Jacob Gooden: Podcast Growth, Smart Monetization & The Role of AI in Podcasting Success | Ep34

Jacob Gooden is a seasoned podcast producer and editor with over six years in the industry, working on shows like “Hustle & Flowchart”, “7 on Sundays”, “The RV Life Podcast”, “The Ride: Lacrosse Podcast”, and many more. With a keen ear for storytelling and a deep understanding of the podcasting landscape, he helps creators craft compelling content, refine their production, and grow their audiences.  

In addition to his work behind the scenes, Jacob also hosts “The Ex-Homeschoolers Club”, a show exploring the unique, sometimes bizarre, realities of growing up homeschooled. Through this podcast and its online community, he sparks conversations about homeschooling experiences, including the good, bad, and ugly.  

Whether he’s producing top-tier podcasts or diving into personal stories, Jacob is dedicated to making audio content that resonates, entertains, and engages listeners.

In this episode of the Successful Spiritual Entrepreneur Podcast, Jacob Gooden, an experienced podcast producer and editor, reveals the behind-the-scenes strategies that successful podcasters use to launch, grow, and monetize their shows. With years of experience working on top podcasts like Hustle and Flowchart, Seven on Sundays, and RV Life Podcast, Jacob shares invaluable insights into the realities of podcasting, the role of AI in content creation, and how to ensure your podcast doesn’t fall into the trap of podfade.

If you’ve ever wondered how to start a podcast that actually grows, how to monetize beyond ads, or how AI can streamline your production workflow, this episode is packed with practical takeaways. Jacob also dives into why podcasting is still a huge opportunity, despite its growing popularity, and how spiritual entrepreneurs can use it as a tool for deeper impact, networking, and brand growth.

Connect with Jacob Gooden:

Listen to Jacob’s Podcast: Ex Homeschoolers Club – exhsclub.com
Podcast Production & Editing Services: jacobgooden.com
Follow Jacob on Social Media: @TheJacobGooden | @exhsclub
Email: thejacobgooden@gmail.com | exhsclub@gmail.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thejacobgooden/
YouTube: @thejacobgooden | @Ex-HomeschoolersClub

Core Themes

• The Podcasting Landscape in 2024
• How to Start and Sustain a Podcast
• Podcast Monetization Beyond Ads
• The Role of AI in Podcast Production
• Social Media & Podcast Growth
• Aligning Your Podcast with Your Values
• The Power of Podcasting for Networking & Business Growth

Connect with Christian

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YouTube:
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Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/chrismauerer

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Transcript

Christian
What's up beautiful people. This is Christian from the Successful Spiritualpreneur Podcast. And today I'm super excited to have Jacob Gooden on the podcast and he is a seasoned podcast producer and editor. So he's kind of the podcast backend wizard behind many podcasts that you know out there. Among them are the Hustle and Flowchart podcast, Seven on Sundays, the RV Life podcast, the Ride, Lacrosse podcast, and many more. And

Jacob really has a talent for storytelling and deep understanding of the podcasting landscape. And he helps creators just like yourself craft compelling content, refine your production, and grow your audience. with that, thanks Jacob for being part of the show.

Jacob Gooden
Yeah, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

Christian
Yeah, it's super cool to have someone on the podcast that actually knows how the backend stuff works in the podcast. So I really love to, you know, just dive in with you deep into, how does it make sense to start a podcast, which I'm sure there's many people interested. Does it make sense to, you know, how can that podcast content be repurposed? Like what is like, what have you seen from your professional experience and personal experience from how people.

use a podcast, how do people monetize a podcast, you know? All these questions that, you know, I'd love to get more insights for, you know, our audience.

Jacob Gooden
Of yeah, no. Podcasting is really interesting because I think most people are in a point right now where they're like, there's so many podcasts, right? There's just like, it's everywhere, right? We see podcast clips on Instagram and TikTok and Twitter and you know, it's like everywhere, right? Everyone's talking about, I have a podcast and we talk about this. But what's really interesting is if you look at the statistics of it, podcasts, there's only about five million. It might be a little bit higher than that, but there's only about five million. And then about half of those,

are not even active podcasts, right? So you got, you know, 2.5 million, maybe 3 million podcasts that are actively posting, right? You compare that to the number of YouTube channels that there are, you compare that to the number of blogs that there are, it is still a very small niche product, right? But it is somehow just inundated in everything we do now.

Right. I don't, I don't know one person, even like my grandparents are like, yeah, I've heard of what, like, I know what a podcast is. Right. You know, it's just there for everybody. But what's cool is yeah. Kind of thinking through why do you want to start a podcast? Right. What is the, what is the purpose of it? I sat for a long time. Like you said, I've been on the backend for six years, a podcast editing, producing, helping creators. Yeah. Get their story out there. Right.

And some of those shows have done really well, right? And they've taken off and they found their audience, right? And then other ones, kind of, do it, they dabble. And then they realize, I don't think this is the channel for me. This isn't the medium that I want to put out to my audience. And so it wasn't until last year when I started my podcast where I had sat for years kind of being like,

What is my story? What is the thing I want to do? Right. And I had thrown all these ideas of like, well, I could do like behind the scenes podcasting. Well, there's like a billion in one podcast. That's not true. Cause I just said, there's only like 2.5 million, but there's, yeah, but there's, there's a lot of podcasts that already talk about the backend of podcasting. Right. There's a lot of, you know, so I'm like, okay, well, what's my kind of niche and what happened during COVID was, so I, I'm an ex homeschool kid, right. I grew up homeschooled.

Christian
Less than... two-by-five!

Jacob Gooden
I have a very unique experience where I had a lot of friends still. was a big part of like homeschool co-op and those types of things. And when when COVID happened, we were all lonely, right? So I started reconnecting with those people. And what I realized was these people have these stories to tell and they're really interesting. And then also during COVID, pretty much anyone who has kids ended up homeschooling their kids because everyone was just stuck at home. And so we started having these conversations and we started recording these conversations and it still took me a really long time.

Podcast didn't come out till 2024, but I had found that thing that I was like, okay, this is what my podcast is about, right? And that was, that's I think where a lot of people miss the boat when it comes to podcasting. They go, oh, I want to start a podcast because it'd be great for my brand. I can monetize it. There's a lot of money pouring into podcasting right now, but they don't take the time to actually think about is this the medium that's going to get me to what I want to do, right? And do I have a unique story that we can position this podcast to be?

Right? So that's kind of a little bit, guess, hopefully that kind of answered your question of like, you know, why should you start a podcast? Right? It's not for everybody. So you kind of kind of got to ask yourself, what is the story? What is the thing that I'm trying to actually like communicate here? Does it exist already? Does it not exist? Because if you just want to do an interview show where you and your buddies sit around and drink beers and talk about sports, like there's kind of a lot of shows that already do that. Right. So maybe that's not the medium for you. I don't know.

You can still have a unique perspective, but anyway.

Christian
Yeah. Yeah. I think it's a, it's very important, but like, what is the intention behind the podcast and why people started. And I think that might also be the reason why after, you know, six months of a year, people just say, you know, not, not continuing doing that, you know, because they, they missed the step of like, why am I putting this out there? You know, I think main, the main purpose of this podcast is really to, you know, invite people to take the step.

Jacob Gooden
Absolutely.

Christian
get themselves out there as entrepreneurs, spiritual entrepreneurs, kind of like at the intersection of spirituality and entrepreneurship, and to discover that there's many others out there doing it and have done it already. Because I think now with AI coming on the market, there will be so many people who will find a new career, whether they want it or not. And a lot of that is...

is going to be entrepreneurs, you know, because employment is not going up very unlikely in the next 10 years. You know what I mean? Like, yes, there will be new fields of work being created, but like overall, like companies are more looking to downsize and, you know, making sure AI takes over what currently a lot of humans are doing. you know, to be honest, useless, you know, what do we need like 10,000 humans for what, you know, 10 robots can do?

Jacob Gooden
Yeah, I think AI is a really interesting one because it, plays a big role in even what I do as a podcast editor, right? And what I can provide my clients now. and it takes out some of the difficult. So when I started six years ago, AI, was on the scene, but it wasn't like, it wasn't what it is today, right? We didn't, we didn't have some of the tools. They just also want to trained quite as well. And so, yeah, I could kind of outline some show notes for you and whatever, but there was still a huge human element to it.

where now it can get it a lot closer, right? And then we can also use these models to train like, this is my writing style. This is how I like things worded. These are, here's how to actually spell this word correctly, you know, and it'll learn it and, you know, own it and that kind of thing. So what's been cool is one of, one of the shows I work on hustle and flow chart, we talk about AI a lot on that show. And, um, we talk about this concept of it's like 80 % robot.

20 % human, right? So it takes you about 10 % to kind of do the prompt to kind of initiate within AI like, hey, I kind of want this, right? And then we let the robots do the 80%, right? They do the heavy lifting. And then we come back at the end and we do another 10 % of human element, right? Because you still got to reword things. You still got to like tweaks and all that kind of thing, right? But to your point of it can take a lot of things off our plates of like, I don't want to do this in the first place, right?

I hate invoicing. That's like something I just absolutely hate. But if I can get a robot to do it, heck yeah. And only have to spend 10 % of the time that I would have spent just double checking to make sure the work is good. Heck yeah, I'll take it.

Christian
Yeah, yeah, of course. I think it's super powerful for, you know, other creators out there who are looking to like step up their game and just really, you know, get themselves out there no matter what it is they want to start. But yeah, of course, with that comes also the flip side, which is there's going to be a lot more of that same thing coming, which will be the one that lasts, that outlasts the others, you know, because it's going to be very easy or is already very easy to start something, but it takes something to keep something going.

You know.

Jacob Gooden
Absolutely. Well, and that's why within so within podcasting right we have this term we call the pod fade, right? So if you make it past 10 episodes of your podcast you I Joke with people I'm like you're a legit podcaster at that point because most shows won't make it past the 10 episode mark and Part of that has to do with we have to build systems in place, right? We don't just pick up a microphone one day and go. Oh my gosh We're gonna start a show like there's there's a lot of like Christian. I'm sure you're learning this I mean your show has been around for a chunk now

But like the systems are going to place of prepping for that episode, right? Of guess, finding people to be on your show if you do an interview show is like hard enough as it is. But the work that goes in before the fact, then we talk about the recording, that's an hour, two hours of your time, right? Then you, then the post work, right? Of all of the editing. That's another, you know, if your show is an hour long, editing takes at least double that typically, you know?

And then you got to write show notes, you got to do a blog post. And we're not even talking about video at this point. We're talking about audio. know, it's like you then you tackle and we got to make social content. We got to do all these different things. Right. And so it's it's so interesting because like I talked about before, right, is when people sit down and they go, I want to start a podcast a lot. That's why it's important to find that story, that thing that is this is the purpose of the podcast. Because if it's just like I said, we're going to

Me and my buddies, we're gonna drink a couple beers, we're gonna talk about the game last night. Well, you know, that's cool, but you're not looking at the whole picture of how much work is gonna go into actually doing that.

Christian
Yeah, totally.

Well,

so let's let's let's turn to stick around a little bit and I want to be like coached by you right now. And just like, I don't know, just like ask me some questions that you think like, are you doing this or is this smart or like what's your X, Y, know what I mean? Like I would love to like, yeah, just get your, you know, wizardry projected onto this podcast.

Jacob Gooden
Ha ha.

Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things that I'll say this right off the bat, I posted this on threads the other day. I thought it was kind of a controversial take, but YouTube is now the number one podcasting platform. As of January, they did like a billion streams, which beats everything, right? Previous to that, Spotify was the number one. They came for Apple, which Apple had been number one for years. They were unchallenged. Apple is really the innovator, the creator of the podcast in a lot of senses, right?

And it's interesting because there are the old heads in podcasting who are very stuck on this audio first mentality and there's nothing wrong with that. and so for the last couple of years, especially when YouTube started really pushing, Hey, we want to get in the podcasting realm. A lot of people were like, I'm not doing video, right? I'm not going to do it. And you don't have to YouTube now has a lot of audio stuff. So I'll say first and foremost, I know your show is already on YouTube, but I was, would say

If you weren't on YouTube, Christian, you better get that thing on YouTube because that's like the number one priority right now. It's the second biggest search engine in the world. If you're not there, what are you doing?

Now let me ask you this about yourself. So we talked about the, you shared that it's the intersection of spirituality and entrepreneurship, okay? What does that mean to you? I know you sent me a list of questions before we even got on. And one of the questions in there was like, what is a spiritualpreneur to you? And I was gonna ask you, can you define that a little bit more for me? Of like, what is it to you? Because that's.

Christian
Yeah, so a spiritual entrepreneur is someone who is an entrepreneur that makes not necessarily spirituality the main part of their business, but that is heavily impacted in their business philosophy from spirituality. So it'd be anyone who just

Jacob Gooden
Such an interesting question.

Christian
is in business pretty much but wants to do it from a heart-centered space. Like I want to make sure like the clients I curate are amazing, my message is amazing, my offers are, it's like it's kind of like ethical. Like there's no sleaziness, no like it's not about making money but yes we're making money, you understand?

Jacob Gooden
Yes. Yeah. There's a bigger purpose behind it than just, hey, a quick dollar. I love that. I think that that is super important in business. Right. And that's, you know, that's, that's huge. And what you said earlier too, of the, of the guests that you want to bring on are sometimes people who don't have a podcast, right? They're people who, who you want to shine a light on them because their business might be in some other field and maybe they don't do a whole lot of social marketing.

Christian
Mm-hmm.

Jacob Gooden
social outreach, anything like that. But to shine a light on their stories is really cool because yeah, I think there's a lot of entrepreneurs who, you know, they own the bakery down the street, right? Or they maybe own a digital company or, you know, whatever. And so to get their takes is a very unique position because a lot of business shows tend to highlight kind of the same six, seven people, right? We see a lot of Grant Cardone. We see Gary Vaynerchuk. We see a lot of that.

kind of hustle culture mentality in a lot of the business shows. And so to see kind of that spiritualpreneur as you defined it in more of an everyday kind of person is a unique take, right? I think it's fascinating, you know? So it may...

Christian
I love that

you say that. not only is it passing, but it also is like, that's the future. You know, like I just, I just had another podcast guest on the show and he is, he was, he was a little older, you know, and he's going to like big corporations and like his word is like courageous, you know? So he goes into like Snapchat and Google and blah, blah, blah. And just tells the teams and the leaderships to like, how could you be more courageous? Which is like.

And basically, what we've worked out throughout the episode and is mentioned in his book as well, The Return to Courage is the name of his book, is that there is mind, there's heart, and there's action. And if those three are in alignment, like...

your company is doing something right or the department is doing something right. And usually one of these is just like left out or it's like too heady or too like feely or too just doing without the feeling is, you know what I mean? Or just thinking and doing, know? it's like that, think. And another point that he made was like, you you can, if you're able to be the person you are at work also at home, like you made it.

And for you and me, we're not a generation where we're like, yeah, of course, that's what I'm aspiring to. For them, it's like, that's the epiphany concept. You know what mean? So for us, it's like, yeah, that will be because the more you're able to live in alignment with yourself, not only in work, but also in your personal life, like...

If those are almost congruent, the less you have to like just fake yourself or put on a mask or be somebody else, you can just be you, you know? When you can show up to this podcast or, you know, to your work with the same kind of like attitude, this is who I am, and just be in alignment, meaning you don't need to shift your energy. And you can just stay in your base vibration, which is probably very high if it's based in authenticity and you're doing something that you love.

There's so much alignment.

Jacob Gooden
Yes. Yeah. No, I a hundred percent agree. So if you don't mind, I'm going to lead the conversation a little bit here, bringing it back to you. Ask me to coach you on, your podcast. So, so let me ask you, let me ask you this. What are you currently doing when it comes to your podcast? We kind of talked about the goal of it, right? What's the, what's the big long-term goal for you? Is it a, is it a money play? Is it exposure play? Is it, what, what's kind of

Christian
Please, please, please.

Jacob Gooden
Do you have a goal in mind of like, want to reach, it could be numbers. It could be, I want to reach X amount of people.

Christian
Yeah, I think it's both. so it's exposure because I want to grow an audience, not only for my agency, which is LovePixel, right? So we build websites and really cool, like personal brands, but also for my personal brand, which is a little bit more kind of coaching people on that topic, which is personal branding, design, et cetera, et cetera. That's one thing. And then the money goal is there's not necessarily monetary goal attached.

But from the exposure and from the podcast, I plan on having someone on the show that says, hey, you do cool stuff. Let me build a website with you or let me get you to one of my events where you can be the branding expert, things like that. So that is kind of like my philosophy of monetizing the podcast because ads, you gotta have a lot of views and it's gonna be,

Jacob Gooden
Yeah, no, I'm the monetization thing. I think is really, it can be tricky, right? And I think, I think you're doing it right in that you're building it on the back of a brand that you already have that already does work. Right. And you can kind of, you know, shift people into, if you want to work with me, this is how, this is how to do it. And, know, and you also then have the opportunity to provide if you're a listener, right? You can get, you know, a special deal. You can have something else, right? Like, it also gets you that exposure, hopefully with people that you can get on stages, which

leads to more business, right? I think that's great. The ad play is a hard one, right? Because you also have to question if we're going to have the show based in some ethics, right? Of like, what am I promoting on the show? You can't just slap every ad on it, right? We can't just have, hey, here's HelloFresh and here's the very dollar shave club and all of these. They're not bad. I'm not saying they're bad brands. I'm just saying that like,

It creates sometimes this disingenuament. That's not even a word, but you get what I mean? Like it creates this like, yeah, it really does. it's fascinating. The show that I've worked on that I think has done ads super well is the RV Life podcast because the ads that she puts on her show are very much based in the products that RVers use. And so,

Christian
Yeah, dissonance.

Jacob Gooden
And what she does is she's able to steer the conversation into talking about those topics. So for instance, one of the, one of the products that they provide is a, is a toll pass for your RV. Okay. It works in all 48 of the congruent United States, and it just goes up in your RV. You know, you assign it to your, your RV license plate or whatever. And so whenever you hit a toll, it auto pays it. You don't have to stop. just go.

right? And you have your account online. Cause most States feel of in Florida, right? Florida has a ton of, a ton of toll roads and all that kind of stuff. So it just makes it easy for RVers who are traveling the globe. But what's great is she can steal the conversation with her guests into this, like, Hey, have you had this problem happen to you of like, you know, you you've missed a toll and then you get a big bill for it you get a fine and all these types of things. And so she steers this conversation very naturally into, Hey, let me tell you about this product.

Right. And it works for so many things that she has. And what's cool is it gives her the opportunity where you don't have that really harsh ad break of like, Hey, let's take a minute to thank our sponsors. That's not always a bad thing, but it, we tune in to listen to a story, right? We tune in to listen to, you know, advice, coaching, whatever it might be. And so to kind of have that, creates this awkward break, right? Where you're just like, like I'm just kind of turned off. And then

A lot of people skip that, right? They go, just hit the 10 second forward button until it's over, you know. Right. It's like, I don't care about this product, you know, but when you, when you can find products that align with you, with your audience, right. Then it becomes a lot easier to integrate them in and actually have people stick around for your ad rate, right? Because people understand we got to make money, right? It does it. This takes time. It takes energy. some of us, we hire editors, right? Like myself.

Christian
That's all I knew.

Jacob Gooden
You know, so it's like, it's one of those things where to put out a podcast, it is a commitment of, of money and time. And so a lot of people do understand that there does need to be a monetization aspect to it. So figuring out how to align that with yourself is, very key, you know, but it's difficult. I think the other thing that you, I don't know if you do this or not, but building an email list off the back of your podcast can be really a good way as well.

to kind of get those monetization elements. Because if you do want to do advertising, sometimes a newsletter can be the way to do that, right? Because it's a lot less weird to open an email and get down to the chunk where it says, hey, this email is brought to you by, you know, this product, right? And so that might be another way to kind of be thinking about as you're, as you're building, you know, this podcast of like, Hey, would an email be awesome? It's also a great way. The thing with podcasts.

It's hard to search podcasts, right? To go into a podcast player like Spotify, like Apple, and to really try to find a new show, it's not easy, right? That's why we rely on socials. And we can get into...

Christian
That's

why the popular ones just get more popular. know what mean? It's really like all you're gonna look through is like what you're looking for new participants gonna look through maybe 20 if you're really curious. You know what I mean?

Jacob Gooden
Right.

Yes.

Yeah. Well, let me ask you this. So are there any shows, are there any podcasts that you listen to Christian that are like not the mainstream ones, right? Like, and by mainstream, you know, Joe Rogan's up there, Mel Robbins is up there, Dax Shepard is up there, right? You know, serial is up there. Like all of these big shows that have millions of dollars backing them, you know, they're up there. They're the ones that are front of page, front of mind for everybody.

But do you have any shows that you listen to on the regular basis where you're like, Hey, I found this through this totally just original organic kind of way.

Christian
Yeah, I think it's if I have those shows, it's usually because about a specific topic. For example, I love listening to like channeled material, know, like Pleiadian channels or something like that. Just like spiritual podcasts, I think is big because a lot of the big podcasts out there talk about the big topics in life, know, health, wealth and health, wealth and.

relationships, right? But a lot of times spirituality is like, it's, I don't know, it's something that underpins all three, but it's kind of always a little bit left out, like personal environment, spirituality, like, just like topics that do well as a podcast because there's not that much content. mean, yeah, there's tons of content on YouTube for that stuff too, but also as podcasts, it's not like overly served, you know?

Jacob Gooden
Yeah.

Well, and let me ask you this too. Are you more likely to go listen to a brand new podcast? If someone you trust comes to you and says, Hey, I've been listening to the show. You should check it out, you know, and just recommends, Hey, here's one episode. Or are you, you know, you're obviously kind of digging for it to some degree, but like, think a lot of people word of mouth is the biggest marketing tool you have. Right. And I've seen that in every single show I work on.

Christian
Yeah.

Bye.

Jacob Gooden
Some of them have run ads, some of them have paid to be in newsletters and they've paid to be in podcast magazine and they've done all these things that you would think would get you exposure. But the reality is, what has worked the best is that one person who found the show, fell in love with it, went to all of their friends and said, yo, this episode of this podcast changed my life.

changed my life, it was a great story, it had this educational element, it was hilarious, whatever the thing is, it changed them in some way that they felt the need to go recommend it to all these other people. And so I think that's one of the things that if we want to go into the social media marketing aspect of podcasting, a lot of people look at, we're use Instagram, they look at Instagram and they go, I need to post reels of every single podcast interview that I have.

And what happens is their expectation is that people are going to see that clip and they're going to go to the Lincoln bio and they're going to click out of Instagram and go to a podcast player and start listening to it. Right. Is that kind of, I don't know. Do you have that expectation sometimes when you post stuff on Instagram that you're like, I want this action from this person.

Christian
Yeah, yeah, totally.

Jacob Gooden
So one of the problems with thinking that way is that you're taking somebody who's already in a very particular mind frame, mindset, right? They're in, I'm scrolling reels right now. They are not in podcast listening territory. They are just like, I want quick hits. So to have that expectation of that is success on social media marketing, I think is the wrong take when it comes to podcasting. I think the right take is

I put out such banger clips of my podcast on social media. The quotes that I put out are awesome. The this, the that, whatever it is, the supplemental podcast material that I create is so awesome and it remains so top of mind for people that when they are in, now it's time for me to listen to a podcast, right? I'm on my way to work. I'm going to the gym. I'm whatever. They go, you know what? There's this podcast. I keep seeing clips.

It's the ex homeschoolers club. It's the spiritual pernumer podcast. It's whatever it is. I'm going to listen to that podcast today. I'm going to give it a try, see how it is. And hopefully we hooked them enough, you know, within that first 30 seconds to be like, okay, they're now lifelong listeners, right? And they're going to turn in every week, every two weeks, every month, whatever it is to your podcast. So some people really push back on me with that, like the social media aspect of it. They're like, no, I want the click, right? But it's like,

I just don't think that that's the play, to be honest.

Christian
Yeah, no, agree. think it's definitely, especially as social media is getting more inundated, you need to kind of little bit take the more softer approach because it's just unlikely to take somebody out of that environment. Obviously, that's what we want as podcasters, but it's getting less and less likely.

Jacob Gooden
Yeah. And that's not me trying to say like, don't include links to your shows. Don't like, that's not me trying to say that. It's also just me saying, what does any platform want? They don't want people to leave their platform, right? You go on YouTube. The reason they serve you an additional video at the very end is because they don't want you to leave, right? We see this on like Netflix, right? You watch Netflix, you finish your movie. At the end of it, what does it do? It doesn't just like turn off. It literally says, here's the next movie you should watch. Right. And so

That's, you know, when you were looking at things like Instagram, like TikTok, that is their mentality too. We want to be the always on platform for you. So you have to learn to optimize it. Now, I will say this about social media marketing. It is draining because we have this desire within us, I think as entrepreneurs, to figure out how to be on every single platform, right? And we take...

Gary Vaynerchuk famously is like, you take this one piece of content, right? That's an hour long. And we're gonna chop it up and we're gonna make 87 pieces of content and it's gonna go everywhere, right? We're on Twitter, we're on TikTok, we're on Instagram, we're on Snapchat, we're da da da da da, right? It's like he makes these crazy statements of like, if you're walking to your job, your phone should be out and you should be recording yourself. It's like, what are we doing? And yes, to a degree, podcast content is great for repurposing.

Right? We can make so much stuff out of it. We can make blogs out of it. We can make TikToks. We can make Twitter posts. We can do all kinds of different crazy, amazing things out of it. You are one person Christian. I don't know how big your team is. I know for my podcast, it's literally me. Like it's just me. I don't have time to be on 37 different social platforms. I maybe have time for two. So I have strategically chosen that, Hey, these are the platforms I want to be on.

This is where I know my audience already exists. And once I dial in the system of figuring out I can post X amount of times a week and I'm getting the likes that I want, it's growing the way I want, okay, the system is in place. I can either then hand that off to somebody else, find an AI tool maybe that can handle it for me, whatever it might be, but then I can take on a new one. And so I think we make this mistake of like jumping all in right at the beginning.

And we don't need to do that, right? We just need to hone in. Let's make the primary piece of content the absolute best it can be. And then we're going to build off of that as time goes on. I don't know. Any thoughts on that?

Christian
Yeah, well, I mean, I, so I have a team of three people, um, on my agency. And, um, so I have a little bit more, I would say bandwidth to produce and distribute the podcasts on platforms. So yeah, I definitely like, I post the podcast everywhere. You know, I want to make sure he gets on YouTube. And of course, you know, mean, podcasting platforms are of course, but also the other socials like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook. So.

Jacob Gooden
Yeah.

Christian
Yeah.

Jacob Gooden
you seen, what has been your, what would you argue is your most successful platform, social media wise?

Christian
For the podcast, I would say it's like Facebook. Instagram, no, because people are just, the mindset is too fast to like tune in. Like, yeah, we post the real, but TikTok, no, of course not. Like, TikTok is not. Like from super tiny attention span to like podcasts, no, forget it, you know? But we're there, so it's all good. And then I Facebook is a little bit more...

Jacob Gooden
Okay, yeah.

Christian
It's like the home for people. like, cool, nice, my friends. Oh, look, there's a cool episode. Oh, I know the guy, you know? So it's also because a lot of people know me on Facebook versus other platforms.

Jacob Gooden
Right.

That's the thing too. You had already had this personal brand and also your agency brand previous to you starting a podcast. And so you're able to leverage that into, you know, maybe not all of those people come and listen to the podcast, but at least you kind of have that audience where even if you convert 10 % of them to come over and hey, listen to the podcast, be an active user, that's amazing, you know? And so that's something too.

to consider if you choose to go down a podcasting route, right? Of like, do I have an audience that's already in existence and how can I tap into them? My previous to me starting my podcast, I didn't really, because I've been the backend guy, I've been the wizard, it's all been word of mouth for me to grow my company where like, I haven't really put out thought leadership content. I haven't done that because I just haven't really needed to do that for my business to be what I would say is successful.

But now building a brand, right? And building a podcast brand, it's been interesting because I'm like, there's a part of me that feels this scramble to get the audience there. And thankfully I've like slowed down and I've taken a deep breath and I said, Hey, it's going to grow how it's going to grow. And it might be overnight and it might take two years. And I just got to be okay with that. So I'm looking at it as a law. It's a long-term play. Podcasting is a long-term play. It's not, it's not short for me.

So, you know, it might take two years for it to be fully monetized and for me to be like, this is a great full-time job that I can quit everything else and it can be just podcasting or it could never be that it could just be a hobby. I don't, I don't know. We'll see. It's, you know, it's kind of up in the air.

Christian
Yeah,

for sure. No, I totally get it. And for me, it's like, it's the same, you know, like for me, the podcast, like to put monetary expectation on a podcast, just so unrealistic that for me, I have this as a sounding board, as a platform to give people exposure and give myself exposure and build relationships with the people who also come on, right? Because ultimately the people who come on are experts in one.

or another field. so having that connection with them and having them on a podcast, think is like worth a lot, you know?

Jacob Gooden
Yeah. It's the ultimate networking product. Honestly is what it is because who doesn't want to talk about themselves, right? Who doesn't want to talk about their wins and, and, know, and hopefully if people are up for it, talk about their, their, losses, right? cause we've been someone lose some, but like to come on and to talk about that, it's like, it's invaluable.

Right. And I get to walk away from the show and I can say, Hey, I have Christian now as a contact, you know, in my Rolodex. I know he does X when I meet somebody who needs that. I can point them to you in the same way you meet somebody who maybe needs some podcast editing, some coaching, whatever, you know, you have me and your Rolodex, right? It is legitimately the ultimate networking thing. I, I.

Christian
Yeah, I think it's really

great. I really love it. I think it's such a great format, way to connect. People can be real, you know, it's not like a fake or it's not quick, like in a conference where there's no time. Like you take the time for a podcast and you have your undivided attention with the person that, you know, you're talking to, which is rare these days.

Jacob Gooden
Yeah. Yeah. And the fact that we could do it from anywhere, right? We can interview people all over the world now. It is the best.

Christian
I

the best.

Beautiful. Well, let me ask you a couple more questions about yourself and just to come back into our philosophy of being a spiritualpreneur yourself. So tell me how, what inspires you the most in your spiritual journey currently or spiritual and entrepreneurial journey?

Jacob Gooden
That's a really interesting one. And I was, I've been kind of thinking about it a lot recently because, um, I grew up like an evangelical Christian and then I deconstructed my faith and I walked away from it. And, and I thought that that meant spirit. So spirituality played a huge role in my life for a really long time of like Christian spirituality. And when I walked away, I kind of was like, Oh, spirituality is like, it's done. It's dead to me.

kind of a thing. And what I realized is that that's actually really not true because now I sit in this place of I'm agnostic and I believe that there's just bigger things than us out there and I don't know what it is. And I'm okay and comfortable just asking questions. So I don't know, is it God, is it aliens, is it spirits, is it what is it? And so anyway, so what's been cool is that that comes through a lot.

in my podcast, because homeschoolers typically homeschoolers a lot of times are raised in some kind of religious environment. And so one of the cool things about interviewing my friends and new people has been talking about that experience and unpacking it together and recognizing where do we sit currently. Right. And so there's a lot of kind of mental health things. I recently read this book. It's called When Religion Hurts You. It's by

It's right here. Dr. Laura E. Anderson. And it's been really great and kind of that spiritual like shifting of thinking, thinking through things that happened to me as a kid and as a young adult and how I unpack those and those traumas and things like that. So I know this is a super roundabout way to answer your question, but it's been cool to kind of recognize and look at my life and go, okay, I value these things, right?

We've talked about ethics quite a bit today. It's like, I value these things. These are important to me. then now, the end of 2024 and beginning now of 2025 has been big in my business as far as I want to be in alignment with the people that I work with. Right. And so I take a lot of time to get to know them. Usually before we work together, we do a lot of test projects together where we can just kind of walk away and like nobody's feelings are hurt, you know, if it's not a good fit kind of a thing.

But part of that is because I, for so long chased just the money of like, I have to pay the bills. I have to do this. And so I would work with anybody and everybody. And that led me to work with people that I was like, I just don't think we're in alignment with where our values lie in the world. now shifting that and now working with people where I'm like, we are very much in alignment of like, this is how the world works. This is what we want to see moving forward. This is how we want to grow it. These are the products and the services.

and the people and the whatever, holy crap. has, because it shifted from now, from not being about money any longer, like now the money is like, I don't even have to worry about it. It just comes, it just shows up on my doorstep. It's crazy. So I know that doesn't totally answer your question of like, who am I following as far as like spiritual leaders go, but like the mindset has been huge for me of just taking the time to like sit within myself to be like, what are the things that I actually value?

because for so many years of my life, I let other people dictate what my values were. And so now for the first time in my lifetime, I'm sitting here and going, what are the values that I actually hold as a person?

Christian
Beautiful. Yeah, it sounds like a very freeing act. Act of, you know, just like liberating yourself from what's been what's been dictating your belief system for so many years, you know, so that's really cool. Yeah. It's a beautiful. It's a beautiful journey. You know, I think just guess one comment and that could be a separate podcast, but it's like religion tends to be dogmatic. Spirituality is not, you know.

You believe something, what are you believing? Make it up. what mean? It's like, you start with the values and then at some point you realize, this entire universe cannot be made by just humans. You know I mean? like, there has to be something more because this is way too crazy for this to be like coming from a monkey somewhere a couple thousand years ago.

Jacob Gooden
you

Yeah, think to your point, it's like I said, I think I thought that spirituality was tied to specifically religion. so separating from that and realizing that it existed outside of that was like, whoa, this is crazy. Right. And then that ability to ask questions and to do things.

Christian
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Jacob Gooden
Yoga is a big one for me. Meditate guided meditation is like a big one for me of just like doing those things and coming in alignment with your body or you're listening to actually what your body is craving is desiring, right? Is needing where it's hurting, where it's, you know, where it's where it's really things are good. Things are bad. And, know, in the gut, whatever it might be, right? You're like listening to your body and like you're getting out that shit. Honestly, you're getting out the negative and you're replacing it with the positive.

It's just been absolutely crazy like experience in the last couple of years of like do kind of making that shift. So.

Christian
Beautiful, I love that. let's, we're nearing the end of the episode, so I wanted to ask you a couple more questions about, know, what are your own future goals, vision, you know, for the future as, you know, as a company, as a brand, as a, you know, podcaster yourself, like, what are you looking to call in?

Jacob Gooden
Yeah. I think I, the big one that when you say call in, I'd love, I'd love that because I think for my podcast specifically, I am trying to call in a lot of vulnerability within myself, within my guests. our stories are very impactful and everybody's story matters. It doesn't matter.

small, how big, how crazy, how just like what we would argue is normal. Like everybody's story has a purpose, right? And they're all very important and they deserve to be told. And podcasting is the way I'm choosing to do that. Right. And so for 2025, that has been my big focus of, want to have people come on and share their stories and really let them do it in their own way and just kind of figure out how to ask questions to not, not necessarily.

Yes, guide the conversation, but not dictate where the conversation is going to go. Let it kind of just naturally evolve into what it is. So from a podcasting perspective, that's kind of the big goal is just to become a better storyteller, to learn how to pull out of people the story that is already there and craft it, right? And help them build, you know, showcase this beautiful thing. So from, from, from podcasting perspective, that's, that's where I'm at.

From a personal branding perspective and just like a personal growth perspective, my business, I'm really excited. This is a big year of growth. My wife is coming into my business with me now as a second editor for me and things are growing. Things are changing. We're adding new services. We're doing a lot more YouTube stuff, social stuff, all kinds of stuff. so, so the big one there has just been like setting the goals of like, what does success look like for 2025?

Is it a money goal? Is it a client number? Is it a show number of how many episodes we want to put out? We don't really know yet. We're still kind of in that process of working through that as a couple. But it's fun. I'll tell you that. It is fun to sit down and whiteboard out like, hey, wouldn't this be crazy? Wouldn't it be crazy if we got to travel this year? Wouldn't it be crazy if we got to do these things? And so I think even just the process of kind of creating those goals.

is success within itself, right? Because we're just sitting there and actually getting to like dream big and actually go for it.

Christian
Mm-hmm. Yeah. And that's just by the mere act of doing that, you're calling that into your life. So that's beautiful. yeah. So as final thoughts and closing words on the podcast, what are the last words you want to leave the audience with? What kind of services do you offer or maybe even plan on offering with your vision exercise? And then where can people find you?

Jacob Gooden
Yeah, so last words, I'll say this. If you're on the fence about starting a podcast, if you're on the fence about being a creator, if you're on the fence about writing a blog, whatever it is, just do it. And do it messy. Start messy. That's not my term. I stole it from Chris Kermitsos. He's the leader of Podfest. But start messy. Just do the thing and then continue to evolve it as time goes on.

It took me seven years to start my podcast. bought a microphone in 2017. I didn't start until 2024. So don't be me. Just do it. Just do the thing. Start it messy. Clean it up as you go along. Okay. That's that. Uh, as far as services go, I'm a podcast editor, producer. do YouTube video stuff as well. Anything from show notes to social clips to a bunch of a plethora of different stuff, anything in revolving around the podcasting industry in particular, we pretty much do it. So

so if you're interested in that, reach out to me. It's the Jacob Gooden. It's G O O D E N at gmail.com. You can find me on all the socials. That's my handle on all the socials. And, if you, if you want to check out my podcast, I know I've shouted out a couple of times on this episode, but ex homeschoolers club. So ex HS club on all the socials or ex HS club at gmail.com and ex homeschoolers club on all the major podcasting platforms. So I'd love to, you know, get some new listeners on there and share my stories.

Christian
Awesome, beautiful. Check out Jacob Gooden and thanks so much for being on show.

Jacob Gooden
Yeah, thank you so much for having me, Christian.