From White House Writer to Agency Founder - John Corcoran's Playbook for Podcasting and Growth
Key Takeaways
- John would run his podcast even if no one listened, and tells clients the same. The value is high-caliber conversations with referral partners, strategic partners, and clients.
- Downloads are a vanity metric for B2B. John knows hosts with a million downloads who never monetized. With a high client lifetime value, a few client conversions is a home run.
- A podcast invite gets you time with people who'd never take a coffee meeting. John has had the co-founder of Netflix, Kinko's, and the founder of EO on his show.
- Systems beat gear. John went from a year with zero episodes to 52 the next year after Jeremy helped him fix his process. Most new clients ask about microphones first.
- 80 to 90% of Rise25 clients are launching a new show. The ones who quit before usually hated show notes, editing, and uploading, work a high-LTV owner shouldn't be doing anyway.
- EO gives founders a place to talk about what they can't say to a spouse, partner, investors, or team. John's chapter runs roughly 11 to 12k the first year and about 6k on renewal.
Gray MacKenzie hosted this episode with John Corcoran, co-founder of Rise25, the company that produces Agency Journey. John wrote presidential letters in the Clinton White House, worked at DreamWorks early on, then went to law school and ran a boutique practice. The conversation covers why downloads are the wrong number to watch, the year he shipped nothing, and what he’s gotten out of Entrepreneurs’ Organization.
He’d do the podcast even if no one listened
Gray asked whether show format correlates with how fast a podcast grows. John questioned the word “growth” first.
I’ve been doing a podcast for 13 years, and I love listeners. I love having people listen to it. But I would do it even if no one was listening, and I say the same thing to our clients: I want you to do it even if no one is listening, because it’s such an amazing tool for having really high-caliber conversations with referral partners, strategic partners, clients, that sort of thing.
I’ve known people that started a podcast, got huge downloads, listenership, and they gave up on it and they’re driving for Uber. I literally know people like that. Or I met a guy a couple years ago that was really proud of the fact that he had over a million downloads on his podcast, which is amazing, but he was working in an Apple store… What it said to me is that the guy hadn’t figured out a way to monetize it.
The caveat: this isn’t advice for a hobby or true-crime show. Rise25 only works with agencies and B2B companies that have an obvious way to turn conversations into clients and referrals.
A podcast invite beats a coffee meeting
Gray asked about conversion rates. John answered from his law practice: networking events, lunches, and coffees where two people promise to refer each other and nothing comes of it. Better, he said, to spend that time interviewing people a level up, who won’t do coffee but will be a podcast guest, and to give them exposure in return.
If you have a high client lifetime value, if your clients are worth 10 grand, 50 grand, 500 grand, whatever it is, you don’t need to get that many clients out of it for it to be a home run. Great use of your time, phenomenal ROI. And so whether you have a million listeners or a thousand listeners, I don’t know, I don’t care, because if you’re just focused on having great conversations with the right people, some of those people will turn into clients or they’re going to be a champion of yours.
The year with zero episodes
Gray asked how John and his business partner, Dr. Jeremy Weisz (a past guest), came to treat podcasting as a business. Both had shows already, Jeremy since 2008 and John since 2010, and they’d run an events business together that John was tired of flying around for. Jeremy’s podcast had better systems. John’s had a bottleneck, and it was John.
There was a year where I put out no episodes. I did some interviews, but I didn’t put any episodes out. And I turned to him, I was like, can you help me put better systems in place? Which he did. And the very next year I put out 52 episodes, one per week. Probably was less time-consuming and certainly much better results for me.
After that, people started asking the two of them for help, and most just wanted to know what microphone to buy. Rise25 became strategy, accountability through a client success team, and all the production. Today 80 to 90% of its clients are launching a new show, often someone who quit years ago because they hated doing show notes, editing, and uploading themselves.
What EO gives a founder
Gray was weighing EO, Hampton, and Vistage for 2024. John started in EO Accelerator, built for businesses around a quarter million in revenue that want to pass seven figures, spent three years there, then graduated into EO proper, a peer-to-peer community of about 18,000 members.
It really is designed to help entrepreneurs, which can be a very lonely profession, because there’s a lot of stuff as a founder of a business that you can’t talk to your spouse about, can’t talk to your business partner about, can’t talk to your investors about, can’t talk to your employees about. Highs and lows. And this gives you that vehicle to talk to others who know what you’re going through.
John moderates his forum, a group of seven to 10 peers that meets monthly. Some communities charge around $25,000 a year for three fly-in events; his chapter runs roughly 11 to 12k the first year including initiation, then about six grand a year.
His number one tip for agency operators
Gray closes every episode with this question. John’s answer, “at the risk of sounding self-serving,” was to do what Gray does: create content and use it as a networking tool.
Before I was doing this, I was growing my network rather haphazardly with any other lawyer in my community who was not so busy that they would decline an invitation to go to coffee with me, which didn’t really help my business at all… I’ve had everyone from the co-founder of Netflix to Kinko’s to the founder of EO on my podcast, and you can’t just reach out to those people and say, hey, I’m curious about you, will you hop on a Zoom call with me so I can ask you questions? But when you’re doing it for the purpose of creating content that gets distributed across the interwebs, it’s an amazing tool for getting those types of people to say yes.
John’s show is Smart Business Revolution; Jeremy’s is Inspired Insider.