As podcasting keeps growing in popularity, Joe Saul-Sehy created Stacking Benjamins to stand out. He is now building a podcast empire with multiple podcasts and many people working together to create a podcast empire.
The Stacking Benjamins podcast is a widely successful podcast and media company empire with multiple, awards, and millions of downloads. Founder Joe Saul-Sehy is on the Successfully Unemployed show and teaching us how to create a podcast empire to become successfully unemployed.
Today, I am excited to have Joe Saul Sehy on this podcast. I met him a long time ago, and his name is all over the place. He is incredibly successful and has a lot of wisdom to share. Like Joe, you can be successfully unemployed.
How Joe Saul-Sehy became Successfully Unemployed
It didn’t come easy.
Starting from his first podcast, it went through 3 changes before Stacking Benjamins became a thing.
Now, Joe makes all his money from his many podcasts including Stacking Benjamins with affiliates and sponsors
To grow the business even more, Joe has multiple podcasts under the Staking Benjamins brand and continues to grow the business with the help of others.
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Joe Saul-Sehy didn’t start with Stacking Benjamins to be Successfully Unemployed. He was a DJ…
Joe realized at a young age that there is a discrepancy in the working world. He wanted to impress his customer, but he also needed to impress his boss.
There were people that were being promoted, because they were impressing the boss, but the customer got lost in the shuffle.
When Joe was in high school, he worked at the Tasty Freeze in downtown Vicksburg, Michigan.
When Joe was 16, his dad helped his brother and him form their own business. They were at a wedding with a bad DJ, and his dad went around bragging that his sons could DJ better than that guy.
The next day, his dad said he would back them if they wanted to do it, but they had to write out a business plan.
They had a loan with an interest rate from their dad to buy the equipment and they traveled around to DJ.
His job as a DJ was much more fun than working at the Tasty Freeze. They played every VFW, high school, and fraternity. There is a low barrier to entry, so there is a lot of competition.
When Joe was just finishing college, he was managing the telemarketing department for a water treatment company. They installed water softeners.
Joe had a friend who was a financial planner who called him and said, “We normally don’t hire people like you, but you would probably be good at this”. Joe had none of the qualifications, but he thought it sounded good, so he became a financial planner.
The next thing you know he was selling permanent life insurance and mutual funds with really high fees. As the business changed, he changed.
Watch the entire stacking benjamins interview here:
Joe owned a financial planning franchise, but the franchisor was purchased by American Express, and then American Express found out he could talk. Joe started off locally representing all of the financial advisors in the Detroit Metro area in the media.
Before long, he was one of 12 advisors in the United States, speaking on behalf of American Express in the national media. He was still a financial planner and he thought this would be the end of his story.
Just before Joe turned 40, and he had been in the business for 15 years, a mentor of his gave his two-weeks’ notice and it was a surprise. This was not the type of business that you give notice, you left in the middle of the night with client files and there was usually a lawsuit involved.
His mentor wrote a nice letter saying he liked his job, but he accumulated a nice sum of money and he decided he had other mountains to climb. He ended up climbing Mt. Everest twice after that, as well as most of the tallest peaks.
This made Joe question what he really wanted to do in life and he ended up selling his business and stayed around for a year to help with the transition. At age 40, Joe went back to school to be a high school teacher and a track coach, because it was what he wanted to do.
How Joe Sold His First Business
Joe had done a good job at saving and he had a spouse who loved what she did for a living.
It was going to hurt to cut their income in half, but it was going to be okay, and he had a bag of money from the sale of his business if he needed it.
Joe lasted just over a year as a teacher, because there wasn’t a lot of creativity involved.
During that year, he was bored, so he started writing TV segments and radio commercials for his friends who were in media along with newsletters for financial advisors.
He was making the same income as a first-year teacher, but he was in a tee shirt and shorts and he was having a blast.
He quit teaching and started a blog, which ultimately became the Stacking Benjamins podcast.
Creating Stacking Benjamins was a process of growth and change.
Joe was writing this ultra serious stuff and other people were writing from their personal experience. Joe had never done that before.
Making that switch was hard, and the blogging world was very crowded.
Joe and his partner on the blog, OG (Other Guy), decided to start a podcast. They waited a year to start it, because they didn’t know how to do everything, but it turned out that didn’t matter. The real problem is having something to say from your unique point of view and your unique style. He shouldn’t have waited a year.
Then he was blogging and podcasting.
Know what your competition is.
One of Joe’s favorite books is from Austin Kleon, called Steal Like an Artist.
Take people that you admire and riff on what they do to the point where you are paying homage to it, making it your own, but you are not really ripping it off. Every great artist does this.
Joe did podcasting halfway for five years and then went to an industry conference and saw how the real pros work. Joe went back to OG and said they were no longer going to blog, they were going to double down on the podcasting.
They weren’t going to be a couple of funny guys, they were going to take some comedy classes and do comedy in a better way and they changed the production schedule.
They did this and lost one third of their listeners and he received a lot of hate mail. He decided to move forward and it took six weeks, and eighteen shows, to recover. Then the awards started coming.
How to create a bingeable podcast like Stacking Benjamins
Learn your space, find out who is in your space, write down what you like, think about other spaces and how you can bring that. Look at other types of podcasts and see what they are doing.
Take pieces of the things you like and put those together in a way that is uniquely you.
The Stacking Benjamins theme song is based on the Tonight Show theme song. It is a variety show and there are a lot of different segments and guests and his narrator at the beginning introduces them all. Joe likes shows that move and he also likes shows that have a hidden track at the end, like one he listened to regularly.
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You are going to suck at first. Get over it and get it out there. Working on revisions is easier than writing from a white page. You can’t revise until it is on a white page.
Stacking Benjamins is the third iteration of the podcast. They started a podcast they knew was going to die, because they knew it wasn’t going to be great.
Do you have any other points about starting a podcast that will eventually make money?
There is a very low barrier to entry, so there are a lot of podcasts out there. Don’t expect to make money right away.
Make it bingeable. (people want to listen to all of the stacking benjamins episodes in a row)
The best advertising of all is the product. Hone your craft and think about it like a Netflix show, where they leave you on a cliffhanger and you can’t wait to watch the next one.
Serve your customer, and if they love you they will tell everyone.
What are some ways to monetize your podcast?
Realize what point of podcasting you are at. Sometimes the name of the advertiser is more important than the money.
Don’t wait until you have an audience to go for advertisers. If are going to have ads, have them from the beginning, because your listeners will accept them. If you add them later, it makes your listeners mad. Figure out your strategy from the start.
People come for what it says at the top of your episode. New listeners will give you about 30 or 40 seconds, so cover that topic at the start. If you are talking about something other than what is in your title, people are going to be gone.
At the end, market there, because those people stayed to the end and they love you.
Get to the meat quickly at the beginning and sell at the end. Figure out how to make it good for your advertiser, but also so it doesn’t upset your listeners.
Should a Podcaster pitch their free or paid items at the beginning or at the end of the show.
Joe recommends pitching at the end of the show.
With advertisers on his show, they are in the beginning and the middle, because they are contractually obligated to do that.
In communication, it is about having as little friction as possible so they love you. The more they love you, the more they will stick around for more of the show, the more they stick around to the end of the show the more they will buy.
Make people love you first and then they will buy from you.
Create stuff that people love.
Does Joe coach other podcasters to be like Stacking Benjamins?
Joe does not regularly coach people, but he does coach a couple of people because they are good friends. Also, he wants to see people succeed in his genre.
If you have to teach something, it makes you better at it.
Coaching others helps Joe sharpen his saw and be better at his trade and what he does.
He doesn’t coach people for the money they pay him.
He does it to make himself a stronger podcaster.
With having more time, and wanting to stay busy, how are you giving back to make the world or the people around you better?
Joe is involved in local charities. He started off doing it to get involved in his community and now he does it to feed his soul.
When he first got involved, he thought he didn’t have the time, but that was not true.
The advice Stacking Benjamins Joe would give to 15 year old Joe…
Don’t try to reinvent the wheel all the time.
Joe surrounds himself with coaches all of the time. It pushes him to be a better human being.
He doesn’t need to be an expert in everything.
What tools do you use in your business or life that make you better or more successful?
Todoist. It is a great to-do list.
Imagine what age you will be when you die. If it is 82, write down everything you want to be doing when you are 80.
If you do all of those things at 80, how many more years do you think you will live?
What will you do with those years?
Why are you going to wait until 80 to do all of those things?
We get so caught up in the little stuff now.
Non-fiction book Joe Recommends Everyone Read
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey
Find Joe Saul-Sehy
- Website: stackingbenjamins.com
- Podcast:
- Stacking Benjamins
- Money with Friends