Scout Sobel is the Founder and CEO of Scout’s Agency, which focuses on running Podcast Tours for female founders. She sat down with Jessica Abo to discuss how podcasts can boost your business.
Jessica Abo: Scout, how did you come up with the idea for your company?
Sobel:
About four years ago, I started a podcast with my sister and very quickly recognized that when we would have female entrepreneurs on, female coaches, artists, authors, personal brands, and content creators, our community would then go and follow them online, buy their product, sign up for their course, become a client. That’s when I had this aha moment that amid this very intimate and long-form medium, there was also a really major PR strategy at play – that being a guest on a podcast was a form of PR. And that’s how the concept for Scout’s Agency was created.
What was the first step that you took to bring your agency to life?
Sobel:
I compiled a list of over 1,000 female entrepreneurs that I wanted to represent. I emailed all of them within 24 hours, and Gmail blocked my email because they thought I was spam. So, I opened up a second email. All jokes aside, I garnered up a roster of 10 clients very, very quickly, and we hit a six-figure revenue in our first year running Podcast Tours. In the last four years, we have grown 600% as an agency. We have booked over 2,000 podcasts, we have a database of over 5,000 podcasts that my team and I have manually built, and we have run over 150 Podcast Tours to date for women.
Why do you think being on a podcast can help someone’s business?
Sobel:
I’ve seen books become number one bestsellers through a Podcast Tour. I’ve seen our clients sign high celebrity entrepreneurial clients. I’ve seen our clients do collaboration networking events with podcast hosts. I’ve seen them gain thousands of followers on Instagram. I’ve seen them increase their revenue month after month after month. With a Podcast Tour strategy, there is a plethora of opportunities that come from getting in front of these new engaged audiences: from social media growth to product sales, to signing clients, to developing their platform as a thought leader and an expert in the space.
Why do you think podcasts get results?
We’re all trying to grow our community, and therefore, our impact, and yet, in today’s digital and social media landscape, growing is hard. Reaching new audiences is difficult. In a world where we have to capture someone’s attention in three seconds or less, content can feel endless and shallow, and too consistent. When it comes to being a guest on a podcast, you have someone’s attention for up to an hour. The average podcast episode is 43 minutes, which means that you are getting in front of new audiences and telling your story straight from the source. It’s not curated, it’s not edited, it’s not filtered. It is your story. They hear the inflections in your voice. They hear your challenges. They hear your successes. They hear the inspiration behind why you started this business. And today, consumers are doing business differently. We’re not buying products because of the product. We’re buying products or enrolling in courses or buying books because of the human behind the brand.
What advice do you have for someone who’s about to go on a podcast? How can they maximize their exposure?
Sobel:
Be yourself. Podcast episodes are human. They’re vulnerable. They’re intimate. They go deep. People want to hear from you. They want to hear about your challenges, successes, roadblocks, and struggles. They want to hear about why you started your business or why you launched a book, or why you have a group coaching program coming up. The best way to connect with a podcast audience is to be human. Yes, of course, this is an interview where you are professionally standing up and being the thought leader and expert in your space – and the thing that’s going to make a Podcast Tour convert is going to be how well you resonate as a human being with that audience.
And, of course, there are so many marketing strategies that we can go over to maximize these podcast episodes, right? You have to be posting them on Instagram, tag the podcast host, be in collaboration with the podcast host, and share it with your newsletter. But at the end of the day, you can share a podcast episode as many times as you want, but if you don’t show up in your truest expression, the episode will fall flat. And if you show up and you’re human and are vulnerable and talk about why you do what you do, you will see that a Podcast Tour converts to business growth.
