1001 – You CAN do this: Tom talks How To Have A Successful Podcast

SUMMARY BY CHATGPT

Tom Antion shares practical advice for launching and maintaining a successful podcast, drawing on his experience producing over 1,000 episodes. The key takeaways include:
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✅ Core Principles for Success:
• Consistency and Persistence:
Tom emphasizes that showing up regularly is the main reason his podcast thrived while many others fail after just 10 episodes (a phenomenon called “podfade”).
• Avoid Early Sponsorship Chasing:
Most new podcasters mistakenly focus on getting sponsors too early. With sponsors typically paying $12–$18 per 1,000 downloads, it takes significant time and audience size to earn meaningful income this way. Most give up before reaching that point.
• Be Your Own Sponsor:
Instead of relying on external sponsors, promote your own products or services. Tom made his podcast profitable from day one by selling his own materials, which can yield better returns faster.
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💡 Cost-Effective Production Tips:
• Edit Your Own Audio:
Tom personally edits every episode using Adobe Audition (or you can use free tools like Audacity). Learning this skill can save thousands of dollars over time.
• Don’t Outsource Too Soon:
Outsourcing audio editing (at $100/episode) is unnecessary for beginners and contributes to burnout and podfade.
• Use Affordable Hosting:
Hosting services like Libsyn cost as little as $5–$20/month, and YouTube hosting is free.
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🎤 Equipment and Content:
• You Don’t Need Fancy Gear to Start:
Start with what you have; you can upgrade equipment later.
• Make Your Content Valuable:
Avoid turning your show into a sales pitch. Offer helpful, actionable insights and lightly promote your own offerings.
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📌 Final Thoughts:
To build a successful podcast:
• Be consistent and persistent
• Promote your own products
• Keep production costs low
• Learn basic editing
• Focus on delivering value
Tom closes by recommending listeners check out episode 1000 for life principles based on his father’s legacy and encourages visiting his mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com.

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Episode 1001 – How To Have A Successful Podcast
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody! It's Tom here with episode 1001 of Screw the Commute podcast, and this is going to be how to have a successful podcast. As you know, we just reached 1000 episodes and I want to just give you an idea of how that happened. You know, this is one of 0.25% of all podcasts has ever made it this far. But I'm going to tell you how you don't have to hit a thousand episodes to really do good and have a successful podcast. All right. I hope you didn't miss episode 1000. That was the leadership skills, loosely based on the eulogy I did for my dad Sam Antion back in the year 2000. It's about a 90 minute one, and I call it my pretty much my best work ever. It's not the hardcore, you know, how to email market and all the stuff that I do, but it's principles that I think would do you, your children and grandchildren and everything. Uh, really well. All right. Pick up a copy of our automation e-book. It's screwthecommute.com/automatefree. And you've heard me say that for 1001 episodes now. But version 3.0 is out. So if you're still on version two, then you want to get rid of it and grab this 3.0 at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. And check out my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com and my school at IMTCVA.org.

[00:02:01] You know, I do a lot of other podcast interviews, over a thousand radio and TV and podcast interviews, and I frequently get asked Tom, what is the key to your success? And you know, you can go a lot of ways with that. And success is different for everybody. I would have to say, especially in my business, is consistency and consistency. That's always my answer is I'm consistent. You can know what to expect from me other than what I do, funny stuff. And that's I get a little goofy, but. And then I'm persistent. I just won't, you know, I scratch and crawl till I get the success I'm looking for and most of these podcasts. So this is how to have a successful podcast. This episode and most podcasts come into what we call pod fade pod f a d e, and that's probably why ChatGPT did some research for me and said that the average podcast quits after ten episodes. Okay, so we're at 1000 or 1 right now. So why is this? Well, I have I have several theories on why this is the case. And one is that people aren't consistent and persistent. That's one. But why aren't they is the question. Well, a couple reasons that that I've come up with is that they go for sponsorship too soon, and that just doesn't make any sense in the real world. See, when sponsors decide they want to sponsor your podcast or advertise on your podcast, they typically pay between 12 and $18 per thousand downloads per episode. It's really, really hard to get a thousand downloads in any episode.

[00:04:10] You could go a year and not achieve that goal. And so even to even if you got that goal, how many sponsors are going to be interested in you? And they're only paying you 12 to $18 and you can't have ten different sponsors on one episode. Nobody would listen anymore. See? So you could go a year and make 12 to $18, which is just, I mean, just bizarrely crazy. It's no wonder people quit because they think I'm just going to get out on the airwaves. Then sponsors will give me money, and that's how it's going to pay for itself and make make me a lot of money. Well, well, it just does not work that way in the real world. So after you do your ten episodes and nobody is interested in you to give you money, then Yeah. You quit. Right? Or most people quit. Put it that way. So going for sponsorship is ridiculous in the beginning. Unless you're already a celebrity, that's a whole different animal. You're not Joe Rogan, you're not Michelle Obama or somebody that's well known. Say, if you are, then you can probably do this, but most aren't. So I suggest that you're your own sponsor. That's why Screw the Commute was profitable from the first episode because I'm my own sponsor. I could sell one book from the first episode and make more money than you could make from sponsorship in six months or a year.

[00:05:49] Say, that's the cold, hard reality of this. So be your own sponsor. Do the podcast to promote yourself, although it has to be quality or nobody will listen to it. If all you're doing is is bragging about yourself. And you can see if you've been around this long that I just give, give, give solid, you know, usable information. And yeah, I'll say, hey, check out my school, check out my mentor program. But it doesn't dominate the whole podcast. See? So you can be your own sponsor. It's so easy to make a digital product nowadays and sell it for $20, $30. And you're already ahead of the game. Sell ten of them and you made several hundred dollars for that episode. See? And when that happens for you, you won't fade. You'll say, oh, well, I'm going to do another podcast because I want that 2 or $300 again. See? So so that's one thing of why I think there's pod fade is people try to go for sponsorship that's not there. It doesn't make any sense. But they don't know any better. And so they quit. All right. So that's the first thing. Be your own sponsor. Then the second thing is they think they're too good to do the work to produce the podcast, or they're too lazy to do the work to produce the podcast. Are you aware that every episode 1001 episodes? I haven't done this one yet, but I will when I'm done talking to you.

[00:07:27] Plus a 5 or 6 youth episodes. We've done special episodes. I have edited each one of them and you say, that's stupid. Tom why would you do that? Why don't you just farm it out? Well, think about this 1000 episodes times. Maybe 100 bucks to to farm it out to somebody to edit the thing to my standards. Well, how much is that? 50 or 100 bucks times 1000 episodes. $100,000. All right, so that doesn't make any sense either. And people can't believe. Well, I can't edit stuff. Well, here's a couple of things. Yes, you could with a little bit of training if you sat here and watched me, how lightning fast I can go. And basically I'm just taking out bad parts. If I say I'm or or or I clear my throat, then I edit that out and it's just lightning fast. You would be amazed how how easy it is to edit audio. Yes, you can easily learn to edit audio for free if you use audacity. I happen to use Adobe Audition, which cost me $20 a month to use it as a service. So I don't download the program, I just log on to it. Again, editing audio is just really, really easy. You're just taking out bad stuff and leaving the good stuff. I mean, my the guy that taught me this and 25 years ago, uh, Mike Stewart, the internet audio guy, he says, hey, audio editing is easy.

[00:09:03] He says he's got this southern drawl. He says, what you do is you record something and then you cut out what's bad and what's left is good, and that's all you're doing. I cut out the any ums and ahs and loud breaths and and lip smacks and, I mean, it's just so easy to do now if you're doing a video podcast. Hey, I didn't even bother with that because you have the visual aspect. Nobody notices the ums and ahs so much, and you might be interviewing somebody else, and so you don't even have any editing on those. So. So don't be spending 100 bucks an episode and it's no wonder people quit. You know, they they don't get any money from sponsorship. They're not sponsoring themselves. And they're paying 100 bucks an episode to get it produced and not put out. Yeah, I get that. It doesn't make any sense. People fade, they quit. All right, don't do that. Learn how to edit. And so it doesn't cost much to do to produce the thing. And you want to get a podcast hosting service like Libsyn that can be from 5 to $20 a month for the gold standard of podcast hosting. And if you're doing it on YouTube, it cost you nothing. Okay, so it costs virtually nothing to have a good quality podcast and you just have to do it. And, you know, forget about sponsors. Be your own sponsor.

[00:10:39] And any editing, if it's just audio, do learn to do it yourself. I mean, like I said, a thousand episodes as busy as I am with this big company and all the other stuff I got going on and all the students I got to handle and help, I still bam, bam, bam, I'm going to, I'm going to edit this podcast and send it off to Libsyn. And there you go. So that's how you have a successful podcast. You, you, of course, you have to have a topic somebody wants to hear about and so forth. So that's a different story. But I'm just saying it's consistency, persistency. Be your own sponsor. Don't spend hardly anything at all on production. Now you have to have a decent microphone. But that's about it really. I mean, I have fancy equipment and expensive microphone, but I didn't start that way. I had just, you know, whatever junk I could plug into the computer. Right. So you can you can do this. All right. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Make sure you listen to that last episode, 1000, screwthecommute.com/1000. Pass it along to your kids, your grandchildren. And if they do, the things in that, great things are ahead of them. All right. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Check out my mentor program. GreatinternetmarketingTraining.com if you want help with all of this stuff on a one on one basis. All right, catch you later.