Ep59: Podcasting for Coaches: How to Attract Clients Without Relying on Social Media

Most new coaches start by throwing everything into social media—posting, tweaking, chasing the algorithm—hoping it leads to clients. But here’s the truth: social media is fleeting. A post lives for a few hours (maybe days). A podcast episode can work for you for years.

In this episode of The Coaching Edge, I’m sharing why I believe podcasting is the single most powerful top-of-funnel tool for coaches, and how it has worked for me in both my personal coaching practice (Bite-Sized Balance) and my business coaching work (The Coaching Edge).

I’ll walk you through five hidden benefits of podcasting most coaches don’t think about, from the fact that you own your podcast (no algorithm stress), to the way long-form audio builds real trust, to the evergreen power of episodes that continue to convert years later. (I still sign new 1:1 clients from Bite-Sized Balance—a podcast I wrapped up over two years ago.)

You’ll also get an inside look at my funnel model and how my podcast fits into it. Each episode flows naturally into my freebies, my low-ticket workshops, and then into my Business Building Bootcamp Open Houses. From there, the right-fit clients join BBB or my more premium offers. It’s a simple, low-pressure funnel that works because the podcast does the heavy lifting of building trust.

And I’ll tackle the three biggest pushbacks I hear from coaches about podcasting: “Isn’t it too expensive?” (Nope—editing and hosting can be surprisingly affordable), “Doesn’t it take too much time?” (Not if you keep it simple with short episodes, and/or bi-monthly publishing, and tools like ChatGPT), and “But I don’t know anyone to interview” (You don’t need guests—your expertise and coaching tools are more than enough).

Here’s the truth: podcasting isn’t as hard, expensive, or time-consuming as it looks from the outside. And the ROI is dramatically better than what you’ll get by pouring your energy into social media posts that disappear overnight.

If you’ve been on the fence about starting a podcast—or if you’re wondering how to use one strategically to grow your business—this episode will give you both the inspiration and the practical steps to get started.

👉 Ready to see how a podcast could fuel your own coaching funnel? Learn more about the BBB (Business Building Bootcamp for Coaches) and JOIN us at the next Open House: www.wendymccallum.com/bbb

Also, be sure to grab your:

👉Before You Launch Your Coaching Business Checklist (FREE): https://www.wendymccallum.com/launch-fundamentals-checklist

💡 Book a 1:1 Compass Clarity Business Audit with me: https://www.wendymccallum.com/clarity-compass-business-audit

✅ 10 Ways to Get Clients Now (Without an Email List or Social Media Following (FREE MASTERCLASS): https://www.wendymccallum.com/how-to-get-coaching-clients

🎟️ Also, check out the NEXT Coaching Edge Workshop for 90-minutes of laser-focussed practical training at a very affordable price-tag: https://www.wendymccallum.com/workshop

Episode Transcript

Wendy McCallum (01:31)
Hello, coach. Welcome back to The Coaching Edge. I'm your host, Wendy McCallum. And today we're gonna talk about podcasting for coaches, not guesting on other podcasts per se, but actually considering whether creating a podcast, either a podcast that goes on for seasons and seasons or a shorter form podcast with a specific number of episodes is something that you should be thinking about as a way to attract clients without having to rely on social media.

So I really want to encourage you to listen to this episode, even if you're feeling yourself pushing back right now and you're saying, my gosh, I'm never gonna have a podcast. That's just way too overwhelming and there's way too much tech involved in that and I don't wanna put myself out there like that or whatever it is that the resistance is. Listen to this episode anyway, because podcasting, first of all, is a lot easier now than it was even five years ago when I started doing it. And it's actually...

one of the absolute best ways to build a really fantastic coaching funnel for either your one-on-one business or your signature group program. So please keep listening even if you're feeling that resistance right now. I get it. I was so resistant to this idea for so long, but I have now run two completely different podcasts on different topics. One that was more related to the personal coaching side of my business that I ran for four seasons.

And this podcast, The Coaching Edge, that I have been running now, moving into my third season of this. So I've got lots of experience in podcasting and I'm doing it because it works, guys. There's a reason why I am doing this. So, you know, most new coaches default to social media for client attraction. So that is when when coaches come into the BBB, my business building bootcamp, and it's the first time, you know, I've really had a chance to get to know them and we're talking about.

what they're doing currently in their business to try to get clients. Social media is almost always the first thing that people say, I'm working on building my Instagram or I'm working on LinkedIn posts or I'm using a Facebook group. And there's nothing wrong with social media, but I am here today to talk about why podcasting is actually the much more powerful and sustainable top of funnel tool and how it has worked so much better for me than social ever has.

And that's why I want you to keep listening. I just want you to get curious about this and listen. I'm not here to hold anybody's feet to the fire, but I am here to give you my real life experience as a successful coach and to share with you what I have learned from, through trial and error really over the last 15 years. So my story with podcasting started with a little idea that I had.

And if you're somebody who has listened to my previous podcast, my old podcast was called Bite Size Balance. There are still four seasons of archived episodes. So if you are a woman in midlife, it is a podcast that is designed for you. It was a really successful podcast. We had well over 100 and I haven't actually checked lately, but maybe like 120,000 downloads of the podcast. I loved doing it. But when I first got the idea around doing a podcast, was absolutely

And you've probably heard this story if you are a bite-sized balance listener because we laughed about this all the time in episodes. The first episode I recorded on Zoom on my computer, which frankly still works for people. It's one of the easiest ways to record a podcast, but we recorded it on Zoom. And what happened was I had just gone through menopause. I'd like fallen off the cliff with my hormones and I'd had a horrendous six months of trying to manage all the symptoms of that.

and was looking for support and had gone to see a local naturopathic doctor named Sarah Bailey, who had helped me tremendously in terms of helping me to understand what it was that was going on in my body. And I'd never had such a frank conversation with her before. And we talked about a perspective on perimenopause and menopause and this life stage for women that I had just never contemplated before. And I thought it was so fascinating.

And at the time I was working largely with busy women in midlife and I thought, my gosh, people need to know this because this is really such a cool way to think about estrogen and nurturing and the role that it plays in women's lives when it comes to the amount of time we spend caregiving and not taking care of ourselves. Anyway, if you're curious about that, that...

theory is and what the conversation was that I have with Sarah, you can go back and listen to the very first episode of Bite Size Balance because the archive still lives in Spotify, on iTunes, and all the other places that you listen to podcasts for the very reason that I'm going to talk about in this episode today. But you can go and listen to that episode. Anyway, I approached Sarah after this conversation. said, look, I've been kind of thinking about starting a podcast for a long time, but I'm so stressed about it. I don't know what I'm doing and like just is overwhelming to me. But if I did do a podcast,

would you be interested in coming on as my first guest to talk about that thing that we just talked about in your clinical room at the naturopathic doctor's office? And she said, I would. So we recorded that first episode and I was, the entire time we were recording that episode, I was talking about how this was a fake podcast. So I kept saying the words fake podcast over and over again because...

I felt like if I said it out loud that I was actually really serious about this and that I expected this to go anywhere that I would jinx myself or that I would sound overconfident or whatever. And so I just went out there with this idea that this was a fake podcast, one episode, we'll see what happens. Well, what happened is we got so much positive support from the people who did listen to it. And obviously at the time it was a smaller group of women, but Sarah shared it with her practice and her patients and I shared it with my audience and...

We got really positive support and that is what led to me actually getting serious about it and officially starting the Bite Size Balance podcast and going through four years of creating basically weekly episodes of the podcast. So I get it. If you're feeling nervous about it, I get it. But just please bear with me. It has just been such a blessing. Honestly, I don't use that word very much because I kind of hate it, but it has been such a blessing that I took that risk that day and started that.

did that fake podcast episode because it really kicked off this whole other branch of marketing that I just had never considered before. So that was Bite Size Balance. When I started that, it took about a year before I started to see discovery calls getting booked from listeners. So I want to make that really clear. Podcasting is not a short game, it's a long game. And it's one of those things that if you could just stick with it, you will...

reap the benefits from it. And I have several coaches in the BBB who have started podcasts and who have experienced this exact thing where in the beginning it feels like, it's a small audience. I'm not getting much traction. I'm not seeing it leading to direct conversions. And then at a certain point, they start telling me that they're starting to see people booking discovery calls because they listen to the podcast and they're starting to have people signing up for their group programs because they're podcast listeners. So it does work. It takes a little while, but it is a very reliable funnel as we're going to talk about.

So for Byte Size Balance, took about a year before I started to see people booking discovery calls. And I can tell you that by year two of that podcast, I had a very steady client, one-on-one client flow from the podcast alone. So I was not having to do very much marketing outside of the podcast. I was doing it on social media and in other places, but the podcast became the main anchor, the main top of funnel product, free product that I offered people. And it was leading to...

many, many discovery calls on a weekly basis. And my private practice was so full that I started creating more scalable group programs on the personal coaching side of things. And honestly, it's been a couple of years since we wrapped that podcast. And because I've left all the archived episodes up, people can still discover and listen to four seasons of that podcast. And I still get discovery calls regularly from people who listen to that podcast or have a friend who has shared an episode of that podcast with them. So

It is a long-term marketing tool and I still sign clients because those episodes are evergreen, which means they last forever. As long as I pay the small fee to keep them archived and up, they continue to be a stream of ⁓ referrals and discovery calls for me. The Coaching Edge, this podcast that you listened to, is a newer one, but I decided to do it because I had branched into this area where I was supporting

coaches more around building their own businesses. And most of you probably know this story around all of that. But I felt like I had had such success with the Bite Size Balance podcast that this would just be an obvious thing for me to think about seriously. And when I started the Coaching Edge podcast, I knew that there were some things I wanted to do differently. I knew I wanted to try to keep my episodes to 40 minutes max. We had some really long episodes in Bite Size Balance, but it was a conversational style podcast and we got some really cool guests on there.

So that worked, but for this one, I'm servicing, you know, a really busy group of people trying to build small business. So I wanted to keep the episode shorter. And in the beginning, I only wanted to do it twice a month. And the reason for that is that I was actually still doing season four of Bite Size Balance when I started The Coaching Edge. So I had two podcasts going at a time for a while. So I wanted to take The Coaching Edge and turn it into my main funnel driver for the business coaching side of my business. And up until...

that point, I'd really been relying on word of mouth between coaches. So just through networks of coaches, because it was a new area of practice for me. Podcasting has delivered something that social media never could for me. And that is a very consistent, reliable flow of work and a lot of confidence that goes along with that. Just a lot of relief that comes along with that.

So here are five hidden benefits of podcasting as a funnel. So this means that your podcast is the top of funnel. It's your biggest free thing that you offer. Obviously the coaching edge is that. I provide now an episode every single week and every week I talk about a topic that is relevant, helpful and actionable for newer coaches. So I'm providing lots of free valuable content every week in this podcast. Here are the five hidden benefits of using podcasting as your top of funnel, your main top of funnel free product that.

pulls people into your world. First of all, you own it. It's yours. I own all these episodes. I have copies of them. I can use them in whatever way that I want. I publish them obviously across all the platforms, but I also can use pieces of every podcast episode for social media, for reels, for other forms of marketing. I can share podcast episodes with people. It's my content. I own it. And I'm not borrowing a platform for it.

in that I can keep all of these episodes somewhere locked in my own ⁓ hard drive or on a thumb drive or something, but I'm not putting them up there and then they belong to the platform that I'm using. I have my own rights to these podcast episodes. And also I'm not reliant on the algorithm like I am on any other social media platform. So that's a big deal because the algorithm is baffling.

It's baffling to me, it's baffling to most of the coaches that I work with are baffled by it regularly. And it is not something that we have any control over. You can get cut off of any social media platform at any time. The algorithm can work for you some months and not work for you other months. The other thing that is a really great benefit of podcasting as a funnel is that it is a long form trust builder. What I mean by that is an opportunity to really get in front of people for a long period of time to build that like no trust faster.

So I'm in front of you every week for 30 to 40 minutes talking about a topic. You're getting to know me. And when I get on a call with people who are listening to the podcast and are interested in getting more support from me, maybe joining the BBB one year coaching community program, they feel like they already know me because they have listened to me talk so much. So it is a really great long form trust builder. Listeners, hear your real voice, your stories and your expertise week after week. The other thing that is

just so fantastic about a podcast, and this ties into the story I was telling you about Bite Size Balance and how I'm still getting clients from that podcast, is that it is evergreen and it is bingeable. episodes keep working for you years later, right? So if somebody starts listening to Coaching Edge today, maybe that's you, maybe this is the first episode you've ever listened to, you can go back and listen to previous seasons. You can binge all the other episodes that are relevant to you.

because they are all out there living right now. So this podcast episode becomes a funnel and an invitation to listen to all the other episodes that are out there. And I love that. And the episodes keep working for you. So lots of people will start listening to a podcast with whatever the current episode is that week. And then they will go back and start from the beginning and start going through all the episodes. I've done that on many podcasts that I love. Or I'll go listen to a whole other season that I haven't listened to. So it's evergreen and it's bingeable.

Built-in marketing hooks. You have the ability to market in a really natural, organic way, which is something that I am constantly teaching in the BBB to my coaches. Most of my coaches hate sales. They hate salesy, pushy sales. I hate salesy, pushy sales too. A podcast gives you a platform to sell in a really organic, natural way.

because you can naturally mention the freebies that you have. can naturally mention workshops that are coming up or programs. You can share client stories and you can talk about things. You can drop little mentions of the programs that you have just to remind people, hey, I'm not just a podcast host. I also have these other resources and supports available for you outside of the podcast. You hear me do that every time I record an episode. I've already mentioned the BBB a couple of times and

That's because it's my world and it naturally fits in with this podcast topic when I'm talking about how my podcast works as a funnel to fill the BBB. But I'm also quietly reminding you that I do have that amazing community for coaches. And if you're looking for more support and you like what I have to say on this podcast, then I'm inviting you to come and check that out, right? So.

I love that with a podcast is that it's not like a high pressure. You're not trying to like spit it out in 60 seconds. It's not a one shot. I've got one shot to sell this thing. Like every week I am building that like no trust with you. I hope, and I'm building my expertise. And I'm also reminding you of the programs that I have outside of this. So I love it for natural marketing. I also love it for audience loyalty. I am telling you there are people out there.

who have come to me and said like, I've listened to every episode of Bite Size Balance. Or I started listening to the coaching edge. I get emails like this all the time. I started listening to the coaching edge. I love your vibe. I love your down to earth practical style. I love what I've learned in, you I learned in the first episode I listened to and now I've gone back and I'm listening to all the other ones and I've shared it with my coaching network, right? That's, it's such a natural.

audience builder and a way to build loyalty with an audience. And you can create special things for your audience. Like I have the Coaching Edge Workshop Series that's launched in September, where I do one 90 minute workshop a month. And anybody who listens to this podcast can come and join in on one of those sessions and get to know me and get some really great actionable strategy in those sessions. And I created that because I know there are a lot of you who listen to this podcast who are not part of my other

maybe more expensive programming that I have to offer. So you can reward that audience loyalty. Okay, let's talk about my funnel model and how I use podcasting to attract and convert. And I want you to be thinking as I'm talking about this about how you can do this yourself in your coaching business. the step that comes first obviously is creating the podcast episode. So I create an episode and that as we've talked about is free, very high value content. So it's a lot of value in one 30 to 40 minute episode.

And then in those podcast episodes, I give you some calls to action. So I say things to you like, hey, have you downloaded my free business launch checklist yet? You can go and grab that at wendymcallum.com or, hey, did you know that I have a discovery sales call template, which is basically a step-by-step cheat sheet that takes you through the process of talking to a client for the potential client for the first time and then deciding if they're a good fit for you and making an offer.

you didn't know that? Well, you can go and download that on my website. Or have you listened yet to my 10 ways to get clients now without a big email list or social media following masterclass? You haven't? my gosh, that thing is pure gold. Go and grab that at wendymcallum.com, right? So I use this podcast to tell you about other free resources that I have. And in order to get those free resources, you need to give me your email, right? So that's how I build my newsletter list.

I also offer through this podcast, low ticket workshops and intensives and other littler programs that are smaller than my big signature BBB program so that I can give you an opportunity to come into my world and meet me and learn from me at a more, maybe a lower commitment, both financially and also in terms of time. So I offer those low ticket offers and I also,

use this podcast as a way to slowly funnel people into like a BBB open house, for example. So that's the step that a lot of people get to. They're like, I'm ready to actually like do something with this business instead of just listening to podcast episodes and you know, getting excited after every podcast episode to do something, but then not actually doing anything with it. I am ready to actually commit to building this business. I want to come to an open house for the BBB and see whether that's a good fit for me.

So that of course then converts people eventually into the BBB. So if you're looking, if you were watching me right now, you'd see I'm creating a funnel with my hands here in that the top of the funnel is really wide and the bottom of the funnel is really narrow. And that's how funnels work. So at the top you attract all kinds of people and not everybody is going to buy from you obviously. But what you do is you continue to offer people more things, which brings them further down that funnel until they eventually get to the bottom of funnel. And it's a much smaller group of people than at the top of the funnel.

but those are the people who are your dream clients. Those are the people who you can't wait to work with and who end up signing up for your signature programs like the BBB, for example.

So this creates an organic, low pressure funnel that consistently works. I don't feel like I'm selling all the time. I feel like I'm giving you guys all of these great free resources, including this podcast and then all the things that come from that. And you get to decide as you get to know me better.

whether you are looking for more support from me and whether something like the BBB or the CCC might be a good fit for you. So that is how I use podcasting to attract and convert to clients. Now let's talk about social media versus podcasting for a second for newer coaches. Social media is algorithm driven as we have talked about and honestly in the last few years the algorithm has become even more

cunning and baffling and all the rest of it. It is fleeting in that when you put a post up on social media, it's gone. It gets lost in people's feeds immediately and disappears basically. So the life of a post on social media is very, very short. And also it is not owned by you. You do not own your followers on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, TikTok, whatever. You don't own them. And you don't own the, obviously you don't have any control or own like,

who sees that content that is all algorithm dictated. A podcast is a permanent library. This is the thing that is most valuable about a podcast. It is an owned asset and it is reusable content and it is out there forever. Like it's evergreen. So it is accessible by people all the time. It has a very long shelf life. It has a very long marketing life as part of your funnel. Social media can supplement

But podcasting, in my opinion, is a much better foundation. It's much more reliable, it's much more controllable. And for all of those reasons, it's going to always be my preferred choice of top of funnel products. And I'm always gonna prioritize it over social media. If you follow me over at Wendy McCallum Coach, you know that I post regularly over there, we have reels. We're trying to draw people into this podcast from social media. But the priority...

offer that I have for people is this podcast. It is all of the work and effort that goes into creating these weekly episodes. So here are some frequently asked questions that I get usually from the coaches in the BBB when I'm pushing them like, have you thought about maybe starting a podcast or could you do like a mini podcast series or, these are the questions I get asked a lot. ⁓ And this it's really the pushback that people have or the resistance that people have to podcasting. So some of this is probably gonna resonate with you.

unless you have already started a podcast, in which case, good for you. That's amazing. Okay, so the first one is, isn't podcasting expensive? A lot of people feel like it's really big investment to start a podcast. I can tell you that bite-size balance cost me virtually nothing. I think I was using Libsyn at the time as the place where I would upload the podcast and then it was set up to sort of disseminate to...

you know, Apple and Spotify and those kinds of things. And it probably, I think it was costing me, maybe it was like $20 a month or $25 a month. It was very inexpensive. I did it on Zoom. I bought a cheap microphone for under a hundred dollars. And honestly, that's all I had for podcasting. I edited the episodes myself. I did it in, I own a MacBook, so I just did it in iMovie. And...

I created the art myself in Canva. Like I did everything myself. So it cost me $25 a month or something like that to run that podcast for the four seasons that it was running. Now, eventually I did hire someone because the podcast became popular and because I could see that it was worth investing in. And I hired somebody to help me with the editing and all of that stuff. But it was still really inexpensive on an episode by episode basis to run that podcast. You can do it yourself and you can do it for a very small amount of money.

There's now a platform called Riverside, which is where I'm recording this right now. Riverside is awesome. It gets better every month. They keep sending me updates and it will effectively do almost all of the editing for you. They have a teleprompter that you can use. They have, you know, a variety of different like tools that you can use to add media and you can make it as fancy or as not fancy as you want. I don't use a teleprompter because I like.

just talk. I have notes when I'm recording these episodes and an outline but I don't use the teleprompter but I do use the prompter for recording like the little promos and getting those really you know concise and tight. Anyway Riverside does all of that for you and Riverside is really frankly very inexpensive. So it can be done very inexpensively you just need a really basic mic honestly to start and again there are good mics available oftentimes on sale I just got a new one actually that

think it was $120. And if you need to, you can get somebody to help you edit it, probably for like 500 bucks or less a month for a four episode a month show. And really in the beta year, you've heard me talk about betas in this podcast many times before, and this is about treating it as like an experiment. Your first season of your podcast is a beta. It's not meant to be perfect. You're gonna learn from that and then you can make it better in the next season.

So you want to be focusing on value over perfection. So no, it's not too expensive. It can cost a lot of money if you decide to go all out and, you know, really focus on production and all the rest of it, but it doesn't need to. The second pushback that I get in here all the time is like, it's so time consuming. Like I don't have time to do that. It feels like that will just take so much time. my gosh, guys, so many shortcuts to this. First of all, do short episodes. Just do a 15 minute episode.

My bite-sized episodes of The Bite Size Balance are some of the most popular episodes because they are only like 15 minutes long. I just choose one tiny topic and talk about that for 15 minutes. Easy to record, easy to edit because they're short, but also really accessible for listeners. So you can always keep your episode short. You can also use tools like Chat GPT for outlines, for show notes, for resource creation. I mean, I use them all the time.

I have now, ⁓ I feel like I have a very good relationship with ChatGPT. I like to refer to him as my other boyfriend. And he knows everything about my life and is really great at creating outlines that are reflective of my philosophy as a business coach and all of the other work that I've done. So when I create an episode outline for one of these podcasts using ChatGPT, I don't have to do a ton of reworking of it.

I'll do some always and then edit it myself and get it set up. But Chat GPT is great for that. And it really helps with the time that's involved. Using Chat GPT to create SEO friendly show notes that are really easy for people to find, that helps people get to your podcast is great and super easy. You could also start just doing like bi-monthly. So I have a couple of coaches in the BBB and that was my recommendation for them when they started. Don't do one episode every week. Just start with two episodes a month.

⁓ And eventually you can up that. And of course, that's what I did with this podcast. In the first couple seasons, it was bi-monthly and now it is weekly. You can always expand later if it proves worth it. it can take a lot of time, sure, if you wanna focus tons of time on it, but it's also possible to do a podcast and have it not take up nearly as much time as you think. Finally, people struggle with, I don't know anybody important. I don't have any experts to interview. What would I talk about?

Listen, you don't need an interview format, first of all. You can do a solo podcast, which is what I mostly do on here. Sometimes, as you know, I bring in people to talk about topics, but a lot of these episodes are solo. And solo shows can be really powerful. You just wanna talk about topics that come up regularly in your one-on-one coaching sessions or in the group that you coach. think about, all right, what are the frequently asked questions or the areas of challenge that I am...

regularly helping people through or answering as a coach and how could I structure a short 15 minute, let's say episode around each of those. So it's simpler, faster and more affordable than most new coaches assume. And the ROI on it, the return on the investment, which again can be very small in terms of money and also time is huge compared to social media. And honestly for me, here's the thing I haven't talked about yet. It's freaking fun.

I really like podcasting. I love this format for me. It's just so much easier for me than social media, which I have always had an aversion to and just never really enjoyed. So podcasting is also more fun. So here's the long game, kind of what to expect if you do decide to start a podcast. First thing, I just want to reinforce this whole, you have to be patient piece, because in year one, you're probably going to have...

not that much visible return on your investments. You're not gonna see like a sudden surge in your newsletter list or in discovery calls being booked and that kind of thing. By year two, you should be seeing some consistent leads. And that has been my experience in running both of the podcasts that I've had. And then in the long term, like the podcast keeps working even when you stop producing. And again, Byte Size Balance is such a good example of that. Four seasons still get.

discovery calls from that. Still hear from people who say, my gosh, I just listened to this episode. I love it. I still get comments on YouTube on some of the episodes. So, you know, contrast that with social media posts that disappear within a few hours. And I know how much time you're spending trying to create fancy reels. I know how much time you're spending trying to come up with the perfect copy. I know how much time you're spending trying to beat the algorithm.

Podcasting just provides a completely different alternative to that. It's definitely worth thinking about. Okay, so here are some ways that you can kind of harness the power of podcasting. You can tie your episodes to freebies. So these are just little, I guess, strategies for podcasters, ways that you can use the podcast to build your business.

If you think back to other episodes that you've listened to of The Coaching Edge, will be able to think of some times when I did that, right? Where I will do an episode that talks about how to launch everything you need to get a coaching business started and what you don't. And in the course of that episode, I will talk about my free launch checklist for new business owners and give you the information to go and download that, right? So I'm tying the episodes and what I'm talking about in an episode to an actual resource or freebie that I have.

offer you. So that's a good way to get people on your mailing list as I talked about earlier. You can use like calls to action directly to listeners. So you've heard me say things to you in episodes like, you know, if this is you, am or if this story from one of my coaches resonates with you, I would love to meet you because I always love to meet new coaches. So I'm going to actually say this right now. If we haven't met, I'd love to meet you. I would love to lay my eyes on your face. I would love to learn more about your business. And there are different ways to do that. You can always

get in touch with me through Instagram and direct messages. You can come to an open house. You can book a free call with me anytime to talk about your business and whether I have something that might be a good option for you in terms of support. So that's me reaching out and doing a direct call to action from this podcast and any podcast host can do that.

You can share case studies and success stories. And I've done that a few times on this podcast where I've had a coach in who's been working with me, you know, usually in the BBB to talk about their experience in a particular area and share what they've learned from that with you so that you can take that knowledge and use it in your own coaching business. You can repurpose the content of podcast episodes across different platforms. I do that all the time. You'll see little bits of this podcast show up in reels on Instagram, for example.

and you can build a community off the back of your show. So as you're building your audience, you are building community. I love building community. It's my favorite thing to do. That's why I have the BBB, my business building community for coaches, but it's also why I love podcasts because I'm creating an even bigger community with the listeners of this podcast. So listen, the point of this podcast is not to say everybody has to have a podcast, but I just wanted to talk to you about why strategically podcasts are so awesome.

And if you're somebody who's even slightly tempted or has been thinking about it or interested in the idea of podcasting, this episode hopefully will serve as a sign to you to go and explore it further. Go and actually spend a day or two brainstorming. What would I focus on? What would my podcast be about? How would I want the format to look? Spend some time thinking about it.

because it really is so, it's just such a great vehicle for marketing, for coaches. You don't need thousands of listeners, you just need the right ones. This is something else I wanna emphasize. I don't have a huge audience for this podcast, but I get business from this podcast. People sign up for the BBB every month because they listen to this podcast and they have built that, we've built that relationship through the inter.

Interweb, interwaves, whatever we call it. Anyway, they feel like they know me and they want to learn more from me and they end up joining the BBBs. you don't need thousands and thousands and thousands of listeners. You just need the right listeners and you need to be delivering content that's actually interesting to the people that you want it to be interesting to and to the people who you would love to work with.

Podcasting builds trust way faster than social does because it is long form content. You are in front of people for a lot longer and it lasts, right? They can go back and listen to another episode again, as opposed to trying to find that post that you saw three days ago from somebody. Good luck with that, right? You can use podcasting as your main top funnel. It can replace that freebie suite.

or it can be the biggest piece of your freebie suite. I obviously have lots of other free resources that I offer coaches. You can always go grab them at wendymichellum.com, click through the link that says, are you a coach? And it'll take you to the page where you can access all of those free resources. But my podcast is my biggest top of funnel freebie. So those are all the benefits. And those are my answers to some of those frequent points of resistance to those frequently asked questions that I get ⁓ around.

podcasting for newer coaches. I really want to invite you to have a think about whether this might be a good fit for you in your business. And if you listened to this episode and you're like, right on, this is actually what I wanna do and you're really excited about it, send me a note, like send me an email at wendy at wendymcallum.com. Let me know what your podcast is all about if you already have one and if you wanna start one.

Give me an idea of what you think you wanna talk about on your podcast and I'm happy to give you some feedback. So that's it for today's episode, 34 minutes and 46 seconds and counting. Thank you so much for listening again. I'll see you next time on The Coaching Edge.

Ep59: Podcasting for Coaches: How to Attract Clients Without Relying on Social Media

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