586: Monetize Your Curiosity: $80k in Revenue from a Part-Time Project

23:20So everyone has a great origin story of how they came into vertical farming and what inspired them. It's been a really amazing journey. Is primarily targeting listeners in the industry or people who want to break into the industry versus like a consumer general population type of listener? The majority, probably 80%, is probably people who are in the industry or really excited to learn more about the industry. I do get those LinkedIn DMs. I'll get DMs on across all the socials. And that's the beauty, again, of having the socials. You're creating like these platforms and these ways for people to contact you about the podcast.

23:53Because in those early days, you don't know where the feedback is going to come from. So we get it on all the platforms and we create just all the graphics and all the ways for people to engage. Surprisingly enough, the most popular platform was LinkedIn profile page or showcase page. I think what it's called now that I created just for the podcast. So highly encourage folks that have a podcast. This is the one thing we do with clients and say, create that showcase page, this landing page for your show. Because you never know, especially for vertical farming and because of this industry a lot of the conversations are happening and linkedin people listen and say wow i wanted to get into this space i didn't know where to start i was curious i was looking for a podcast about vertical farming and i found yours and i was like well that's probably then everything's the only game in town baby i should have asked that are there others or were there others before you got into it there's a couple and i didn't really interestingly enough i didn't really pay too much attention to it i kind of had my horse blinders on I said, look, I don't want to be influenced.

24:46I have a format that I like that I've honed over the years with podcast junkies that I love long form conversations, hour long conversations, and I've honed it down to a science where those first 10, 15 minutes are really like the icebreaker. If I can get them feeling comfortable, I know I'll get some gems later on in the conversation. So I'm grateful for that opportunity to, and I'm just fascinated by this idea of long form conversations, interview based shows. And I'm always trying to make sure I improve that skill over the years. yeah and somebody who spends theoretically hours and hours with you in their earbuds you build a pretty good relationship with them over time i get people coming up to me at conferences they're like you don't know me but i feel like i know you and it's just very i don't know it's a really cool position to be in because while while you're doing it while the sauce is just being made it's just being hairy that's just right like you said the three people i guess the host and the singular listener.

25:39Yeah. Trying to avoid, maybe it was one of your talks at some of these podcast conferences, like avoid ever saying stuff like you guys or to everyone listening, like, no, no, no singular listener. Imagine that person they're out walking the dog, they're at the gym, like just one person going back to this LinkedIn showcase thing. I don't know if I have something for the side hustle show set up over there, but any best practices that you found in terms of the type of posts that tend to get traction or what's working over there. I think of the social posts, what I can do, Nick, is I can go to that LinkedIn page.

26:10I can post their press release and most socials and I'll let you pin a post. So I'll pin that post for the entire week. So anyone who's coming to the page sees the press release and I'll have a little blurb probably at the top saying, congrats to our title sponsor cultivated for securing their second seed round. And so I'll tag the sponsors and anything I do. What I love about these platforms is again, first of all, I knew I wanted mini stages to blast out every time we publish episodes weekly. So they're getting the audiograms or the videograms, TikTok style videos, whatever it is we produce.

26:42And they're going on Twitter. They're going on LinkedIn. They're going on now YouTube. They're going on Facebook. So all of these platform, mini little stages that I've created for the Vertical Form Pod and the LinkedIn page is the same. Do any of those drive meaningful listenership? Like the audiograms and the short form stuff? It's hard to measure and you and I know this very well to track where all these listeners are coming from. But what I'm looking at also is how many likes I get, how much engagement I get on the actual posts. So I can see that people are engaging with the posts. And I think it's more of a brand visibility that's happening across all the platforms.

27:18And so people are reminded and I'm reminding them wherever they are. So even if they only use Twitter, we're posting on Twitter, you know, even if they only use like LinkedIn, it's there. And I want it to sort of be top of mind for them. The other thing that I did is I was thinking about this broad term because I said, I'm going to create a niche. He talked about how people start with a newsletter sometimes, but I secured vertical farming jobs. I secured vertical farming weekly. We've now got a website. We've got CEA.events and CEA stands for controlled environment agriculture. So I was thinking really ahead, where can I create platforms to promote this?

27:49So I even created a LinkedIn group called vertical farming community. It's on LinkedIn now. And I'm creating these places. If you go to verticalfarmingpodcast.com, shout out to PodPage. We use them for our podcast website. It just makes things incredibly helpful because I don't have to worry about creating a post every time an episode goes live. They read the RSS feed and it posts there. But at the top, you can hit a sticky banner and it says Vertical Farming Community. And if you click it, it takes you to a Notion page and shows you all the ways we can engage with us. One of them is the LinkedIn community.

28:18Again, I'm just creating these, I'm looking for places where I can promote the episode. Vertical Farming Weekly is a weekly newsletter. Essentially what it is, I've got a part-time editor, Natasha, who helps me. I put out a call on the podcast. I said, hey, we're looking for a new editor. And someone who's a listener for the show, she's like, hey, I've been listening to the show. I'd love to help. She lives in the UK and now she's the editor for my newsletter. And essentially what it is, she pulls 10 headlines from the world of vertical farming. We use Beehive for our newsletter, post them on there.

28:46But at the bottom, it's the weekly episode. It's every episode that we publish. So again, that has about now 1 ,500 subscribers. so i'm using all these platforms to promote all these it's sort of like a circular reference wherever i can find or create a platform to promote the other thing it's all this cross posting and all that creates like this lift and visibility of the show yeah nobody is going to be remotely interested in vertical farming without finding you that's kind of how i look at it like you don't have to start this way because i think it's kind of intimidating to say well i got to have 10 different platforms and the newsletter and the linkedin and the tiktoks and the instagram and all this stuff.

29:21But eventually you can get there and you could say, look, if you're searching vertical farming anywhere, you can't miss me. And we had John Haas. I remember this episode from like probably eight, nine years ago. And he was doing this in nursing and he eventually bought, I think, nursing.com. But at that time it was like NRSNG. Like it was kind of like the vowel-less version of nursing. And he had all these self-published books on different aspects of nursing on Amazon. And he had the website and he had the app and he had the YouTube stuff. And he like all this, like he was casting this really wide net to dominate in that niche.

29:53It sounds like you're going about and doing the same. I want to circle back to the media kit really quick. There is a shorthand URL for that Notion page. Do you mind sharing that? I think it'll redirect if it's verticalfarmingpodcast.com forward slash sponsor. I've created a short URL as well. I'm a bit of a social media nerd. So I secured vfpc.st, which if you look at it, it looks like vertical farming podcast. It's really shortened. So vfpc.st forward slash sponsor, that'll redirect to the Notion page. I think this is a good example of what you can put together on a media kit or sponsorship package page.

30:27If you run an influencer type of business, because here he's got kind of his both personal and the business social stats on here. He's got selected reviews from different listeners, copy and paste screenshots on there. He's got different rankings that pulled in from the different podcast charts, which I think is really cool. is to say, like, look, I understand it's a niche podcast, but like we are playing this game that we're playing and we're playing it well, right? Here we go. He's got demographics, who's tuning in, income levels, all that stuff. And then some of like the social engagement stuff before getting into the actual sponsorship packages.

31:02Hey, do you want to get in front of this audience? Here's how you can do it. Title, platinum, gold, silver, like different tiers, different levels on that. One thing that's interesting, because this is counter to the advice that you hear a lot, is like, don't publicize your prices. Like everything is negotiable. You don't want to be the first person to lay your cards out, but you do put prices on here. So I'm curious about your take on that. So I want to dive into that page a little bit because there's a lot there and it's been building up over time. So in the beginning, to your point, I had to highlight my credentials personally.

31:32So I said, this is my reach. If you'll notice about that page, there's not one mention of download numbers at all. And that was intentional because I said, look, this is what I've been building up over the years. I've been podcasting since 2014. We know what we're doing. And you can see, I put the actual numbers there for my LinkedIn, my personal Twitter, my personal Instagram, all the personal. And then I had all the vertical farming social. So as that's been building up over the years, I keep modifying the numbers, they keep going up. And then this idea of social proof. In this podcast, one of the things I say every single episode, if you're loving the show, if you love this episode or past episodes, I'd love if you leave a rating or review.

32:09I use a service called ratethispodcast.com. So I say rate this podcast dot com forward slash VFP. And then the beauty of that tool is it shows you all the different platforms that you can do reviews, Podchaser, Apple. I think I'm going to add Spotify there as well. And then I read them out on the show because this builds that engagement. And then once they start reviewing them, I'll take that screenshot. I'll drop it in there as well. The other thing with the categories, this was really eye opening for me. You get three category choices when you're creating your show and your host. And the primary one is I think I picked science and technology.

32:38And I think I picked the second one that was relevant. The third one, I always like to play and experiment with. And I said, oh, there's a nature category. And I was like, well, farming is kind of like related to growing greens. I switched that third one to nature. I think it was that week or a week or two later, it started shooting up and it ranked number one in about 15 to 20 different countries around the world, smaller countries in Africa. And I was like, wow, I took screenshots of all that stuff. So now I can say I have the number one podcast in vertical farming. That's right. It's like getting that bestseller badge.

33:07Spike the algorithm in Amazon. Just log it up. Make sure you capture it. Social proof, baby. Social proof was great. And so I just keep building up that page. And what I'm doing, as you can see, as you scroll down, you're building up the social proof. And the other thing that you'll notice is I'll put the faces of the guests on the show, seasons one through nine. It should be updated. I think we've got to add the most recent guests. But if you're scrolling down and you're in the industry, you know these people. You know these people. You've heard of them. And you're like, whoa, that person. Wow, he's had that person, that person on.

33:36And you're sort of building up this hype about the show. By the time you get to the pricing page, I think what I wanted to do is show people like this is an investment, obviously. But if you look at the pricing, there's title, there's the different tiers, and then there's the single. And I think the single is very cross-prohibitive. It may be at this point like$1 ,600 if you want to just one episode. I'm really discouraging people, as I mentioned earlier, from doing that. I want them to build a relationship with me because whenever you build this relationship and you get this package of a sponsorship over a period of time, like a season, And it benefits three people.

34:10It benefits the sponsor, benefits the host, and it benefits the listener, quite honestly, because they're hearing you episode over episode, repeating that. Yeah, I may not even have this single episode on here anymore. I'm trying to dissuade people to go multi-packages. And those are the conversations that I have with sponsors too. We want to do like a one-episode test. And it's like, you know, I'm trying to do like a four-episode minimum just because it's like you said, it's this game. It's kind of a weird hybrid between like traditional radio advertising, where it's like very much a game of repetition and awareness, and also this direct response element, because it's like, well, you go to this specific URL and use promo code side hustle.

34:48And it's kind of a mix between the two, but definitely steering people toward those longer term engagements. I think that makes a lot of sense. Let's take a quick break to pay the bills, and then we'll be right back to the show. As a business owner, you worked hard to make that phone ring, but missing a business call? It's like watching money fly right out the window. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q-U-O. It's the smarter way to run your business communications. Quo is the number one business phone system built for 2025, not 1995. In fact, it's rated the top choice for customer satisfaction with over 3 ,000 reviews on G2.

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36:42Shopify's got you with ready-made templates to match your brand style. What if people haven't heard about my brand? Shopify helps you find customers with easy-to-run email and social media campaigns. And what if I get stuck? You can tap in to Shopify's award-winning 24-7 customer support. Let's turn those dreams into and give them the best shot at success with Shopify. Sign up for your$1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash side hustle. Go to shopify.com slash side hustle. Shopify.com slash side hustle. and also one more point there on that sponsorship types be creative because you've now created this platform so some of these earlier sponsors and some of these conferences i've been to indoor ag con which is in vegas indoor ag tech nyc that ticket is twelve hundred dollars to attend i've attended the last two and i have not paid for a ticket because again i'm building a barter relationship and i just figure out what the math is i think we do a certain block of episodes and so i'll do an ad read for indoor ag tech nyc some sponsors like indoor icon they gave me a code to use.

37:44So I use VFP code. I get a hundred dollars off every ticket that was sold through that code. And I think I made an extra$600 because people were using the code to buy their conference tickets. So in addition to whatever they paid me for the sponsorship, I didn't pay for the ticket for the event and I was making a deal with them. So as I build those relationships over the years and their conference gets bigger, I'll add that. I'll maybe say maybe it's a 4 ,000 to book the sponsorship, or maybe it's a higher percentage of the ticket sales. So just be creative. Don't try to limit yourself because once you have this platform and ad read is a really powerful thing and a really powerful vehicle to get the word out for these shows and so it's really been interesting to see the different ways that you can be creative with the sponsorship yeah and this may be a hack really for any niche that you're in is approaching these events and oftentimes they have a certain number of passes allocated to media and if you could say yeah i'm a media business i have a podcast or have a YouTube channel or have a blog.

38:41And you can kind of raise your hand and say, I'd like to come to your event and cover it. And sometimes they'll comp your ticket. Sometimes they'll comp your hotel. Like there's different ways to go about that. So I think that's a cool way. And then really put names to faces and kind of be part of that community. But we mentioned the sponsorship side. Is there any other revenue streams for this thing? I mean, you mentioned the job board a moment ago, but I'm curious what else is going on there. So it's interesting because I thought there may be some opportunities with the job board. So that hasn't really taken off yet, but I think I'm always creating and thinking about ways that people can engage.

39:12So what's been happening recently is obviously I've built relationships with other people who are media in the space. So there's a popular newsletter called I grow news, and we've just been building relationships over the years, so much so that every time they publish a weekly newsletter and they cover the entire CEA industry controlled environment, agriculture, my show is there. So he shows my podcast and the artwork. He just pulls it. I don't even have to send it to him. So he's pulling it. So every week now on iGrow News, I'm being promoted on their page. And so we've been building such a good relationship.

39:43So we're having some conversations about ways we can work together and maybe build a media group or something like that. So still early days with some of that. And that's in the works, but that opportunity wouldn't have happened if I didn't have this opportunity or this platform that is synergistically aligned with what they're doing, because they're trying to get the word out about everything that's happening in this space. So it's interesting. And then the other option that's happened recently is also I'm meeting a lot of startups in this industry. I'll go to these conferences and they usually have a part of the pavilion set up for people that pay a smaller amount.

40:15You've probably seen these at podcasting conferences and like a little table. That's just like, Hey, a smaller price. You don't have to pay for a full booth. I started having those conversations. I meet those people. I get them on the show. That's the first thing. Some of these companies, they're so small, they don't have a marketing team. So because of my marketing background, I'm now having conversations with them about maybe possibly helping them for an equity percentage of their business to come in as a fractional CMO or just help them because of all they see what I've done with the podcast.

40:41They said, obviously, we know what you're doing from a marketing perspective. We don't and we need help. Our specialty is in like the business and the farming and all that. So it's just being creative. Like, where else can I add value and where I can contribute my time? And it's a longer play, obviously, because you have to do something vested with them and over time. So they continue to add value. But you really over deliver in those first few conversations with them. They really get excited about an opportunity to work with you in a way that's helpful for them because they don't have the money to hire like a full time CMO.

41:10Yeah, I think that's kind of a cool place to play if you have the time and bandwidth to do it, because you need really only one or two of these things to hit and have my fractional ownership, my equity stake in this company. all of a sudden is worth a lot more than the 200 bucks an hour or something I might've charged as a marketing consultant. In terms of growing the listenership, anything else that you found effective? Because now you're obviously really well established in this niche, but anything that you found effective to get traction early on? I think what we're going to start to do is start to build relationships with some of the other more established people who have been in the space.

41:45Because while vertical farming is new, greenhouses, and that technology is not new, It's decades old. They've really perfected a lot of things that are going well, but they speak about the entire industry, including vertical farming. So I'm looking for ways to build partnerships with them, placements on their site, doing small buys of banners on their site to see which ones get the most traffic. I was actually on a traditional agriculture podcast recently where they're asking me, tell us about this vertical farming thing. And it was like a weird moment because I'm like, well, I'm now a spokesperson for vertical farming, but I was able because of conversations that I had, osmosis, whatever you want to call it, to just at least speak intelligently about what I've been learning in the space.

42:21Because obviously, we know the best place to find a podcast listener is on another podcast, looking at opportunities to speak about what's happening in this space. And just having that position that I have of a sort of a spokesperson in the space and treating that with respect and making sure I speak intelligently on this topic. Yeah, it's just hard to find other agriculture podcasts, other vertical farming podcasts, go out and guest on. Obviously, you can go on business podcasts and tell the story. That's cool, but that's a challenge to go out and grow that. So I think these different partnerships definitely make a lot of sense there.

42:51Yeah. And also when I'm at these conferences now, and some of these partnerships, some of these, when I went recently with the Virta Farm that, you know, they built a booth for me as well. So it's now really thinking about, I have the space, what can I do creatively to make sure that people who are there, that's an audience dedicated to this. There's people obviously at the conference who didn't know about my show. So they're learning about it and I'm getting listeners from there as well. So I think I'm wanting to make a conscious effort, whether it's postcards or something that I literally can make a partnership.

43:16If I'm already making a partnership with the sponsor, I have that direct one-to-one relationship. I'm going to be like, Hey, if you're giving out a bag, like drop a postcard for my show in there. And I wasn't like thinking that as much because I was just getting to know people there, but I have to really be conscious of like, Hey, I've got a captive audience that's there. And, and then also putting myself a little bit out of my comfort zone, but saying, Hey, would you like me to moderate a panel? Which is what I did in Germany. I moderated two panels and I was just like introducing myself and say, I'm the host of the Vertical Forming podcast.

43:46And so really beginning to think about ways where I can show my visibility in this space in a way that builds off what I've already done with the show. Yeah, I was thinking of, well, where are my target listeners already hanging out? Super obvious. They're hanging out at these events. Yeah, that's a fantastic place to go out and meet them. I remember our mutual friend, Dr. Ryan Gray, would either have his little postcards, you go to these pre-med events and talk about the pre-med podcast or whatever. He's had like six or seven different pre-med themed podcasts or med school prep type of shows.

44:15But yeah, trying to like, hey, where are these students hanging out? These are my target listeners. I got to figure out how to get in front of them, make it easy for them to get this on their device. And I think he had QR codes or even was like, hey, give me your phone. I'll show you how to download this. It's like, there's still like that barrier to entry into the podcasting world. When I go back to your point about now people are inviting you to speak about vertical farming. And isn't it interesting how this authority tends to rub off? And that's what I found, at least in my case, I felt like I thought I knew a decent amount about side hustles and I had my own experience in building a side hustle business.

44:49But after 10 years and talking to hundreds of different entrepreneurs, like, oh my gosh, I knew nothing when I was getting started. But the authority tends to rub off and you become the go-to person in that space. I think that's really cool. Even if you didn't have that pedigree or you didn't go to school for that and that wasn't your previous career. I think it's really important to just have an open mind when you're having these conversations and then really hear what these CEOs are saying. A lot of times they just, they're more nervous sometimes about coming on the show because they're like, all your guests, they sound so professional.

45:17I'm like, we do a great job of editing. We cut out the alms and alms. You know, I want to make them sound good too because a lot of times they're nervous. And there's several CEOs, surprisingly enough, who've never been on a podcast. And I was like, whoa, I have to like make sure they have a great experience. And I'm holding their hand through the process. And I'm letting them take breaks. And we just make sure when we do the edit that they sound and they look good. because I feel like a responsibility now to showcase this industry and also showcase the people that are doing great things in this space as well.

45:45Yeah, for sure. What's a day in the life if there is such a thing? I've got to imagine that the hourly rate for this is pretty high. It's like, okay, I do a weekly show and then I got to do the social stuff related to it. But then I'm running this other business. It seems like a part-time thing. What I think is really important, and this is something I learned from Podcast Junkies, is to really block off that time for availability for podcasts. And so we use a tool called SavvyCal. I only take interviews between Tuesday and Thursday, I think between 11 and 4. And I've built it and adjusted it in a way so there's that half-hour block, because I've done this and I'm sure this has happened to you in the past, where you schedule so many interviews and you're like, well, I've got three interviews today.

46:30And you can get drained. So it takes a lot of work to have that one-on-one conversation. So I've gotten better over the years with that. So I make time for it. You don't stack them up 15 in a day like JLD. JLD. Shout out to him. I think he does like 30 now. Doesn't he think like only just 15 in two days and he does covers the month. That was. Take the rest of the month off. Yeah. That's intense. Yeah. I'm not at that level yet. So I want to be really focused and really be able to give all my energy for these conversations. And so when I blocked out the time, I typically will have one or two. That makes sense.

47:01Throughout the course of a week. It's going to be a pretty good hourly rate. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so I have the one or two scheduled throughout the week and we always try to stay ahead, maybe four or five episodes ahead. And so once the interview is complete, then thankfully, because of the agency, I have my team do the editing, the audio, the video, they write the show notes. So we're prepared. And then what they send me is prior to the episode getting published, there's a whole notion page again that I use for my guests. And I'm saying, Hey Nick, thank you for being on the show. Here's all the media we created to support the show.

47:30Here's some text you can drop into socials. And you'd be surprised at how many times that actual verbiage of the text that I wrote out shows up in a social. I'm like, oh, cool. You just cut it and pasted what I had there. And again, I never want my guests to be working harder to promote a show because they already gave me an hour of their time. So here's the beauty again, you're sending this email to the CEOs and the basic, what do they do? They're like, great, Harry, we'll just send this to our marketing team. And they send it forward to the marketing team. And then voila, they start showing up on all their socials.

47:57And the one thing that I've been doing more of in Instagram. It would be cool to get access to their newsletters too. If they have email databases like, Hey, our CEO was just featured on the vertical farming podcast. It's happened. It's happened. And I put a little blurb at the top of that guest page, and I can include a link to the most recent one as well. We've also shown you can get more visibility if you put it in your newsletter as well. So we see some companies doing that, but it's just interesting that you go overboard and you give them all this information because they really appreciate the fact that they don't have to work harder to promote it.

48:27And in Instagram, what I think is cool, we've been doing recently, you can add someone in. I think this is only on mobile, but when you're creating this vertical post, I would create this TikTok style with like the karaoke wording, you can add a collaborator. And this is pretty cool because if I had you as a collaborator, you'll get tagged and you'll get a notice on your phone. And you say, Harry added you as a collaborator for this post. All you do is hit yes. It shows up now on your feed right away. And that's been pretty cool. And I've been making a conscious effort to do that more. So now I'm just making sure.

48:56And this is part of the process when we sign up guests, not only do they book time, but immediately after they book time on using SavvyCal, it redirects them to a page that says, now give us all your information, headshot, socials, all your social accounts. And so we have that ahead of time. So when it comes time to producing, we know which profiles we're going to be tagging. And that just does so much to spread the word of what we're doing. And the guests appreciate it. The marketing teams appreciate it. And it's so nice to see it show up on these other companies' social accounts. yeah make it easy for them to promote and just i appreciate that too but can we give a shout out to harry for dropping all these cool tools like savvy cal like notion like captivate like pod page like rate this podcast.com like we always love hearing what tools and tech that other people are using so i think that's really cool for sharing that what surprised you the most over the last three three and a half years of doing the show i think what was interesting for me is how I went from zero visibility in this industry to now being seen as someone that's respected, that people are coming to for guidance on the industry, and that people want to come to me to partner with projects on in this industry.

50:05They're asking me to participate in their events. And it's interesting because I came at it from a perspective of like an outside observer and a fan of something that I wanted to learn more about. But now over the years, it's been three years, 110 episodes. We're about to launch season 10 in a couple of weeks. And now I sort of take more of a position where I'm a spokesperson now, whether I like it or not, as long as I continue doing this for vertical farming. And so I don't take that lightly. Yeah. I'm just doing the math on 110 episodes divided by, or maybe the other way around, but 80 grand in sponsorship revenue divided by 110 episodes, 700 bucks an episode for a show with 2000 ish listeners, right?

50:47You said like, If you were going CPM model, you'd be making 50 bucks an episode. So you got to flip that script. If the audience isn't going to be huge, you got to find a different way to make that happen. I think what you've done is super, super inspiring. So you said, hey, I'm just scratching the surface of this stuff. You keep it going. What does the future hold for Vertical Farming or the Vertical Farming podcast? I think it's really partnerships. And I think this idea of being seen in the space from others who are doing something similar, I mentioned the newsletter folks. And just now, I think there's an opportunity there to build this into what you would call a vertical farming or a CEA media group.

51:23And that's been pretty exciting. So early days with that conversation, and I'll shoot you an update if we make progress there. But I think it's really thinking, what's the bigger picture? Where's the bigger opportunity? Because if you think about it now, if you deep dive, as with most industries, they have a breakout in what they call a landscape of like the different categories. So in podcasting, it's podcast hosting. it's like people that do tech it's people that do tools in cea there's indoor farming there's greenhouses there's ai and robotics there's a lot of different niches that are in there and as you might imagine as a marketer the brain starts kind of cycling you're like well we could do a podcast just on ai and robotics in cea the beauty of doing that is now we have the model in place where can we replicate that and see if there's an opportunity to build a bigger play i always in awe of what the people at Morning Brew have done, the hustle, these kind of newsletter, and have built it out to a media company that eventually got acquired.

52:17So, no, I'm just thinking bigger picture because I think there's an opportunity there to think more broadly about what's possible. Yeah, super cool. We are early days in this space. And to bring it back to Peter Diamandis and Abundance, it's like my all-time favorite TED talk. And it's his talk on why Abundance is our future. He starts off with, look, the news is always bad, but the future always gets better. How does that work? And it's like every time I'm feeling down, like I will still bring that up probably once or twice a year when I need that, I need that reminder. Like, yes, on the surface, it looks like the world is going to absolute crap, but maybe there's reason to believe it's not.

52:52The Vertical Farming Podcast. Check Harry out over there, fullcast.co. That's the podcast production agency. Of course, podcast junkies. If you want to hear the inside scoop from other podcasters, podcasters talking about podcasting. I know there's a Nick Loper episode somewhere in the archives over there. But Harry, really appreciate you joining me. There's been awesome, took a ton of notes. And I would love to wrap this up with your number one tip for signed Hustle Nation. But just keep moving forward. The universe rewards momentum. As an entrepreneur, I fell down a lot. I spent thousands of dollars on stuff that didn't work.

53:22In the beginning, I'd just be sitting in the dirt, just wallowing in my sorrow and just be like, oh man, I'm a failure at this. But over the years, as I've grown that entrepreneurial muscle, So I really feel like you need to have those failures so you can really quickly figure out what does not work. But I posted on something on social a couple of months ago about all the domains I acquired over the years. And it was like probably 30 or 40 of just random ideas that I thought might work and that failed miserably. So just keep moving forward. Have the confidence that you need. I enjoyed that. There was an email of yours.

53:52It was like the graveyard of unused domains. Yes. I think anybody who's been online any length of time has that. And I had to delete the GoDaddy app from my phone. Like, no new domains. Yeah, I'd still do it, but at a lesser pace. And I do it to stuff related to what I'm working on. But yeah, I think that's the most important takeaway. Just when you first become an entrepreneur, you think like, if one idea you try doesn't work, then you fail. But I think, you know, just keep moving forward. Keep taking that imperfect action daily. Yeah, I agree with you. Take that imperfect action. And just a couple notes that I want to hammer home is like, it really is possible.

54:29to build a name and a reputation for yourself in a space that you don't have that preconceived expertise in, where you can just play the curious bystander. Like, I want to learn more about this. I don't know. I'm not the world's foremost expert about this, but I want to talk to people who know more than me. And by virtue of doing that over the course of several years, like it starts to rub off. And the second thing is, if you're considering a niche, think about, is there a way to make this a B2B thing, because obviously that's where the dollars are really, really flowing. Certain brands are trying to reach mass consumer markets.

55:05But if a company is willing to drop nine grand on a podcast that doesn't exist yet, like they've got to be selling something high ticket, right? If you can find those opportunities and use all the tactics that Harry mentioned to find out, well, who's spending money in this space? Now can I be of service to them? How can I provide a platform for them and do it in a wholesome and value added way? And that really makes a lot of sense. So again, notes and links are at sidehustlenation.com slash Harry. Lots of links in this one. Again, lots of great resources. While you're there, I want to invite you to download my list of 20 other hobby-related niches that you might be able to apply Harry's model to.

55:39That's at sidehustlenation.com slash Harry or through the show notes link in the episode description. Big thanks to Harry for sharing his insight. Thanks for supporting the advertisers that support the show. We talked a lot about sponsorships in this episode, but it really all does come back to listeners supporting the show through supporting those advertisers. As always, you can hit up sidehustlenation.com slash deals for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place. That's it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen. And I'll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show.

56:11Hustle on.