stress, I felt the stress in my body, and the anxiety around it. I don't want that anymore, and so I'm going to do what brings me joy, and I'm going to figure out, continue to figure out how to monetize to a way that makes me feel really good about my business from a financial perspective, right? But you got to lean in to what brings you joy, and so that's like, for me, the biggest thing that I'm doing, and that's why I quit consulting.

38:26 I hated consulting. generated a blank ton of We never seemed to be able to do it on budget, on time, and under budget, and that just drove me crazy. And then I, I do not like sitting in front of my computer creating a PowerPoint with all these analytics from a spreadsheet explaining to some leader what all this means. Amen. A great result, but I don't like that. What I like doing is leading groups, educating people, and creating conversations, and so that's what I'm, that's what I'm going to be doing. Man, you got to bring, you got to have joy in your life. Marc Ronick: Well, I don't know, audience, but I'm feeling very inspired by you right now, Sid. So, thank you for sharing all of this. And DR. has a question for you. Sid Meadows: Yes, ma'am.

39:13 DR: Yeah, so I want to ask a follow in your footsteps in podcast, I want you to talk a that you overcame in this whole private podcast genre. Sid Meadows: So the easy part The easy part was writing the I mean, thanks to AI, it makes Recording it was super easy, like that's the easy part. Actually, doing that stuff. The hard part was all the technology stuff, like figuring all the technology stuff out, like buying the URL, finding the URL, right.

39:56 And I hired someone, listen. And I am not creative, okay? I try to be creative, but I'm not. And I heard someone do the website for me, and he's been great, but he's also been a little bit of a pain in my ass, and it hasn't.. it should have been done by now, and like his deadline is Friday. I mean, it's almost done a couple of notes this morning, right. He's really good, but he also did it in code rather than in blocks, and so now I can't edit anything. So I'm like, oh my god, Sid, but that's okay. I have a deal with him to make all the updates in the edits, which is very affordable. It looks really good. He gave me three designs to choose from, and then the single most frustrating thing about this, honestly, was Hello Audio.

40:40 It is a really great platform, but it has limitations. Do your research. in Kajabi, and Kajabi has a Okay. Well, Kajabis podcast product doesn't drip, it just publishes it when you publish it. I'm trying to simplify this and make this as automated as possible, right? So it kind of can live on its own. Okay, Kajabis courses drip, you can set a date to drip based on the date the person enrolls. be private and paid, doesn't I've been after them too, though they're not listening to me, but I've been after, like, come on, guys, make it drip, okay? So that forces me to go to Hello Audio.

41:20 Well, Hello Audio, when you enroll and you want one thing, and then you realize you need something else, guess what, you gotta upgrade. So that's really frustrating with Hello Audio, they're still a young company, they're less than five years old, right, and they've got a lot of user experience stuff they need to work out. I'm sticking with it, but it has not been the easiest. And then there's no direct connection between Kajabi and Hello Audio, so I had to go to Zapier. Like, I opened that thing up, like, what the hell is this? Like, I've never used Zapier before, so I've never had to, and so then, but thankfully Zapier has Copilot built into it. You just tell you what do you want it to do, and it did it. And the first time I did it, it worked. And then the second time, because I changed the website, because I had a core foundations page up on my regular website, right?

42:13 And so then, when I read it again, I got an error message, and so, like, it wasn't working. So last night I enrolled in the program, I wanted to see if everything worked, like I wanted all that, and it didn't work. Oh my god. Then I realized the problem was inside of Hello Audio. So that's long answer, DR. But the biggest challenge for me has been the tech and getting the tech to work, because I want this to be easy. I don't want to have to go and push an email to, you know, people that enroll. I don't have to do that, because hopefully we're going to get hundreds of people enrolling in this. Right, my goal is 10 people a month to enroll in the program, that's my goal, that's very attainable, but I hope to make partnerships with office furniture dealers and office furniture manufacturers that anytime they have somebody, let's call it an enterprise relationship, anytime they have somebody new, this is an automatic, they give them a code, they go to the website, and they get it, and they enroll the tech has been the biggest pain in my ODR. Froze.

43:23 Yeah, hear you. Marc Ronick: Yeah. Okay. So we're playing, we're playing the wheel of jargon, because there are two things that I think people need to understand. One was Zapier, and the other I saw Yvonne put it in the chat. What is drip, right? So, first, Zapier, I can share it's.. it's basically automation software. It can automate things between So, if you wanted something good example? Sid, maybe you've got one, but it'll talk between different systems and automate between them. I think that's the best way to DR: connect two different connected before and didn't, connecting. This is like the middleman, this is the bridge between two different platforms.

44:15 Marc Ronick: Yes. And then Sid, do you want to explain what dripping is? Sid Meadows: I've never used Zapier before, so like I was the learning curve. It's hard, it's hard to learn, but Marc Ronick: I'm glad to hear they've integrated AI into it. I think that makes it easier. Sid Meadows: I just told it what little action steps. I'm like, "Oh gosh, I hope this is right. So, drip.. it's a really great So, you can publish all of your content at one time, you can publish it at when you want to, so you go kind of like your podcast, and you go and you set a publish date that's going to publish on this date. A drip is the content is dripped out to the student in this case, okay, based on the date that they're enrolled, so that it gives them the content based.

44:59 On a schedule, so if Dr. enrolls today, she's going to get four episodes, and then seven days later she's going to get episode number five, and then seven days after that she's gonna get episode number six. Let's say Ralph joins in on Sunday, he's going to get four episodes, and then seven days after his enrollment, so you're on your own schedule, it's dripping based on the date that you enroll, rather than dripping based on an arbitrary date that I set. So Dr. joins a month later, Ralph joins. Ralph's got all these back episodes to listen to, because he's not caught up with Dr. So it's dripping based on your enrollment date, so that the days at their pace with me days, because what I did not binge consumption of the retain the information. It's only like two and a half hours long, if that's right. So, could you listen to all the 14 episodes at one time. Yes, you could, but I don't want that, because I want them to consume and learn.

46:05 I have a did that answer the question? Do I mean, Devon, did that answer your question? Marc Ronick: Well, she's not on stage, but Sid Meadows: okay, Marc Ronick: yeah, we'll find Sid Meadows: So, the other thing because I'm to Ralph's point about this person learning our fall in love with the industry So, I've created a sponsor guide, and so I will email their sponsor. We'll find out. I find out I was trying to at least not yet. But I'm going to ask who their sponsor is. I'm going to email them a sponsor guide, and this sponsor guide tells them what each episode is about, and then it gives them three to five questions for their sponsor, their leader, their boss, the owner to ask in one on one environments about what they're learning along the way, so that the sponsor can help continue their journey, their learning journey, this is really a partnership. This is not a set it and forget it, and they learned everything from Sid, because there's things they're going to want to know more about.

47:08 And so I've created this guy that's called a coaching guide, right, that the sponsor or the leader can use to have additional learning conversations with their employee. Marc Ronick: Thank you, Sid. And I want to, since we're getting close to time here, I want to wrap up with a couple of questions. First, does someone need a full course or certification or a big offer to start experimenting with private podcasting, or can it be Sid Meadows: You could do No, you don't need a big course, you don't need something major if you've got ideas and you want to put it out in the world and you want to test it as a private I would encourage you to do it. Go figure it out.

47:51 Go try it. I mean, I read that, like, let's say you have a, like, Mark. Here's a great example. Just use words are hard in the morning, don't play it, Ralph. Yep, he has to Marc Ronick: play it. He has to play it. Waits Jingle: are hard in the morning. Sid Meadows: Okay, so Mark, I'll You could start a private podcast for your community. Let's just use the EPC three commute people that sign up for APC three. You could use it where you could put out additional content relative to the conference. Hey, I'm excited to announce this, and you can publish it however you want to, and make it free, but it's in my ear.

48:32 I can listen to it when I want to. You don't have to make it public. You can share insider secrets behind the scenes. I know a lot of people that I see a lot of people, I don't know a lot of people doing this, but what I've read is like people have group coaching, they're using it as bonus content or inspirational content to share with their community. Every one of you has an opportunity to create additional resources for your community that's going to help your community be better people, help them grow, help their businesses grow. You just have to figure out how you want to do it and what it is you want to do. And I think a private podcast is a really great solution for it. DR: So, Mark, how about a private podcast on how to create a conference?

49:17 Marc Ronick: I mean, that for sure, especially if I feel more than just the podcast something like that, right? of podcasters have this desire right, but I'm sure some of them others in other industries want to do something like that, so I could see something like that I was also thinking something, maybe for other podcast producers, editors, et cetera, some kind of private podcast for them, since I know we have a lot of those types of community members. Year, as well, so yeah, I'm certainly inspired, for sure. Billy, I forgot about you, and I knew you had a question, so I'm gonna Sid Meadows: problem, Marc Ronick: so I want to make Go ahead, Billi: Sid forgets about me all the time, it's okay, never called me back, never text me back.

50:16 Jingle: Well, I mean, I guess Sid, I love, first of all, I love all the work that you've done to get to this point, but was there based on average conversion rates of one to 3% basically in any industry of like marketing, that's kind of like the just the magic numbers, was there like any like having to look at my whole audience, my whole network before I put all this work into it, or was this like oftentimes I get other Amazon influencers going asking me the same million questions, so I'm like, okay, I need to build a product to answer these questions, and when I'm what I don't want to see go, oh, this is a nice quick so small that they can't this time, energy, and money opposite of what they hoped it So, was that a part of your process to go, like, "Hey, I got this network of 30,000 people of 20 years in the industry, I feel confident that I can close 10 deals a month?

51:16 Like, how would a regular podcaster go about this? What would be your suggestion, Sid Meadows: so for me, Billy, I I didn't - they're not the target. People that listen to my podcast are already in the industry. Most of them probably be in the industry five to 10 years at a minimum, right? They're not my target. My email list is not my target for an actual direct buyer. They're influencers, maybe they're leaders, and the leader says, "Oh, I want to look at my new employees, or maybe the leader is encouraged to hire someone new, because now they know that there is a program out there to actually train on the industry, but I didn't look at those things. What I looked at was my I looked at my network of the leaders in the industry that I'm connected to, knowing that I could talk to them, knowing that I could put things out there that would attract them, knowing that I could talk the language of the problem, and every leader that I've talked to is like, "Oh, wow, this is let me know when it's published, like when this is ready, send it wait list, I have some beta testers right now going through it to give me feedback, like, hey, Sid, you missed this topic, you should have included this topic.

52:27 It's like about the content, and these are industry veterans that are going through it. I'll volunteer to go through it for me, and so my target is the leader, and I think I can reach the leader through my network, right? That's what I think, Billy. And so, what I would say to anybody that is thinking about doing this again, I'm gonna go back to think about the problem that you're trying to solve, what the problem is in solve that problem, and then if you're gonna monetize it or not monetize it again, a beautiful whatever you wanna do with it, test it and get feedback and there's so many options here, I mean, Billy, I think for you, for Amazon influencers, you to start a, do a, you know, you don't have to be long hour long episodes, they could be quick you know, charge whatever you month, you can set it up as to, and just start providing the the audio version, you could do your video version, if you wanted to, and make a course, and all that kind of nonsense.

53:28 But, Billi: yeah, I mean, we did this in the fishing space, and that's what we did. We charged 10 bucks a month, and got like 300 people to sign up. We also had an audience of about 20,000 or so people that were listening to our show that we built the show for like a couple years, so that's the only reason we launched it, because I'm like, well, this conversion rate, I think we can get enough people for this to financially make sense. So that was kind of my Thanks, Sid. I Sid Meadows: mean, I'll report anybody about this, right? I'm waiting on the little tweaks to the website. His deadline is Friday, so it's Friday, is let's call it the hard launch. I've done one on one conversations about it. I have my wait list of people that are ready for it, so I'll report back in 60 days or so with how we're doing with conversion, how many people have enrolled in the program, the feedback that I'm getting, but I think I need a minimum of 60 days in order to let it get some traction.

54:24 Let the emails get some traction, because there's two lead magnet. Well, there's one, there's one lead magnet. There's a well, you join the community, there's a welcome email sequence. I've never done this before, by the way, but I wrote the email sequence, so there's a seven None of them sell until the last one. It encourages you to buy, then there's a download. There's a lead magnet that's called your first 90 days onboarding plan. plan that anybody, hopefully They go into a 12 email sequence, the first 10 add value, or the first nine add value. Be the last three sell with one of those cells with the link to schedule time on my calendar to talk to me about your onboarding process, so I create a whole 90 day onboarding map as the lead magnet, so we'll talk about that a lot to get people into that email sequence.

55:13 Then to buy Marc Ronick: cool, thank you for those questions, Billy, and thank you, Sid. And I think Sid, real quick, where if people are curious about private podcasting, if you've piqued their interest, and maybe they have more questions, what's the can they contact you, and what's the best way? Sid Meadows: Yeah, you can contact me. Shoot me an email, Mark, and drop my email into the show notes. Go to my website and fill out the contact sid form, sidmeadows.com But I would tell you, like, if you're interested in it, I'm happy to talk to anybody, right? But if you're really interested in it, do what I did. Go to your homework, go to your research. I went to, because I'm telling you, I don't know everything about Hello Audio, so I went to YouTube.

55:53 I did a little research on Hello Audio, then I joined Hello access to the Hello Audio without being a member or a paid program. coaching, you can submit them. They come on Riverside, and you can ask the questions, they'll answer it, or if you're there, they'll bring you on live, and you don't have to be a founders, do this, and so that's what I did. I started learning about it to ensure, in the meantime, I was comparing at Kajabi, and that's where I figured out where the differences were and what I So, you know, go explore private podcasting.

56:36 We did, I think, Mark, there are two episodes on this show about private podcasting, and I think one, we had the founder, like a couple of years ago, yeah, of Hello Audio on the show talking about it. It's probably evolved since then, but Marc Ronick: oh yeah, for sure, for sure. Sid, thank you again for stepping up last minute and doing this and providing all of this information. Really appreciate it. And of course, if you want to check it out, his website for the private podcast, we have that in the show notes, but if you're just curious, it's Core foundations.co so go check little more inspiration, or if space and want to be a part of program, so with that, a are off. Tomorrow is a national holiday, and it's, it's actually falling in quite nicely with our Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays all summer long.

57:36 So, we're not going away completely, we're just shaving off a couple of days during the summer, so I can have some time focusing on my business, focusing on the Empowered Podcasting Conference, etc. So bear with us and keep coming back every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday at Podcasting Morning show.com/join us. So, hey Ralph Estep Jr.: Mark, can I interject something real quick? Don't forget Tuesday we've got Rob is with Captivate. He's been in the industry for a long time. So, make sure you tune in Tuesday to, we're going to be talking to Rob Walsh. Marc Ronick: That's right. Yes, thank you for that. So, until then, make it a great weekend, everybody. Take care.