SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders
$1m Podcast Agency Launches Booking Software
09 Mar 2021
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This just started. We are going, we are alpha launching literally yesterday.
Okay, so launching here in 2021. So you're pre-revenue? Correct. You are listening to Conversations with Nathan Latka. Now, if you're hearing this, it means you're not currently on our subscriber feed. To subscribe, go to getlatka.com. When you subscribe, you won't hear ads like this one. You'll get the full interviews. Right now, you're only hearing partial interviews.
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My guest today is Tony Warnaccia. He's grown up over 10,000 small businesses and dozens of Fortune 500 companies, including ADP, Ford, and AutoNation, and became the Google Partner of the Year. Later, he returned to the entrepreneurship group to bring his strategy, tactics, and resources, normally reserved for large enterprises, to small businesses.
He's now focused on making podcasts profitable for hosts and guests with Custosity. All right, Tony, ready to take us to the top?
Yes, absolutely.
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Chapter 2: What is the purpose of Castosity and how does it help podcasters?
I mean, I get these pitches all the time. I probably get seven a day, but those agencies that charge their clients that want to be guests, a $1,500 retainer a month, they're committing to getting them on like 10 podcasts, but also they're trying to quantify how many views those podcasts get. The small podcasters still get screwed.
That agency is not going to make their client happy if they book them on a 200 download episode podcast.
I don't know if that's accurate because that's not what I found. Because the way they pitch it is it's more about the quality of who you're being booked with and the size. There's a whole bunch of agencies that kind of move away from that model. And the idea is that, to answer your initial question, is if I get booked on that show, then I have some money to actually... promote the show, right?
So the idea of this kind of gets into the sponsorship model. The sponsorship model is not to just monetize as advertising. It's to add value around that podcast. So for instance, if I'm just launching my podcast, there's a certain value to the downloads, but what about your email list? What about your social media profiles?
So just because you're launching a podcast doesn't mean you don't have influence outside of that. And so we have our system.
Paved.com and thoughtleaders.io really dominate the email space for this exact same concept.
Yeah, I'll take a look at that. But the idea is to have all that in one place where you can book with the podcast show and then they monetize it. So it starts at $100 and it goes up from there.
So the idea is to go after the smaller players. I just think we have people listening right now that have been on other podcasts and they're listening to you pitch the idea of no, now that they're not just giving an hour of their time to go be interviewed somewhere, they're also going to have to pay for it. And they're going, I don't, I would never do that.
I don't like Tony's business model, but you say you've seen this. It sounds like you've seen this with agencies. You have guests that are paying you as an agency, $1,500 per month. And they're totally cool. If you just go book them on 10 podcasts that average 200 downloads each for $1,500.
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Chapter 3: What monetization strategies does Castosity offer for podcasters?
200 downloads. That's obviously you just said you want to help small podcasters. So we're not talking about you booking people on Joe Rogan here.
No. Well, I think you're using an extreme example of 200 podcasters or 200 downloads as well. I'm not saying that's my target market. Someone just starting. I'm saying it's the smaller podcasts that haven't monetized yet. And so what we're simply doing is giving them a path.
The kind of podcaster on your platform are going to have at least how many downloads per episode?
Yeah, I mean, they're probably going to have, you know, the ideal. You really start monetizing on podcasts once you get to 10,000 episode downloads. So we're looking somewhere probably between.
That's top 1%. The average podcast download, the average podcast is less than 100 downloads. So you're not working with a small guy. I mean, you're working with a top 1%.
That's my point, though. That's what I'm saying is the average, not who we're targeting. I'm saying the average one really starts monetizing once they get to 10,000. So we're targeting the people below that. So below that, somewhere between 1,000 to 10,000. So we're not looking at the 200, we're looking at the 1,000 to the 10,000.
A lot of you guys will ping me out of the blue asking for help selling your software companies, but I'm not a broker and I'm really focused on founder path right now, not helping folks sell their company. So I'm always looking for great tools to recommend for you guys to quickly figure out what you could potentially sell your company for and how much cash you could get.
That's where Flippa comes in. Now, here's my thing about brokerages, especially for selling your company. You guys should not have to pay a 10% brokerage fee when you put your blood, sweat, and tears into building your company for years out of a sale. All smart founders know, though, that the best way to maximize price is to have multiple options.
So how do you get multiple options, multiple bids on your company without paying a broker 10% or more? Well, I recommend Flippa because they have the largest list of buyers for these sorts of digital assets, which almost always guarantees a bidding war. I tell my founder friends all the time to try Flippa's valuation calculator to see what their company is worth.
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Chapter 4: Why is targeting smaller businesses important for Castosity's model?
I understand. I fully understand the product. I'm just trying to understand if you're going to try and get people in it. So you've got 100 people on the wait list. You're going to launch with joint ventures. I mean, isn't the right way to launch these ideas you're talking about is actually to launch an agency, not a software product?
Yeah.
No, because I've done this when I work with Google. This is the problem Google has. Google needed a fee on the street. And so to sell small businesses, it's very, very difficult to do that as an agency because the revenue is just not there, to your point earlier.
And so software is really the best way to approach a small business market because the cost for acquisition is too high at the end of the day.
Got it. How much money of your own money have you put into the company so far to get it towards that today?
Not too much, probably 20,000 at the most.
Did you raise capital or no, all bootstraps?
No, I bootstrapped it.
I love that.
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Chapter 5: How does the booking process work on Castosity's platform?
Take us home. Take us home here. What's something you should do when you were 20? Something, something like what you wish you knew when you were 20.
Oh gosh. I wish I would have, uh, I wish I would have got a mentor. That's probably the biggest thing you can do is get someone to mentor you. I wish I had quality mentors earlier, earlier on.
As he had an agency in the podcasting space, helping people get land books, working with sponsors, working with podcasts. So it's now turning into software at a service with this company, castosity.com. They are pre-revenue launching paywall here shortly, a hundred people on the wait list. He's put 20,000 bucks of his own money in. We can, we'll see if he can make it work.
Tony, thanks for taking us to the top.
Yeah. Thank you.
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