After two years and more than 100 episodes of The Business You Really Want, Gwen and Tonya have enough data to answer a question every business owner should eventually ask: Was it worth it?

In this episode, they look back at what actually made the podcast sustainable, what surprised them, and what the numbers revealed about the people who listen. They talk about the importance of building a buffer before you need one, setting realistic expectations before starting something new, and why good content mattered far more than aggressive promotion.

They also unpack one of the biggest surprises of the past two years: The podcast didn’t just help new people get to know Gwen’s perspective. Existing clients became some of its most devoted listeners.

This is a behind-the-scenes look at what happens when you give an idea enough time to generate meaningful data—and why Gwen and Tonya agree that the investment of time, money, conversation, and even reputational risk was worth it.

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Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

What Two Years Of Podcasting Taught Us About Business

The Strategic Power Of A Content Buffer

Welcome back to the show, which has been around for two full years and a little bit of change. You shared on LinkedIn about our two-year anniversary. We had gotten a couple of questions there that I thought would be fun to address here on the show, mainly because people want to know what we have learned.

What I thought was that we could go back and forth and share a few things that we have learned over the past couple of years by doing this show weekly. Not everybody does a business show weekly. That alone, going on the heels of our last episode, provides us quite a bit of data that we can share with folks, review, and also reflect upon. I’m going to tip it over to you, because I get to do that in this seat, and say, first thing that comes to mind, what have you learned over the past few years?

This was more of a confirmation from other examples. It ties into the last episode about talking about how you define what good data is, how much data you need, and whatnot. We made the decision very early on, before we started, that we wanted to have X number of episodes in the bag before we got started, and we wanted to stay ahead a certain amount so that we could be consistent on delivery.

For the most part, we’ve had a few hiccups in the last little bit for a variety of reasons. We can probably talk about that more later. On the whole, because we did that, that made the whole process easier. We very consciously stayed ahead and rarely rested on the buffer that we had, even to the point when I was in the process of moving. I can’t remember how many we got ahead at one point, but we were 8 or 10 ahead. I knew I was going to be in this weird environment because I was between homes. I didn’t know I’d have access. I didn’t know all of those things.

I don’t know if this happened in your world because you do all the backend stuff, but in my world, it kept things so much easier. I wasn’t worried, like, “We’ve got to record an episode.” That occasionally happened for us. I can’t say that that never happened but in two years, that almost never happened. I learned it years before when I was trying to be super consistent. I didn’t have anyone helping me with blog posting and some of those other things way back when.

Before we had schedulers and a lot of the tools that we have now that make it easy, I know I needed to have them written, or it would be easy for my life to get in the way. When we started this, there was no anticipation that I would be moving in the middle of all of this at that time, but life got in the way. Sometimes, it does. My first thing would be thinking through the bigger plan, not just saying, “Let’s start a show. Let’s do it weekly.”

Thinking through the bigger plan—of not just saying 'let's start a podcast'—is crucial because life occasionally gets in the way. Share on X

Setting Realistic Expectations With Industry Benchmarks

I’m so glad you brought that up. When I planned our last episode, I wasn’t thinking, “I’m going to have us do this for episode 110 so that I can then talk about this for episode 111,” but it’s a great segue. Though I am the person who went out and did the research to get the data, I cannot take credit, I believe, for going, “This is the data that we need to compile.” You get the credit for that as well.

Before we ever went into this, it started off with, “I’ve always wanted to do a show. People always tell me to do a show,” and me going, “Before we ever do a show, we’ve got to do this.” It was then you and me getting together and going, “What are the numbers we need to know now in order to set accurate expectations for what this show will be, what the show will do for the business, and what will end up?” First of all, I have to give huge credit to your friend Crista Grasso.

With all of the research that I had done, she had the most similar podcast to what we were planning. She was super kind in revealing the nitty-gritty of her numbers to me so that I could set expectations. She was very generous. I said, “I want to set accurate expectations. If we have to pull the plug in six months, that’s fine.

I don’t want to pull the plug, though, because we think that we’re going to be the next fancy podcaster person.” She gave us the numbers over time, so we knew what to expect. We went into this with the expectation that when we hit our stride, we’re going to have 300 to 500 downloads per month. You’re going to die, but we are sitting pretty at about 800 downloads per month for the last quarter after two years.

It doesn’t surprise me because I remember us talking about that. Shout-out to Crista because most people who would have what would be considered a competitive podcast would not have shared the amount of detail that Crista did. Shout-out for having good relationships and all of those things, because that’s why. That did allow us to look and say, “Are we on track? Are we doing relatively well?” I remember there were several times that you would give me numbers and I said, “Those seem good. Is that good? It feels like it’s good.”

I’m like, “This is triple what I thought we’d be at right now.”

I’d be like, “That’s good.”

When I look at our numbers, we’re over 12,000 downloads of all time. We switched hosts three months in, so we don’t have that data. We only have data with our current host. You know we were not getting these download numbers in year one, but that brings us to an average of about 511 downloads per month over the life of the show.

Why High-Quality Content Beats Paid Marketing

The reason that I think it’s important to bring this up is for this other thing. You’re probably going to have to unpack this because I might be much up here. We don’t do a lot to market the show. We have not once paid a dollar to market the show, as far as I know. We have not sponsored anything. We’ve talked about it over time, but we’ve never done that.

You have done some interviews where you’ll lead people to the show, but for the most part, this show’s marketing happens on LinkedIn and Facebook through 2 to 3 posts a week that are completely scheduled and automated. Marketing also happens on my channel, but because I’m the co-host and my target market is not quite at the level of most readers of this specific show, I’m sharing it maybe once a week. You put out a newsletter once a month that links people back to the last four episodes. I put it in my newsletter about once a month, and that’s it.

Everything that this show has gotten is either a few people who have found it and keep coming back for more or people who are sharing it and referring the show to their friends. We know a lot of that happens because that’s the data that we keep getting back. It goes to show that all the marketing in the world cannot help, nor can it hurt a show with good content. I do believe, and I don’t care if it sounds arrogant, that we produce a stinking good show in terms of content. Not super high production quality, but very good content.

 

 

To that point about good content making a difference, that was one of the other things that was part of the conversation early on. I have a friend who says, “I’ve never met a microphone I didn’t love.” I’m the same, but I’m also the same way with a camera. I’ve never met a microphone or a camera that I didn’t love. I was on video early, doing other things. People were like, “I can’t watch myself.” I was like, “I don’t have any problem with it.” Zendaya? I’m not her, but I’m okay. I’ve always been okay. I know what my voice sounds like. I know all of those things, so I don’t mind watching.

I also know we didn’t need more of the same thing. When people are like, “You need to have a show,” it’s like, “I’m not sure what I’m going to say that’s not the same as what everybody else is going to say.” That was one of the big things that you helped me identify. It was like, “You say these things, and you feel like they’re normal. They are normal to you and to your clients because you say them consistently, but it’s not what the rest of the world is hearing.”

She said, “In the conversations that you and I would have on a weekly basis when we’d get together and meet specifically, the world needs to hear that.” This is not a quote, but it’s pretty close to the conversation that we had. It was like, “That, to me, is worth doing because I don’t feel like it’s exactly the same content that’s already out there.” To me, that was an important piece.

In the two years that we’ve been doing this, AI has completely taken off. By the time someone’s reading this, they may be like, “What do you mean it was taking off? It is.” It was before AI hit. It was starting when we started this. Now, it’s heading up the exponential curve very quickly. That means content and information is a total commodity by the definition of what a commodity is. There is so much out there it doesn’t even matter, quite honestly.

The fact that we were trying to say things that weren’t necessarily out there, that weren’t part of the conversation, that it wasn’t all of those things. To me, it was an important piece of what we were doing. It was one of the things that I would be proud of and frustrated with at the same time. You can talk more about this. I would say things, and we would talk about whether it was the yellow VW Bug scenario.

Is it where once you buy one, all that you see are yellow VW Bugs when before, you never saw any, or is it that you set the trend, and everyone is buying yellow VW Bugs? I would say things, and then all of a sudden, in about a month or two months, a lot of the people that I know and follow, and that I’m pretty sure follow me as well, were using the same phrases. It was like, “That’s interesting.”

Content and information is a total commodity. The fact that we were trying to say things that weren't out there was a really important piece. Share on X

I’m so glad you brought that up. I remember that time when I said, “At the very least, if we do a show, we’ve got a timestamp. We don’t have to wonder. We can say, “You were saying this going back to August 2024, and they started saying this at this point in time.”

I have done enough public things in my life to understand that if you want to hold it precious and for it to always be about you and yours, then you can’t put it out to the public. You have to be okay with that.

Fostering Real Thought Leadership For Female Entrepreneurs

Piggybacking off of that, this was one of the things that made me excited about this show from the beginning. I did not need another show in my life. Can we be clear about that? I was co-hosting a show that had millions of downloads. I was getting ready to launch my own show. I wasn’t quite sure the world needed more of Tonya Kubo on the mic, but what excited me is when I was digging into business shows hosted by women targeting women, I wasn’t seeing a ton of quality or consistent quality.

There were some great interview shows highlighting and elevating women. Crista does a great job of that. There are several that do a great job of interviewing female entrepreneurs and showcasing what makes them amazing, but there wasn’t a lot of great thought leadership in this space. It’s where you had women on the mic, talking about things that other people were talking about, but adding new perspectives to it that changed how it was viewed or maybe the conclusions you could draw from it.

That was something that I’ve always loved about knowing you. We’ve known each other for seventeen years. You always bring that to the table, but you’re not a super fast writer. You can write it all day long. You can’t make people read it. The beauty of podcasting, live streaming, or whatever you choose to do is everything spoken can be turned into written words, whether that’s by a human or by an AI assistant, much quicker than you can sit there, write, edit, and rinse and repeat.

I feel like we have been able, in the course of two years, to produce a lot more solid, thought-provoking conversations and help people draw conclusions that allow them to make different decisions based on new information than we ever would have if we spent the last couple of years writing one single book.

You know us. It would have taken us a whole year or two years to write one single book, a series of articles on LinkedIn, or a Substack. I didn’t go into this thinking, “Two years from now, I’m going to be so proud that we planted our flag there and we stayed committed.” I spent more time plotting these episodes than I probably would have spent writing an article on these topics, but they were so much better.

That, to me, is the other piece that was super valuable. We picked this format. We did have a discussion, like, “Should we be interviewing?” There are some of those. There are some that are a hybrid. We’ll call on Crista again. She’s going to be our highlight reel because she does both in every other situation. She interviews one. She interviewed me, and I was grateful for that. She then does one that’s her own thought leadership. She does that hybrid piece of it.

If you want to hold your ideas precious and for it to always be about you and yours, then you can't put it out to the public. Share on X

I like the idea of more of you interviewing me because part of what we know is I am good off the cuff. That’s one of the things. I have insights, and I don’t necessarily have to be highly prepped for it. Most of the time, I’m hardly looking at the outline. I’m hardly looking at anything. There are a couple of times where it’s like, “You need to look at the outline. You’re going to a way different idea than where I was at.” I’m like, “Sorry.”

That’s my fault because I ask questions that I know for a fact you could answer three different ways. I got much better about that over the course of two years.

That was part of it. Part of it was because I knew what your background was. Your background is journalism. That’s where you started. I knew that you knew how to ask the question in an interesting and compelling way to allow me to take it in a variety of ways. In most cases, it wouldn’t throw you off. It would be like, “I wasn’t thinking about that, but that’s a great example.”

We are able to move it on into whatever direction it needs to go. For me, that was another reason that this version worked well for me because I didn’t have to prep. I paid you to prep, which was part of the deal, even though we would both brainstorm topics together and whatnot. It allowed it to still have enough structure without it feeling like a script. No one wants that.

Analyzing What Matters Most To Your Listeners

I’ll give another surprise. This speaks to some of the things that we did that were different. Over the past couple of years, our top five episodes of all time were, 1) Creating Moments That Matter for Clients. 2) From Task Rabbit to Brain Trust: The Real Secret to Effective Delegation. 3) Creating Consistent Revenue Without the Drama. 4) It was the question we asked, Are High-Touch Services Making a Comeback?. 5) When Not Scaling Is Your Strategic Advantage. What does the fact that those are our top five tell you about what matters to people, to our readers?

The thing that stands out goes back to an earlier statement that we made. Most of those titles and the content in them were not bait-and-switch titles. Our friend Annie P. Ruggles was talking about the bait-and-switch title. She was like, “I apologize for offering you the best service ever.” That was her thing. That’s a total bait and switch.

None of those were bait-and-switch titles. That was what we talked about. Most of those statements are fairly contrary. Not all of them. They’re a little contrary to what is often perceived as best practice. I’ve said this many times. Best practice is often common practice in disguise. That created curiosity. That was our point. It was like, “What if what everyone is telling you is completely wrong? Not because it’s wrong universally, but because it’s wrong for you as an individual person?

 

 

Are you thinking about the things that allow you to make that judgment instead of beating yourself up because you’re not doing the thing that everyone says you’re supposed to do, or if you do that thing, that must mean you failed? The list goes on and on. Owning the contrary side in not an aggressive contrary way, not to be contrarian, but to say, “Context matters.”

I love the short that was put together very early on. Context matters often because it does. If we don’t take into account that we’re human, and we’re all having very unique experiences as we walk on the same planet, often in the same city, sometimes in the same house, but we’re still having different experiences, we’re missing the point.

Shout-out to RJ for picking up the context matters and putting together that clip for us.

Quite honestly, that’s one of my very favorite things that we have up on the channel.

It’s my favorite thing, too. It makes me happy all the time.

It makes me laugh.

We said it so many times in those initial episodes. I’ll put my marketing hat on. For me, it did two things. First of all, it validated the offer-market fit of the show. The show was getting into the right set of ears. You have always worked with impact-driven professionals. Before you even focused on, “I work with female entrepreneurs who X, Y, and Z.” It has always been impact-driven professionals. These are people who want to make a difference and people who value the people they serve.

When I look at a five, one being about meaningful moments for clients, another being about high-touch services, and another being about not scaling, that tells me that we attracted the exact audience that we were hoping to attract through this show. These are people who wanted to make a difference and people who wanted to work deeply with a few clients more than working very generically with a bunch. I don’t think we would have hit that market quite like we did had we been doing this through another mode.

I agree with that.

This is not the kind of content that goes viral, for a good reason or a bad reason.

It would have been fine if something went viral, but that was never our goal. The goal was never to be an influencer, which is what I think of when I think of viral. The goal always was to make an impact where someone said, “Holy crap.” We’ve gotten a few of those. It was like, “This is what I thought was true, but no one had said it. Until someone else said it, then what I thought was true is true.”

I had one of these experiences. One of my own heroes in the world, his name is Greg Crabtree. He wrote a book called Simple Numbers and a second book called Simple Numbers 2.0. I had the honor to be in a room with him. Part of the reason he is my hero is that there were instinctual things that I have said about numbers, finances, and all of that, where I have no official training on any of that. All of it has been from the ground up and figuring things out.

He, as a CPA who created a large firm that was bought by a bigger firm, is someone who has real credentials in this area. Almost every finance person I know, when I say that name, is like, “He’s amazing.” This is a person with huge credentials who says the exact same thing that I was saying. Even though I knew it was right, the point is that someone else who has some real credibility says it, you go, “See? I told you. I knew it.”

When I talked to him, I mentioned a couple of things, and he said, “You didn’t have to unlearn the thing that wasn’t true. It doesn’t surprise me at all that you instinctually knew these couple of specific things because you were doing it from a logic standpoint. Not from a training standpoint.” I know that when we were able to do that for others, whatever it happened to be, that’s where real impact was made.

The Unexpected Value Of Podcasts For Client Retention

I like that one. I will share a surprise next. The whole idea here was to shorten the sales cycle. You would meet people, and you would say something that they’d never heard before. In a networking space, whether it’s an in-person conference or an online Zoom, there is very little time for you to develop the idea and little opportunity to make enough of an impression to follow up afterward.

A lot of times, you would say something, and it would be so contrary to what the other person had heard before that they thought you were full of you know what. The show became an opportunity for you to be able to drop a quick link and say, “If you want to know more about this, here’s a link.” If they chose to, they could spend 20 to 40 minutes hearing more about that.

If it resonated, maybe they follow up. If it didn’t, oh well. You didn’t lose any time. You didn’t have to chase people down. We spent the first year thinking that’s what we’re doing here. It’s a nurture mechanism. A lot of people will talk about podcasts. Megan Dougherty has a podcast agency and does a lot of strategic podcasting.

We got to be guests together on her show, which was fun.

She talks a lot about podcasting as a mechanism for nurturing toward a sale. I was surprised, and yet looking back should not have been, at how much our existing clients rely on this show as their daily dose of Gwen, which I think is so cute. They love it. They’re like, “In between quarterly tune-ups and between my one-on-one sessions with Gwen, I love to pop the show in because it reinforces what Gwen has taught me over the years.”

This is a direct quote from one of our clients, Debbie Floyd. She said, “Every time I hear it, I get something new out of it, even though I have access to Gwen all the time.” I don’t know why. To me, clients are paying for a certain level of access. I would assume the clients at the level that we serve wouldn’t think that our free content would be valuable to them or there’d be anything else they could get, and yet Sarah, who’s another one of our clients, talked about, “I don’t understand how you guys can afford to give all this great stuff away for free.” That was a surprise to me, but it’s a good one. I love that.

Related to that, one of the things that we discovered was we never got a new client from the show, even though I think we were hoping we would get some new clients. What we got were returning clients because they were like, “I remember why I need to have Gwen talking to me on a regular basis.” It’s the messaging back to, “She’s saying things that no one else is saying.”

We got several returning clients, and we did get some referrals that converted faster. They would be technically new clients. The only reason they got there was because they were referred by someone, but they were like, “You should tune in to the show.” As soon as they tune in to the show, they’re like, “She’s saying something completely different than other people are.” It helped that conversion of the referral.

It was that whole piece of, so often, what we were saying is so contrarian. I would encourage the same thing as well. If no one else is saying it, can it be true? I’ve been in the same boat. I’m not even being critical about it where it’s like, “No one else is saying that. Is that true?” Unless you were that example of, “This instinctively feels right, and no one else is saying it, but now one other person is saying it.” It makes sense to me.

Part of it for me always was that I want you to question. I don’t want you to assume that what you’ve heard everyone say is correct, which is often. So-and-so is mimicking. It’s not thought leadership. It’s thought mimicking. If anybody in the process said, “That’s an interesting way to think about it,” even if they didn’t take action on it, I consider it a win.

So much of what we hear is someone mimicking someone else. It's not actually thought leadership. It's thought mimicking. Share on X

Reflecting On The Return On Investment After Two Years

I agree. I’ve pretty much completed my list of what I’ve learned and things that I think are important reflections to have on record. I want us to come back in the next episode and talk about what our next steps are after two years of hosting. Anything else you want to add that you think we should gather together in this little time capsule, as it were?

There was a significant investment in doing it, and I am so glad we did. I’m glad we invested the time. I’m glad we invested the money. I’m glad that we invested in the conversation. I’m glad we invested in the reputational risk, because anytime you start putting things out in public, there is some amount of backlash that could happen. I don’t think we had any serious backlash, but someone wants to be a hater. At some point, that may happen. Who knows? It was a lot of what I expected. There are always a few things that weren’t. I am never, ever going to regret having done it. There is nothing about this that I will ever regret.

That makes me so happy. I feel the same way. For me, it was not the financial investment it was for you. It was the time investment. I’m grateful that we did this. I’m grateful that we didn’t do it when we first talked about it. I’m grateful we sat on it for about a year, and I’m grateful that we did it. More than anything, I’m grateful for our audience and everybody who has ever shared the show or reviewed it. I don’t think we ever got past thirteen reviews, but you know what? All thirteen of you mean a lot to me. Those of you who didn’t review it, it’s okay. You mean a lot to me, too. It’s a lot of work to leave a review.

They can still review it.

Thank you, especially you Apple users. Those Apple reviews matter. We’ll come back next time, and we’re going to talk about what’s next. In the meantime, do you want to stay in touch? Go to www.tonyakubo.com/Question. You can sign up for our one weekly question. You can also email me or Gwen directly. The best way to reach both of us is Support@EverydayEffectiveness.com. We’ll see you next time.

 

Mentioned in This Episode

• One Really Good Question
• The “Context Matters” Podcast Clip
• Crista Grasso
• The Business Podcast Spotlight with Megan Dougherty
• Simple Numbers, Straight Talk, Big Profits!
• Simple Numbers 2.0 – Rules for Smart Scaling: A Play-by-Play Analysis for Pure Growth
• Support@EverydayEffectiveness.com
• When Smart Business Practices Feel Pointless

 

Top 5 Most Downloaded Episodes:

• Creating Moments That Matter for Clients
• From Task Rabbit to Brain Trust: The Real Secret to Effective Delegation
• Creating Consistent Revenue Without the Drama
• Are High-Touch Services Making a Comeback?
• When Not Scaling Is Your Strategic Advantage

 

About Your Hosts

Gwen Bortner has spent four decades advising executives and entrepreneurs in 45+ industries. She helps women succeed in business without sacrificing happiness by identifying their true desires and aligning their business functions. She spots overlooked bottlenecks and crafts efficient plans toward sustainable success that center your values and priorities. Known for her unique approach to problem-solving and accountability through the G.E.A.R.S. framework, Gwen empowers clients to achieve their definition of success without sacrificing what matters most.

Tonya Kubo is a marketing strategist and community builder who helps entrepreneurs build thriving online communities. As co-host of The Business You Really Want and Chief Marketing and Operations Officer (CMOO) at Everyday Effectiveness, she keeps conversations on track and ensures complex business concepts are accessible to everyone. A master facilitator with 18+ years of experience in online community building, Tonya takes a people-first approach to marketing and centers the human experience in all she does.