The Audience Growth Engine [Full Framework]

By Dan Sanchez · Episode published November 29, 2025

Audience growth stalls when churn catches acquisition. Use paid, owned, and earned media, build retention habits, and give people a mission worth staying for.

Audience growth is a retention problem too

An audience can grow for a long time and still hit a ceiling. The reason is simple: every channel has acquisition and churn. If you add new people at a steady rate while existing people gradually stop paying attention, the two numbers eventually meet.

That is why subscriber counts can be misleading. A large email list, podcast following, or social audience is not the same as active reach. The useful number is the people who still consume the work consistently.

To raise the ceiling, work on both sides of the equation. Increase acquisition and reduce churn. Then add a third element: give the audience a larger reason to stay involved.

Build acquisition across three buckets

Every growth tactic fits into paid, owned, or earned media. Paid media buys attention. Owned media is the content and audience access you control. Earned media comes through someone else’s permission, such as a guest appearance, a stage, a mention, or a collaboration.

The three buckets work together. A podcast guest appearance can introduce new people to a newsletter. A strong owned-media system can make earned opportunities more likely. Paid promotion can speed up a proven offer, but it can also burn cash when the content, message, and audience fit are not clear.

Start by making the owned-media system useful. Then use earned opportunities to reach adjacent audiences. Add paid distribution after the message has evidence behind it.

Give people a reason to return

Retention is often ignored because acquiring new followers feels more visible. But a loyal audience is more valuable than a larger number of people who no longer pay attention.

Consistency creates habits. A recurring day, time, or industry rhythm can give people a reason to check in. A weekly video, a Monday podcast, or a newsletter connected to a morning routine is easier to remember than content that arrives randomly.

Frequency also creates feedback. More publishing gives you more data about what people consume, share, and act on. That does not mean posting for its own sake. It means using a sustainable cadence to learn what earns attention and trust.

Depth matters too. Short-form content can start a relationship, but longer material helps people stay. A podcast, book, course, community, or live event gives someone a place to spend real time with the ideas. It also gives you more chances to package the work clearly instead of leaving it scattered across posts.

Elevate the relationship

The strongest growth engine has more than acquisition and retention. It has elevation: a mission, a picture of success, and a way for the work to support itself.

A mission tells people where the audience is going together. It is more durable than chasing the next algorithm trick. When people understand the problem you are trying to solve and can see their role in it, they have a reason to become participants instead of passive followers.

The goal is not merely a bigger audience. It is a healthier audience that returns, learns, shares, and helps carry the work forward.

Dan Sanchez: For the last month, we've been going on a journey of trying to become an authority in the age of AI. And we've talked about how the problem of AI content makes it harder to stand out, how it makes everybody kind of seem like an expert, and all the things you can do to actually unpack your expertise, your story across podcasts and across the two-channel rule that we just talked about in the last episode. But today, we want to unpack some more advanced tactics. For those who actually have traction for those who want to go beyond where they're at because they already have something going on. They've already implemented a lot of the things we've talked about.

Dan Sanchez: This particular episode is going to go into the deep end. like What do you do when you have traction? What do you do when you have momentum and you want to grow your influence farther still? so Welcome to the episode on the Audience Growth Accelerator here on the AI Driven Marketer. Again, we are on our podcast to book series called Own the Show. We are turning this into a book using AI. We'll document that at the end and let you know how it goes, if it's any good or if it failed miserably. I'm Dan Sanchez and I'm joined by my co-host, Ken Frey.

Ken Freire: i am here and ready to rock and roll.

Dan Sanchez: So here we go into the audience growth engine. Can, you know, actually before I got like, this was right before I started the AI driven marketer. i actually tried to roll up this whole framework we're about to present in this episode as something I sold.

Dan Sanchez: And, uh, what what I, what I pitched this multiple times to multiple companies.

Ken Freire: Yeah.

Dan Sanchez: A lot of people are like, wow, this is, this is good. This is really good. But when you look at it, you're like, uh, yeah. ah This looks like it would take a while and the the the benefit isn't immediate.

Dan Sanchez: And for me to help people do it like cost too much. So was kind of like too long of a payback cycle. So I never actually ended up rolling this into a product or a service of any kind because it just was too hard to sell.

Dan Sanchez: But it was really good. And a lot of people saw it as good. So the reason why I'm so excited is I'm like, yes, I finally get to took all this work I put into this and have experimented with and have tried and essentially have used.

Dan Sanchez: This is how I grew a big part of the AI driven marketer was using a lot of these frameworks.

Ken Freire: Thank

Dan Sanchez: So and I still need to better implement them still to grow what we have currently going on to be to go even bigger. Like there's there's levels of this and I'm not like the first level of implementing this.

Dan Sanchez: But now I get to go and implement more of it, just reviewing it, getting ready for this episode. But I'm excited to actually put it into an episode for those who are on more of the advanced side, for those who are kind of already authorities, right? They're already micro authorities and they want to get to a bigger stage. They want to get to a bigger audience. ah You have to go through these steps. And I broke it down into in such a way that it can work across platforms. It's fairly agnostic about what channels you're doing. It doesn't even have to be a podcast at all for this.

Dan Sanchez: um these are basic things that apply to almost all the different audience growth channels out there. But all of this, this particular framework, this audience growth engine framework focuses on one problem.

Dan Sanchez: um And it's a problem I discovered on LinkedIn, but it happens on every single channel. It's a really sad thing, but it's something we all run into. If you ever start to grow an audience, eventually, eventually, no matter how good you are, you will run into this problem.

Dan Sanchez: And it's what I call the audience growth ceiling.

Dan Sanchez: Eventually you get to a point, I figured this out on accident when just using Excel to ah calculate how fast I could grow and an audience for when I was working at Sweetfish and helping podcasts grow audiences. And i I found a consistent way to grow an audience at a, a like i kind of a finite rate. So I could add X amount of audience every single month.

Dan Sanchez: And what I noticed is if I could add 100 new audience members to any particular channel over a month, but I had a churn rate of people not engaging with the channel anymore, not even necessarily unsubscribed, they're just not even paying attention anymore, then eventually those two things meet.

Dan Sanchez: So again, if I am adding 100 new audience members every single month, but I'm churning 10% of my audience, how big is my audience?

Ken Freire: If you're right, you said 10%.

Dan Sanchez: I'm adding 100 new people every month, but I'm churning 10% every month.

Ken Freire: Yeah.

Ken Freire: Oh, you're using that way. You only have 10 people.

Dan Sanchez: I'd only have 10 people. It's much more than 10.

Ken Freire: That's why I said 90.

Dan Sanchez: You at 6 a.m. in the morning. Come on, bro.

Ken Freire: 10% of 100 is 10. So if it's a churn, that would be 90. That's what I was saying initially, 90%. And then you're like, no. I'm like, oh, is he using it as attrition?

Dan Sanchez: but you're adding it, you're accumulating it every single month, but eventually you level off at a very specific number.

Ken Freire: Oh, I don't know that number.

Dan Sanchez: So, like, let's say you add 100 And then the next month, you're adding the next 100 people, but you're also losing 10% of the original audience.

Ken Freire: All right.

Dan Sanchez: You lose 10, but you gain another 100, so you're at 190. And then you gain another 100, but you're losing 10% of the 190, right? So that number continues to grow and grow and grow. But eventually, that 10% churn rate starts to work against you to the point where you level off no matter how no matter what you do. If that 10% remains constant and that 100 remains constant, you level off at 1,000.

Dan Sanchez: at ah at a thousand

Dan Sanchez: Asking too much. I guess I've already seen it in Excel, so it became obvious to me that eventually if you have 1,000 people and 10% churn, then then the the churn the the amount you lose every month to churn is the same amount you add. So it levels out at 100. Because you're adding 100, you're losing 100. You're adding 100, you're losing 100.

Dan Sanchez: And this is what happens across the board, no matter what channel you run into. It happens on LinkedIn. it happens on Instagram. It sure as heck happens on YouTube. And it's it's easier to see on YouTube because you can see the the views per video and the subscriber count.

Dan Sanchez: And it happens to everybody. the you it like It became more apparent to me, like, oh, this is why Gary Vee has 5 million-ish, or probably more now, like subscribers, but his videos only get 60,000, 100,000 views.

Dan Sanchez: right what happened people He has a lot of subscribers. It's just his audience isn't paying that much of attention right now. Now, you go back a few years ago, and you had like Dude Perfect, wildly popular trickshot channel, and they were reaching beyond their subscriber base. like They had maybe 20 million subscribers at some point, and their videos were consistently doing 35, 40 million.

Dan Sanchez: Now it's like the reverse. They have like 40 million subscribers. I'm just kind of making this off the top of my head now, but now their videos only reach 5 million people apiece. They have hit their audience growth ceiling and the ceiling is coming down.

Dan Sanchez: The subscriber does the subscribe, like how many subscribers you have. and this is true for email list too. Like you have a certain amount of emails and you might even have people that haven't unsubscribed,

Ken Freire: but they stopped reading.

Dan Sanchez: but they're not reading it. And if they're not consuming it is, are they really audience? Now, the subscriber numbers is still it's still a metric and it's still helpful, but your true audience are the people that regularly consume your media.

Dan Sanchez: So your true reach or your true audience reach is like how much your view how many views you're getting on average per piece after a certain amount of time. So a podcast, usually the general marker is like how many people have listened after seven days.

Dan Sanchez: And then, of course, there's a different marker for 30 days, little bit more, but generally you've picked up most of your views in seven days. So the last three episodes past the seven-day mark is a pretty good, accurate number of like, this is how many people listen to your show.

Dan Sanchez: That is your audience size. No matter how many followers the platforms are telling you you have, this is your audience size. The thing is, everybody has, and and you're always increasing at a certain rate and you're always decreasing at a certain rate You have a certain amount of churn going on.

Dan Sanchez: And that becomes the battle because people grow faster and faster, but they haven't had a churn rate start to catch up with them yet. And that's what happens to creators everywhere. and it happens to thought leaders. It happens to entertainment creators. Is that when you're on the rise, you're, you just, i'm like, you just haven't been at it long enough.

Dan Sanchez: It just seems like you're going, going, which is more impressive if you've been on the go for like a years and you're still rising. I'm like, dang, that means they're actually growing that fast that they're out, outpacing their churn rate.

Dan Sanchez: Hermosi is one of those people right now.

Ken Freire: Yeah.

Dan Sanchez: He's still growing at a rate, even though I know people have churned from listening to him. Like our friend James Carberry has like, he doesn't, he's not watching a lot of Hermosey on YouTube anymore. He used to watch every video.

Ken Freire: Wow. Yeah, that's fascinating. i like He used to be like a fanboy in a good way.

Dan Sanchez: Yeah.

Ken Freire: But yeah.

Dan Sanchez: And he still is. He still buys the books. He still shows up to the live events. Shoot. He he bought Hermosi's big, big thing. ah his His playbook thing. like just a august So he's just still a fan.

Ken Freire: Yeah.

Dan Sanchez: He's just not tuning in as much as he used to. We all have this happen. So this audience growth engine is addressing this problem.

Dan Sanchez: Because audience growth is not just about acquisition, net new. If you want to be able to lift your audience growth ceiling, you have to attack that churn rate.

Dan Sanchez: You have to build, and you have to actually build something that's bigger than just the flash in the pan.

Dan Sanchez: actually built this little framework, and I'm not going show it visually, but it's essentially like a roof called the audience growth ceiling, right? Because everyone's got a ceiling. You got to raise the ceiling, which is ah whatever that number is you know It's your your your new your net new minus your churn rate, right? So if it's 100 and a 10%, it's 1,000. That is your audience growth ceiling. You will never get past 1,000 no matter how far you go if you're only adding 100 and you're churning 10%. So you got to increase the ad rate and reduce the churn rate in order to lift the ceiling. And these are the three pillars, these three essential ways we can address it. We can address acquisition, the growth rate.

Dan Sanchez: We can address retention. And I have this third one because it's just worth talking about and it's elevation. It's more because we have to look at that too. And all of this is standing on top of foundation of just good content marketing and targeting your right audience, right?

Dan Sanchez: We've already talked about those things.

Ken Freire: Yeah, so if you're doing everything that we've talked about before, this is the three pillars that are needed to grow that audience ceiling.

Dan Sanchez: Yeah.

Dan Sanchez: Yes. This is assuming you're already doing the two-channel strategy. You already got ah a channel or two activated. You're growing in both places. Like, so this is the advanced, like I said, this is the advanced chapter. This is the advanced episode for those who already have a bit of a platform and want to grow it. Otherwise, this doesn't work. You have to leverage everything else we've talked about or do whatever you did do to get to where you're at. And I might be speaking on stages. A lot of ways to grow authority. We've presented one that we think is the the best one for online, for using a podcast.

Ken Freire: Thank you.

Dan Sanchez: There is many ways to do this, but you you figured it out somehow and now you want to grow. So anytime I sit down with somebody who wants to grow their audience, i'm like, okay, well, let's look at the three pillars.

Dan Sanchez: The first one being acquisition. We have to be ah move beyond the two channel rule. And believe it or not, there's only three buckets to grow.

Dan Sanchez: Only three. These are the same three across for marketing for audience as we have for audience growth. There's only three major buckets to grow, which is nice. Believe it or not, no...

Ken Freire: And it's funny because when you told me this, I remember thinking, no, there's not.

Dan Sanchez: Go ahead.

Ken Freire: And I try to fight you on it. And you kept me like, nope, that's this bucket. That's this bucket. I'm like dang it.

Dan Sanchez: Yeah.

Dan Sanchez: Nokia came up with this back in 2010. So this model really isn't that old. They did it just to organize how to they did it just to explain their like marketing plan at Nokia in 2010.

Dan Sanchez: And it was so good the way they organized it that marketers have been using it ever since then to organize their their promotional strategy because everything fits into one of these three buckets. Every single growth strategy fits into the three.

Dan Sanchez: okay And they are paid media, owned media, and earned media.

Dan Sanchez: And differentiating between them, there's crossovers, of course, but there's there's they're pretty easy.

Ken Freire: Yeah.

Dan Sanchez: Like if you're paying for it, it's paid media, right? If you're paying to if you're paying to play, it's paid media. And that lets like Facebook ads, LinkedIn ads getting it putting an ad in the newspaper, like old school.

Dan Sanchez: There's tons of ways to do this, but paid media has been around a long time. It's fast. It's not easy, but it's the fastest way to get results is paid media. But you know, you got to pay through the nose for it. So I can be hard. The other one is earned media.

Dan Sanchez: This is where you don't have permission to do it yourself. You have to ask for permission to get in front of the audience. Someone has to invite you to get in front of their audience more like, and that's earned media. If you don't, if you, if you have to ask for permission to do it, it's earned a media. Okay. Like if you want to get up on stage, earned media, you want to get written up by a journalist in a newspaper, earned media. Uh, if you want to get, if being a guest on someone else's podcast,

Dan Sanchez: earned media, getting mentioned in a podcast or being shared by an influencer. Like as if ah of influencer shares your post on LinkedIn, that's earned media.

Dan Sanchez: And then there's lastly owned media. That's the media you control. You don't have to ask for permission. That's why all social is owned media because you don't have to ask for permission. You can post. Now, there's obviously, you can subcategorize all of these.

Dan Sanchez: Owned media does have a very distinct one that a lot of people debate marketing called rented media, and where there's a difference between an email list where you can send it to people and there's nothing between you and the audience. There's no algorithm between you and the audience. If there's an algorithm rhythm between you and the audience... We tend to call everything with an algo in between rented media.

Dan Sanchez: Interestingly, podcasts is one of the few where you kind of don't own the list, but it's not, there's no algo in it. So that's considered like owned media more than rent, just rented media. But social, podcast, newsletter, direct mail list, if you're sending people a direct mail, that's considered owned media.

Dan Sanchez: Trying to think of the other ones. Text messaging, phone calling, being able to call them. That's all owned media. Or if you have an app and people are checking out your app or going there for whatever reason, owned media.

Dan Sanchez: So those are the three major buckets. Is there anything like any important ones that I miss, Ken, of as far as like what are the major things within paid, owned, and earned?

Ken Freire: No, i I mean, there's, I don't know if you, I can't recall if you said like SEO would probably be a big one for, for owned, but that's going to change drastically in the, the age of AI.

Dan Sanchez: Interestingly, i SEO is kind of earned. You have to earn your way onto Google.

Ken Freire: mean,

Dan Sanchez: It's just you don't you're not asking for permission, but you have to play you have to play the game.

Ken Freire: the game.

Dan Sanchez: You earn your way to the top of the board. You don't just get there. Unlike Google Ads, you know or ah the blog is certainly owned media.

Ken Freire: Yeah, the blog is only media, but the SEO.

Dan Sanchez: And once they're on there, it's become owned. But like, it's, it's it's I don't know. That's why it gets a little fuzzy in between because i SEO kind of fits between owned and earned. But it's to me, it's earned. Yeah.

Ken Freire: this is This is the debate Dan and I are always having, like, where do where do people put certain things? Because when you start to get down to the nitty gritty, it can be really confusing. Now, I think the important part for people is, as they're thinking about their acquisition plan, is figuring out where do they want to double down on these three buckets.

Dan Sanchez: Yep.

Ken Freire: And if you're doing a podcast,

Dan Sanchez: Yep.

Ken Freire: there's a fantastic way to do collaborations and continue to grow the earned media while you're growing your own list or your own email list and you've probably caught that as we've been talking about this like man imagine doing a collaboration with uh another influencer those people now hear you they come listen to your podcast they got into your newsletter like all those things is how you start to grow um And Dan, you already mentioned it, like the paid media plan. That is a fantastic way to grow fast.

Ken Freire: We would encourage people not to do that right off the get go. So if you don't have a good content marketing plan, if you don't have ah your ideal audience in place,

Ken Freire: man, you're just going to burn cash really quickly if you just do that. And I've seen it time and time again where people just like thought, this is going to work. And it's like, no, man, make sure you you've tested it with your own media or your earned media before you go do paid.

Dan Sanchez: Luckily, if you're getting to this point and you already have a strong owned media, owned media is the best is one of the best ones of the three.

Ken Freire: For sure.

Dan Sanchez: Because if you have owned media, the best owned media gets you free earned media. Earned media is always free, but it's not free. None of these are free. All of these cost something.

Ken Freire: This work. Yeah.

Dan Sanchez: Owned media costs you a freaking ton of time. Earned media... Costs also a ton of time. Like sometimes years worth of building relationships and stuff so that you can actually ask for permission and actually be granted right? So like earned media takes a freaking ton of time. It's very expensive. Paid media, obviously you're paying for it. So it it costs money.

Dan Sanchez: So it's either going to cost time or money. Some cost more money. Some cost time. A balance of all three is actually ideal um to max to get to get the most out of all three.

Ken Freire: Thank

Dan Sanchez: i tend and Most people, when you're just starting out, double down on owned media because you don't have any relationships to get the earned media and you don't have any money to pay for paid media. So you you do what's free. And so you have to commit with time.

Dan Sanchez: I found that the more the more I do owned media well and I grow my own audience, the more I get free earned media. People reach out to me and they're like, hey, can you be a guest on my podcast? Hey, can you speak on my stage? Hey, can i feature you in this newsletter? I'd love to get your take on it.

Dan Sanchez: Hey, I'm writing a book about AI. Can I get a mention in it? That's all earned media that I didn't even have to ask for. It came to me. When you actually start to grow an audience, it starts to become very powerful with owned media because the earned media starts to come to you.

Dan Sanchez: Um, but you can of course come up with a guest outreach strategy. If you want to become a guest on a lot of people's podcasts, there's playbooks for that, but you have to ask yourself like, which one should I grow? And if I already have an owned media audience and I'm starting to get some earned and I'm thinking about paid, what should you do next?

Dan Sanchez: Um, you kind of have to ask yourself what, what is working for me now in what are the general things people are like, how are they getting in and what are they really falling in love with?

Dan Sanchez: For example, I was talking to Davey yesterday. Nothing is Wasted ministry. He helps people overcome grief. And he does a lot of public speaking.

Dan Sanchez: I was like, dang, dude. like People just need to hear your story. And that's how they oo they get hooked. And then they show up for his things, his workshops and his course and all that kind of stuff. And I was like, you should probably do YouTube ads.

Dan Sanchez: Because people need to hear the story. They need to hear it from you. And that would be an appropriate place to hook them because people already have the audio turned on. You can run video ads in other places, but people generally have audio audio off.

Dan Sanchez: But if you can hook them and they listen through to the whole ad and they don't skip to click to skip, you only pay when people actually watch like 10 seconds versus the five seconds, um then you could probably sync your story and find, essentially get the people to raise their hands by because they continue listening to to story because they're probably experiencing grief of some kind.

Ken Freire: Yeah.

Dan Sanchez: then that would be the best way to extend what he already does speaking on stage. So it made sense to go paid media for that, to extend it. And that's what I would be experimenting with if I were him. So there's probably something you're doing where it lends itself more to one thing or the other.

Dan Sanchez: You might have relationships already because you're already speaking on stage. and you might be able to get on more podcasts. like So getting getting earned media and being best on more podcasts might be the game for you.

Dan Sanchez: I will say of all three, paid, owned, and earned, earned is definitely one of the better ones. It's just really hard. It's actually my weakest point of the three, getting earned media. there's That's where public relations and PR people are really good at this.

Dan Sanchez: But it's a hard game. It's a long game. But there's nothing quite like somebody getting on someone else's platform and them being like, this person's legit.

Ken Freire: Yeah.

Dan Sanchez: That's the point where they get to call you thought leader.

Ken Freire: but

Dan Sanchez: And that's where authority really starts to happen is in earned media. But you have to, uh, paid media obviously has the least amount of trust. Earned media has the most amount of trust because other people can call it to you on owned media. You're just sharing it. You're not calling it to yourself that, but on earned media, not only you sharing your expertise, but other people are like, oh yeah, this person's got the goods.

Dan Sanchez: You know, I'm like, yeah, hard to beat that.

Ken Freire: Yeah. And that's where when we go back to the credibility standpoint, like the credibility of that person gets transferred to you and you didn't have to do much at at that point.

Dan Sanchez: That's right.

Ken Freire: Right. You have to beforehand. Right. All the work leading up to the relationship. And that that's why, going again, going back to those other stories about like, how do you collaborate? How do you connect with people?

Ken Freire: The follow up, all that stuff is so important. Engaging people. I mean, even yesterday, probably because we were talking about this, I was like, man, who are the people i haven't engaged with in the last two months?

Ken Freire: And I just when started started going down the list and I just sent them an encouraging word. and they're like, oh man, thanks so much for you know remembering me. And I wasn't pitching anything. i wasn't trying to so you know do any I was just trying to maintain the relationships.

Dan Sanchez: Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Sanchez: So this is probably the most ambiguous part of the plan. It's where you probably need to sit down with the marketer and figure out what channels are best for you, which ones to wind down, which ones to double down on in order to actually grow.

Dan Sanchez: This is where hiring someone who really has good marketing chops is really helpful. The rest of the plan is more way more concrete. And I think you can implement by yourself the, should you go paid owned or earned or which channel should you expand into? Which ones make sense?

Dan Sanchez: ah talk to your best marketing friend and they'll help you figure it out. They'll at least pick at it. Because where this makes, there's so many options that where it best makes sense for you can can differ ah quite a lot.

Ken Freire: Yeah.

Dan Sanchez: But those are the three major buckets to consider. And then each one, there's different platforms within them if you want to expand your audience acquisition. But it's good to know that there's really only three buckets. So which one do you want to go after?

Dan Sanchez: I generally recommend only starting and activating one at a time. If you already got two channels going or three channels and they're working good, only add one more.

Dan Sanchez: Don't try to activate five. You'll freaking kill yourself one channel at a time and then get it splitting and then get that running before adding the next one. It's generally always do more of the thing that's already working until that's completely maxed out and then activate the next one, whatever that might be across these channels.

Dan Sanchez: All right. But acquisition is not enough. Again, the churn rate starts to work against you because you can acquire people fast. But if you're if they're listening to three episodes being like, think I got the gist, then churn's a problem.

Dan Sanchez: Ken, can you think of anybody you used to listen to a lot and then now you don't?

Ken Freire: Oh, tons.

Dan Sanchez: Yeah. And i bet some of them were longer than others.

Ken Freire: and there's There's literally out of like all the podcasts I've listened to, there's probably maybe two that have lasted with me for like 10 years that I've met Chandler from the Village Church is one of them.

Dan Sanchez: Some of them you're like, dude, me and homie were, we were, I was listening to homie for five years before I unsubscribed.

Dan Sanchez: Who's that?

Dan Sanchez: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ken Freire: um The other one is, well, he's retired now, but Sam Storms was another person. um Those two, Enjoying God Ministries is Sam Storms. Those two were the main ones.

Ken Freire: Now that Sam Storms goes, everyone else is kind of like ebbs and flows. I mean, there's the the briefing by Albert Mohler. I'll do sprints of that one and then I'll stop, you know.

Dan Sanchez: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Ken Freire: um marketing, the the the hardest ones, honestly, like marketing and business ones, for me, at least personally, you tell me, Dan, I tend to like binge a certain person, then I'll go find something else or I'll just need a pause on that.

Dan Sanchez: kind of how it goes. Some are a lot longer. Some are shorter. I'm looking at my list and I'm like, huh? Who have been listening to the longest? Al Mohler has been on here a while.

Dan Sanchez: but my own shows on here. I'll actually listen to my own show and I'm like, how could I've made that better? um My first millions on here. i've been liking that show. The artificial intelligence show is the only, no I got a, of course, AI explored from social media examiner on here. The next wave podcast, but I haven't listened to him. I've been downloading his episodes. Haven't listened to an episode, probably like 10 episodes. I'm like, eh, I'm kind of churning for me, bro. Sorry, Matt Wolf. Like it is the podcast isn't what I'm into. I'm still listening to his YouTube channel.

Dan Sanchez: Then that can happen. So how do you keep people from churning?

Ken Freire: You know, I would. Yep. The other one would I would say it was a now that I think about it, it was the flip lifestyle podcast by Shane Sams.

Ken Freire: But he actually paused because he life circumstances and he was just like, I'm pausing recording this for the last and it's been eight months, nine months.

Dan Sanchez: Yeah.

Ken Freire: So that happens to when you stop creating content. obviously you're going stop growing your audience. It's just an obvious statement to make, but something that sometimes people need to be aware of.

Dan Sanchez: So here is the retention plan. After studying how other people had did this, after experimenting myself, this is what I find is the best way you can actually increase retention and do it in a way that's that's that's predictable, it's consistent.

Dan Sanchez: The first one is actually having an activation plan. It's funny because a lot of people think about this for especially like freemium products or through a product-led growth, right?

Ken Freire: Yeah.

Dan Sanchez: If you get someone into your new tool, you need to activate them. You need to get them a quick win, but hardly anybody does this for audience growth, but you should. This is why lead magnets, in my opinion, are really important.

Dan Sanchez: it's not for It's not just for the lead. You want to deliver something that's high value, gives them a quick win, reinforces your beliefs, and actually introduces them to your general larger mission.

Dan Sanchez: You need to be able to do those three things with the lead magnet. And the lead magnet doesn't necessarily need to deliver the beliefs in the mission. That might just be in the follow-up email sequence. I remember Ryan Dice introduced me to the topic in marketing, at least, he talking about indocrinate like the indoctrination email.

Ken Freire: Oh, yeah.

Dan Sanchez: And that's kind of like indoctrination kind a negative bent to it. I'm like, just introduce them to your mission and see if they find themselves feeling the pain that all of us are feeling and why this mission is important. you know that's That story we talked about starts to become so important.

Dan Sanchez: But you have to have a way to bring them in. And there's always new people being introduced to you. So how do you activate new people? Whether you've been doing this for a year or 10 years, you need to get people in to an activation loop. Like what's the start here page?

Dan Sanchez: That's why I love start here pages. So people get there and they're like, oh, I'm new. Oh, I start here. Okay, i get the gist of what's going on, right? um This is one of the frustrating things that I found about like, remember I i knocked on Chris Walker for not writing a book because he didn't pack.

Dan Sanchez: He had a bunch of different cool ideas, but he never packaged them into a book. He also didn't have a start here page where people could be like, Hey, if you're new, here's what we're all about.

Ken Freire: Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Sanchez: Here's the main problem we address. Here's our main solution to it. here's Here's my story. And here's freaking three of my best podcasts that address it. Go check it out. see if you See if it resonates. You know, like something easy like that. You need a start here page. And generally, it's best done with a lead magnet.

Dan Sanchez: A lead magnet that touches a very specific problem, a very micro niche problem within the broader problem. That gives them a quick win so that that you can actually start to endear them from the very beginning. Because if you don't start well, well, they're probably not going to hang around long.

Dan Sanchez: So you need to be able to hook them from the beginning. I think a lead magnet is one of the best ways to do that.

Ken Freire: Yeah, and making sure that the lead magnet is not overwhelming or confusing is huge. where like One of the things I like to think about is when you solve that problem, do they instantly get relief?

Ken Freire: Or they're like, yes, this is exciting.

Dan Sanchez: Yes.

Ken Freire: like I finally found the person I could connect with. And they understand me, they get me, and they actually help me. um I will say that there are some marketers and salespeople that get in trouble for this because they You're trying to grow an audience or you're trying to get sales.

Ken Freire: it's one I found many times it's one or the other, you can't do both. Because the sales funnel process, what you're trying to do is you're trying to get them to raise their hand and also starting try to pitch them right away or pretty quickly.

Dan Sanchez: Yeah.

Ken Freire: And you just have to be mindful of that. For all of you who are listening to this, there is this crazy like balance that you have to make of when you're making a lead magnet, is it for acquisition or for sales you know or audience growth or for sales? And if you're trying to do both, it it typically goes wrong.

Ken Freire: and from what I've seen in the past.

Dan Sanchez: Absolutely. Now, audience activation isn't the only thing you can focus on to reduce churn. There is also increasing frequency. So once you activate them, you want to make sure to stay top of mind with them. That's why we use that phrase, top of mind. And a while ago, we in earlier in this series, we talked about the RFM analysis, recency, frequency, monetary. Recency trumps everything else.

Dan Sanchez: When's the last time you've provided value to me? That's why being consistent in your social posts, why you should only activate one channel at a time. Because if you become inconsistent there, it's like, well, then your recency isn't going to be that good. Because the last time we've interacted might've been two weeks ago, four months ago.

Dan Sanchez: Recency is a big thing. So you have to stay consistent, actually getting your value out there, coming up with new ways to be helpful all the time. It's hard. It's hard to show up and be helpful multiple times a day or interesting in some way or have people give them unique insights.

Dan Sanchez: but that's the game. I will say it's a lot easier doing it when you've been doing it for a while. It's really hard at first to show up every day and try to find something meaningful or insightful to say. But once you do it every day or multiple times a day for like months and months, that muscle gets stronger.

Dan Sanchez: And now I could literally show up on LinkedIn and be like, all right, let me just pick a category. And I could be like, bam, bam, bam, bam ba justir right. Especially if I know like what the issue of people, what's top of mind for people, then I could really start being helpful.

Ken Freire: Yeah.

Ken Freire: Yeah. this part is is important because so many people will give up too soon. They don't see the ah ROI and they don't they don't understand what they're doing, what's wrong.

Dan Sanchez: Yep.

Ken Freire: But really just staying top of mind is the game. And it's what you're having to remind yourself. People are not ready to buy right away. I think what is it like five or 10% of people are ready to buy at any given time. So that means 90% of people are not ready.

Ken Freire: And what you're doing instead with those 90% is building the trust. building the relationships, engaging them. And I'll give you a great example. Even since we started um recording every day or every other day, it's hard to post every single day.

Ken Freire: Before us recording, I probably posted on LinkedIn maybe once once every day, so maybe five times a week or something like that. I would take the weekends off. But since we've been recording this, it's given me a plethora of content that I've been posting two times a day.

Ken Freire: for since November. And because I've been able to post, and this is the beauty of doing this, I'm getting so much data.

Dan Sanchez: Yeah.

Ken Freire: And every week, Dan and I are looking at that data. And I'm just saying, oh, look, this is where I've been growing. This is what I've not been getting, not been growing. And I've been able to iterate way faster. And I'm starting to see change way faster because of that.

Ken Freire: So my encouragement to a lot of you if you're like, I don't want to post. Another reason why podcasting is great is because now you have the content. Now you can double down on posting. And then also the more you post, the more you can start to see what works and what doesn't.

Dan Sanchez: Now, you didn't get to this point and not have already had a rhythm of posting regularly.

Ken Freire: Yeah.

Dan Sanchez: So let me give some more advanced tips on not just increasing frequency, but increasing consumption, creating habits with your audience. And there's a couple of different ways I've seen people do this that are really smart.

Dan Sanchez: One is anchoring to a specific time of day or a time of week and creating in their mind like, oh, it's Friday afternoon. I need to go check out the whiteboard Friday video.

Dan Sanchez: which was a Rand Fishkin thing at Moz for a long time. Whiteboard Friday, Whiteboard Friday. And I was reading Moz and ah Rand Fishkin and other places, but he anchored it in my mind. I'm like, oh, wait, it's Friday. I need to go check out the Whiteboard Friday video. He's probably published it.

Ken Freire: Yeah.

Dan Sanchez: Or, you know, like some some whole media companies are built on this premise. Morning Brew is built around the premise of you sipping your morning coffee, reading this new email newsletter.

Ken Freire: Newsletter.

Dan Sanchez: It's creating a habit. So what so it's you can either attach it to a day, at time of day a time a week You can be the one who riffs off of seasons, like all your sales mattress sales stores, right? Like always have a take on what's going on.

Dan Sanchez: um There's a couple of people I go too current events. I want to hear so-and-so's take on current events. What is that thing? You can also base it off like regular habits within the industry.

Dan Sanchez: For example, every every industry has its rhythms. Can you attach yourself to the rhythm of what marketers do or accountants or whoever you whoever your expertise is geared towards?

Dan Sanchez: What things are they doing regularly and how can you create a consistent consumption habit around that thing where to them it becomes a bit of a ritual?

Ken Freire: Yeah, and and that's that, you know, that's the game to play for retention that I found is so fascinating of and what most people don't do is think about the rituals and habits.

Ken Freire: I'll give you a great example. When I was on the full focus podcast as a co host. um you know, it was, the podcast was called Focus on This. It would come out every Monday, right?

Ken Freire: And we would say like, hey, this is the happiest Monday or the most productive Monday because we're going to help you with productivity.

Ken Freire: I kid you not, when we would not post or publish an episode, we would get DMs and emails and people would be on the Facebook group page being like, oh my gosh, is everything okay?

Dan Sanchez: Yeah.

Ken Freire: Like, i where's your podcast?

Dan Sanchez: There's no Monday post.

Ken Freire: I know.

Dan Sanchez: Yeah.

Ken Freire: because you're just so used to listening it listening to it and getting ready your mindset ready for monday that week and how you're going to align your productivity so that's how powerful it is man it truly is when you start putting that habit in place it it's a game changer for people

Dan Sanchez: Yep.

Dan Sanchez: ah Time of day, day of week is the easiest place to do it. But I think the more powerful way to do it is even to attaching it to a specific ritual already in their lives. um Even when you like you read atomic habits, he calls it habit anchoring, right? Like if you want to put on sunscreen, put the sunscreen next to your toothpaste where you brush your teeth so that you when you brush your teeth, you're reminded to put on sunscreen kind of a thing. Right. This is habit stacking. You can use that to your advantage as a as a as as marketer as you are acting like a marketer in this situation to have it content consumption or thinking about your method or thing, whatever you're trying to do in their minds during those times.

Ken Freire: And that's also going to um define of if you're creating a podcast, for example, how long you go or how long the length of your podcast, right?

Ken Freire: Because if you're like, hey, I'm only going to while they're brushing their morning ritual, right?

Dan Sanchez: Right.

Ken Freire: Of like getting ready for work. That means you probably need to only have a podcast that's 15, 20 minutes long, right? But if it's maybe a drive to work, you might be 30 minute podcast, right?

Dan Sanchez: Right. Right. Yep.

Ken Freire: Those are those little habits and things to consider as we're you're processing this.

Dan Sanchez: The last part of the retention plans, we've talked about audience activation. We've talked about increasing frequency. We want to talk about creating depth as the third part of our retention plan.

Dan Sanchez: And this is where having long form content is really helpful. Because if you're only on short form channels at this point, like you're only crushing it on LinkedIn, you're you're drastically missing depth.

Dan Sanchez: You have to give people a way to like go for minutes or hours listening to your content if they binge it all.

Ken Freire: Yeah.

Dan Sanchez: Can you get by and do really well in just one short short form platform? Sure. Can you make tons of money from it? Sure. There's plenty of people that just do LinkedIn and crush it. Got it. But if they really want to get to know you, if you really want to create longevity, if you really want to grow your authority, you're going to need a long-form channel.

Dan Sanchez: Chances are you already have one. Great. How do you create more depth? Well, you can have a podcast. You can have a short-form channel. And that's why a book is one of the best ways to create depths because you're packaging all your best ideas in a really succinct way that even if people had been listening to you for years, we'll still buy the freaking book, read it, get more out of it. Because chances are, while they've heard all this stuff before, they've never heard it packaged all together in just the right sequence, they will get new unlocks from it.

Dan Sanchez: And there's always going to be new people who miss some of your previous ideas or loving your new ideas and need to see it all packaged together. And this is why really big creators, the big guys, are almost always releasing a new book every couple of years.

Dan Sanchez: Because they're constantly creating, coming up with new stuff. They're changing themselves, their own brand, their own way of approaching things. They have new they rent they grow bigger and do better, and they run into new problems. So they figure out how to overcome a lot of these problems.

Dan Sanchez: So then they figure it out. They document it, usually podcast about it. And then they they package it all on the book becomes the the highlight of all the learnings they got in that season of their life.

Dan Sanchez: That's what professional creators do, especially in this like more B2B, like I'm helping other people space, especially helping you with business or any of those things. They're usually writing books. I think now it's even easier than ever because you can essentially be working towards it and then have AI like help you write the whole thing every time. So it's going to be more consistent. and That's fine. It's good.

Ken Freire: Yeah.

Dan Sanchez: there'll be more books and less people reading books or a less, less. I'd say if you publish a book, even if you have a following, you'll probably have less people reading the book than before because there'll be so much more competition for books, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't do it.

Dan Sanchez: You should still do it because it's still considerate to package all your ideas into a book. Um, but a book's not the only way I'd say a course is another really great way to do it. um There might be some other ways.

Dan Sanchez: Maybe a documentary. Can you think of anything else that's like really substantial, juicy piece of content?

Ken Freire: um I don't know if it's a juicy piece of content, but I think a community is ah is a huge way to create depth because it's building relationships. So you might just go live at a certain point and just connecting with your people, doing Q&A.

Ken Freire: it might You might house your course there. I know several people who what they do is like, hey, we're talking about this podcast episode. And then right after the podcast episode, they do Q&A. So there's a lot of those little things. So a community would would be a huge one.

Dan Sanchez: And the last one, you just, it just came to my mind as you were saying that is live events. That would be another way to create depth in person, live events and virtual events.

Ken Freire: Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Sanchez: Great too. But like, uh, actually there is something to be said just for like streaming and virtual events are working really well to create depth with creators. That's why Alex or Mosey has gone deep into just live now.

Dan Sanchez: Um, so there's something be said for that, but at the same time, live events, nothing like it. Probably one of the most deep experiences beyond a book or course that you can do.

Dan Sanchez: Nothing better than that.

Ken Freire: I would say a fun little hack that um Michael Hyatt taught me was he said, hey, if I were to write a book moving forward, I would create a course first.

Ken Freire: Because of course you could iterate, you could develop, you can change and he's getting feedback. When you start doing that, all of a sudden you start getting all the best distilled ideas that you can then package into a book.

Ken Freire: And I think that's part of what we're doing here in the podcast is that we are recording all this information. We're getting feedback from people. We're even talking offline like, oh, we forgot about that. We should add this. We should do that. Right. It's helping us to refine those things.

Ken Freire: So and and we're learning from our audience. The audience is telling us, oh, what about this? Have you thought about this? So all that's going to go into the book at the end. That's another way that you're creating depth. But also a nice little fun hack is like if you're thinking about the order of which ones should you create first, that's what I would do.

Dan Sanchez: And if you want to go deeper on this topic of retention, this, I, I try to find every book I could find on this topic and there's hardly anything. There's like nothing. I'm amazed at how, but ever, everybody talks about how to get new followers.

Dan Sanchez: Hardly anybody talks about how to keep followers. It's the weirdest thing. Cause like everybody knows that if you're in a subscription business, like, and you have reoccurring revenue, like retention's the freaking game because we all know that acquiring a customer is way more expensive than keeping a customer.

Ken Freire: Yeah.

Dan Sanchez: Like they all know that and they all get that. They all still suck at retention. Like they still don't do enough.

Ken Freire: Yeah.

Dan Sanchez: and know, but they at least know it and are trying stuff in audience growth. Nobody thinks about retaining subscribers. nobody. Like I never hear anybody talk about it. The one person that I've actually heard talk about it and he wrote a book. It's not about this topic particularly, but like it's the closest thing I could find was Pat Flynn.

Dan Sanchez: ah this is i've This is the only book I've bought from him, but it's a fantastic book. like And it's good it's good through to through. Most books are only worth two chapters. This one's actually good all the way through. It's called Superfans by Pat Flynn.

Dan Sanchez: ah A lot of my best ideas around retaining people came from this book. And even has at the top of the book, it's like followers crossed off, subscribers crossed off, customers crossed off, superfans.

Dan Sanchez: You implement the ideas in this book. This is the best retention game plan book that I've ever read, is that's essentially what you're doing. If you create super fans, they stay longer. ah And the more super fans you create, the longer they stay. And not even that, it becomes, at some point, if you create super fans, it becomes an activation channel because they're referring you at a higher rate.

Ken Freire: Yeah.

Dan Sanchez: So freaking win-win. More money, more time and energy spent on retention is always better than the time and attention spent on acquisition. Crazy, but we know it's true. You know, even as I said it, you're like, oh Yeah.

Dan Sanchez: So let's move on to the last one, which in my part is is even is like the most neglected thing, but it's actually probably like one of the most important. The elevation plan. I had to make a third pillar because it's that substantial. You could get by on just two pillars, but like, let's talk about elevation. It's probably the more important part. It's the deeper part. Like once you get past a critical mass, this is the stuff you start to actually focus on. It's like even this stuff I'm starting to wrestle with now.

Ken Freire: Yeah.

Dan Sanchez: even though I've been in the game for two years now, have a good audience. I'm starting to think about this more. It's even part of why we're putting this book out there is we're starting to think about bigger things. Like, where are we going? What's the mission?

Dan Sanchez: starting to double down on this human first AI driven as a mantra as job creation and job loss starts to become a problem. We need to start elevating human dignity, which is why this book is even coming to existence or this particular series.

Dan Sanchez: So let's talk about the three parts of the elevation plan. There's the mission, there's success, and there's monetization. And again, I'm just pulling from a couple of different proven playbooks, specifically the mission.

Dan Sanchez: Like we've talked about it. You have to have a general mission you want to see achieve achieve with your your audience. Like where do you want to take your audience big picture? That's going to keep them around longer. And it's actually going to cause more of the impact you want to see.

Dan Sanchez: If you want to have authority, this is where it actually starts to happen. Because you're starting to mobilize people to your way of thinking, to attack a general problem in the industry. that's like That's the most exciting part. Like, come on, like, what are we doing? Yet we forget about that. And we just keep going after hack after hack in order to please the algo gods, right?

Dan Sanchez: ah But you have to actually step back and be like, okay where are we going? Why are we going there? Why should others care? How often do we take a step back and actually address that?

Ken Freire: Yeah, very often, i don't see a lot of creators casting good vision for people to stay on. I'll give you a great example of one creator that I know you love, that like, it's probably more entertainment, but I haven't caught the vision of why I should keep following him. That's, that's Mr. Beast.

Dan Sanchez: Yeah. Yeah.

Ken Freire: Right? Like he he he's for sure in the entertainment category. But even then I'm like, what's the vision? Like, where is he? Where is he trying to take us? I feel like every single time is just a new bigger and better idea of just how to give people money in a challenge or something like that. Do I watch some of his stuff? Yeah, like it's an it's entertaining.

Ken Freire: But he's not like the guy that I'm going to be like, oh, he's gonna change my life or he's gonna, he's taking me somewhere. um It on the flip side. You know, there are other people that I've i've followed.

Ken Freire: Like I use Dwayne The Rock Johnson, right? Where he's like, hey, he's an entertainer. He's doing all these things, but he's always telling people like, I wouldn't have never gotten here without all of you fans.

Ken Freire: I am here today because of you.

Dan Sanchez: Yeah.

Ken Freire: And here's where we're going. I'm going to make you guys the best audience ever because of it. Like he just flips it. He's still entertaining, but he's casting vision all the time of what we can do if we stay with him.

Dan Sanchez: yeah yeah

Ken Freire: um And that doesn't mean I'm like a super fan of his, but I follow him enough that I'm like, oh, yeah, what are you doing? What's going on with your family? What's happening? You know, they're both entertainers, Mr. Beast, The Rock, right? um But one's consistently casting vision.

Dan Sanchez: yo i don't think i don't think jimmy has it um you could start to see it kind of show up with this chocolate brand where he's trying to lift children out of poverty but it doesn't give like an overarching reason why he even wants to do that you're like oh that's good we all acknowledge it that's a good thing like great fair trade children not working and for long hours and coco fields got it why don't know.

Dan Sanchez: He doesn't say.

Ken Freire: Yeah. Yeah. Super

Dan Sanchez: so you're right. That is a major thing. And he's just really good. at He's just really good at pleasing the algo gods ah consistently best in class.

Ken Freire: super good

Dan Sanchez: Probably the best in the world right now is Jimmy Donaldson at at getting attention and keeping it and holding it. But it's he, he will have to figure that out if he wants to go the distance long-term, which I think he's, I think he's starting to even plateau now, even though his subscriber numbers are still showing up.

Dan Sanchez: his his He's starting to hit his growth ceiling for the first time, I think.

Ken Freire: Wow.

Dan Sanchez: Because I pay attention.

Ken Freire: Because he's been growing substantially.

Dan Sanchez: The reason why i even watch him because I like to see the mechanics he uses to get and capture attention. And what is he doing? Because he's so good at it. Like what are his thumbnails look like titles? What's the first five seconds of his, of his opening video?

Dan Sanchez: What are hooks he uses throughout the video? How is he staging things? I even like watching behind the seam here and I'm explaining it because it's really, really a masterclass and attention of online media.

Ken Freire: Oh, for sure.

Dan Sanchez: Um,

Ken Freire: I mean, even like he's been posting like these 30 minute videos on like Facebook or Instagram, right? And they're all like these things that you would watch on reality reality TV shows that would be like 16 episodes. He's doing it in 30 minutes.

Ken Freire: And I found myself every single time I was getting ready to just like swipe because I was like, ah, okay. He would add a new pivot to the challenge. And I'm like, oh, okay, I'm in, I'm in.

Dan Sanchez: Yeah.

Ken Freire: I'll watch for another few minutes. What's going to happen here? he's great at it. But going back to the mission, it's like, cool.

Dan Sanchez: But can he can he weave a strong enough narrative to keep hundreds of millions of people with him for the long haul?

Ken Freire: Yeah.

Dan Sanchez: That will be the thing. um And we'll see what he does. It'll be interesting to watch. i ah So that's that's the mission. You could do that in a micro way for a small niche organ community.

Dan Sanchez: Think about everything you've ever been really passionate about probably has this in it.

Ken Freire: Yeah.

Dan Sanchez: where you get together and you're freaking like, yeah, you're pumped with you and the other people who get it. There's probably a mission involved, a general larger thing going on. Good kind good software companies build it, even if it's light.

Dan Sanchez: um But it doesn't have to be. It can be really in-depth and meaningful and have a strong manifesto to back it up and be like, this is what we freaking stand for and this is what we're going to do. And we're not going to stop until we accomplish X. But it doesn't even have to be a specific X that you're trying to accomplish. It can be something vague. Like it's just give us a direction and a reason and why to go after. It's powerful.

Dan Sanchez: This is why Andy Raskin's strategic narrative is so freaking powerful. Because if you can have a narrative that everyone's like, ooh, that hits. Like as soon as you lay out the story of why and where you're going, and what's changing,

Dan Sanchez: People tend to come. people We all follow stories, and this is the big thing. This is why it's in the elevation plan. It's a major pillar, but it's not the only pillar in the elevation plan. The next pillar, I'm kind of and like, I'm embarrassed that even I don't even do this and I need to do this. But I'm like, it occurred to me because I was thinking about like, okay, what are things we can do in order to actually like, what's the point of growing an audience? Like years ago, I sat back and like, okay, like if I really want to crush audience growth, like what are we trying to do here?

Dan Sanchez: Well, we're trying to educate people. Well, how do we know we're educating people? Well, it's probably because they're implementing the things and seeing success. But have we ever defined what success looks like?

Ken Freire: Yeah.

Dan Sanchez: Do we measure it? Do we report it? Do we track it as a community? This where the community aspect starts to come in. I have seen some people do this.

Dan Sanchez: Um, uh, there's a great channel called income school in YouTube and they have a paid community, uh, where you can do this, but like they actually track the success of people using this is, this is, I don't know what they're doing now because they gotta be dying now because they were, they was like, they had a really proven methodology for ranking on Google with blogs, getting traffic and a bunch of different ways to monetize it. So they were helped launching blogging entrepreneurs essentially. And they were really good at it, but they would track it and they would help you report it and track it as a community and how many people were doing. They had a little map where everybody had reached certain revenue markers.

Dan Sanchez: So they were actually one of the best that I've ever seen across any audience of actually tracking the success of their audience and then reporting on it.

Dan Sanchez: I'm like, but they're the only ones I've ever seen do that.

Ken Freire: Yeah. and and but And it's challenging because a lot of times people are like, I want people to grow with me from an idea that they have but they'd never take that idea and make it into an action that people can continue to stay with them.

Ken Freire: Now, there are times that they do that with monetization, right? And we'll talk about that next, where the way they take that idea and and move forward with it is come join me and pay for my stuff.

Dan Sanchez: Yeah. Yeah.

Ken Freire: And and that's a great way to do it. But overall for audience growth, yeah, man, it's it I seldom see like, what's the goal for for growing the audience? for for just audience sake, audience growth sake alone.

Dan Sanchez: yeah generally people will start monetizing this part of it. But if you wanted to really grow an audience and have more influence, then think about what you're trying to accomplish. Like you have that overall mission. Are you tracking your steps towards it?

Dan Sanchez: Nonprofits kind of do this. At least the great nonprofits do. It's amazing how many nonprofits actually don't track the progress they're making towards their mission. It's why nonprofits generally suck.

Ken Freire: Yeah.

Dan Sanchez: It's probably why giving's down because they all suck at reporting on actual success.

Ken Freire: Dan, tell me how you really feel.

Dan Sanchez: Um, Yeah.

Ken Freire: ah

Dan Sanchez: After working in nonprofits for a long time, you can tell live how I feel about it.

Ken Freire: You're jaded. um

Dan Sanchez: Yeah.

Ken Freire: i will say the person who who has had, the one person i can think of who's had pretty good success in this is Alex Hermozzi. Like if you've been following him for a long time, he used to say like, I'm trying to remember the exact verbiage, but he was like, hey, I don't want your money.

Dan Sanchez: Hmm.

Ken Freire: i don't want you to buy anything from me right now. I am here for the long game. I'm going to give you as much success as an entrepreneur so that when you win, you're actually going want to buy from me later because I'm all about acquisitions.

Dan Sanchez: Yeah.

Ken Freire: And he was like, I don't remember the exact pitch, but he always had the same pitch every single time. And i'm like, okay, cool. You know, he's he's helping as many people. He had a mission and he he knew what success looked like. And I think that's why he's been immensely successful over the last, you know, five to six years.

Dan Sanchez: yeah

Ken Freire: Because he's got a game plan and he's measuring what success looks like for his his audience growth.

Dan Sanchez: Dude, talking through this, because I haven't actually looked at this material in probably like two years since I rolled it up and started this show to kind of like prove to people that like, look, this works. Okay, fine. Frickin' no one's buying it. I'm just going to do it myself. This is part of why the show even exists just to be raw. I've actually, i think I've said this on a few guest episodes, another podcast.

Dan Sanchez: um But walking through it again, I'm like, frick, that's why we need to start a free community for more AI marketers. Ha ha ha ha ha. Otherwise, how do you how do you track success across the community? you have you have to have a community or a place people go and log in and report on things in order for you to track it.

Ken Freire: Come to my side.

Dan Sanchez: So, yeah, yeah.

Ken Freire: Yes.

Ken Freire: I pitched it.

Dan Sanchez: So that that's got to be a thing.

Ken Freire: I pitch ideas to Dan all the time. I'm like, Hey Dan, what if we did this? Get shut down. Six months later. He's like, I think we should do this. I'm like, yes. Yes.

Dan Sanchez: Ken's like, I was right. You win, but I'm right. Yeah.

Ken Freire: I haven't recorded 56 minutes in.

Dan Sanchez: yeah

Ken Freire: Hmm. who

Dan Sanchez: So success, are you tracking success across your audience? And then the last one of the elevation plan is monetization.

Ken Freire: Yeah.

Dan Sanchez: Come on. That's why we're here for most of it. Like, come on. And this, it's good. You should monetize it. Honestly, find unless you're a nonprofit and you're you're making your money somewhere else, monetizing is something I feel like a lot of people get ashamed about, but I'm like, it's actually not a bad thing. It's good to make money.

Dan Sanchez: It's actually even considerate to give different tiers or different ways you can serve people. alt At the end of the day, like the ah capitalistic system is it forced altruism.

Dan Sanchez: That the way you get what you want is by helping other people get what they want.

Ken Freire: Yeah.

Dan Sanchez: And that's why we have money as an exchange for value. That is a good and noble thing, as long as you're doing it with integrity, with high trust, even better if you're over-delivering, but even if you're not, you're trying, you know, like all those things.

Dan Sanchez: That's why monetization is important. You need to have good ways to monetize. And it can be high-end, it can be low-end. Find the right play that's the most helpful for your audience. Oftentimes, if you don't charge money, they don't even take advantage of the material.

Dan Sanchez: Think about how much Alex Hermosi gives away for free, but people don't actually implement it's because it's free and it's cheap and it's easy. Like we all know, like if we actually spent money on a gym and a personal trainer, we would probably get more fit because we're sacrificing f freaking money on it.

Ken Freire: Yeah.

Dan Sanchez: We would show up, you know? So like there is something about charging it that actually makes it more valuable. So yeah, For that reason, monetization, massive pillar within elevation because it's actually a tool to not only get people, to not only reward you for doing what you're doing, which is the easy part, but us also to actually, oddly, to add more value to your community, to let them pay in to the thing that they believe in.

Dan Sanchez: And honestly, there's no one better at this. no In my opinion, no company is better at this than Disney.

Ken Freire: Oh, yeah. I was wondering who you're gonna say. i was like, Oh, thanks, bro. thought you're gonna say me. But then you said Disney. I was like, Yeah, Disney's better.

Dan Sanchez: No, Disney.

Ken Freire: ah

Dan Sanchez: And I freaking love it. I remember growing up as a kid and watching the movies and wanting more options when it came to like experiencing the movie. I don't know. Like when you're a kid and you watch a movie and it just freaking hit, you're just like, dude, I could freaking live in this.

Dan Sanchez: I don't want it to stop. I want to like, give me the video games. Give me the merchandise. I want to go and experience the ride. Like give it all to me. Like I want to live in this, this world.

Dan Sanchez: Disney's like, yes, and we will charge you for it. But I'm like, take my money, ah take my money. ah Like people were, um, yeah, it's kind of

Ken Freire: you

Ken Freire: i mean I remember the first time you went on a Disney cruise, you were like, this is the only cruise I will ever go on moving forward.

Dan Sanchez: not true.

Ken Freire: Yeah.

Dan Sanchez: I've been on many other cruises since then. I haven't been on Disney cruise since because they cost so f freaking much, but dang, that was a whole new f freaking experience.

Ken Freire: and

Dan Sanchez: Um, But they deliver. You got to say, like, it costs a lot of money, but Disney freaking delivers the goods most of the time. um I just went, I was at Disney just to a month ago, and it was f freaking amazing. I was like, whoa. Yeah, and that's why they charge the big bucks, because they're really good at this.

Ken Freire: Yeah.

Dan Sanchez: So monetization.

Ken Freire: So I think that the key here is um for some people who are listening to this, I'm just speaking to you specifically. You have a hard time monetizing because you feel selfish doing it.

Ken Freire: But the reality is that the only way you're going to be able to keep creating new ideas and helping others is by charging, right? Like so that you can feed yourself, feed your family. So it's totally okay for you to do that in an ethical way. So I'm actually encouraging you to like go find ways to monetize what you're capable of.

Ken Freire: Don't be always giving everything for free. There should be certain things that you charge for and it's okay to charge at a premium too. right Sometimes people are like, hey, I'm going to charge so low for an offer. And I'm like, well, you're going to need 30, 50 clients. and they're like, that's okay. that I'll do it all the time.

Ken Freire: I see this with coaches a lot, right? Where they'll be like, the average minimum might be like $3,000 for an offer. And they're like, well, I'm going to charge $1,500 or $1,000 just to get my foot in the door.

Ken Freire: And I get the mindset, right? The mindset is they've they're not they don't value themselves enough to see themselves to charge $3,000. So they have to start at $1,000. And I totally get that. The problem is that if you stay there, you're going to burn yourself out in the long run because now you need three times as many clients just to keep up.

Ken Freire: And hit your goals. So that's why I'm always telling people like you could do that or you can just find a medium price or a premium price that you can hit that you're happy with, your clients would be happy with, and you can stay in the game for the long term. And that's what I'm always looking at for people is how can you bring in different streams of income, but also with your core offer, it's priced well enough that you're like, man, I could survive off of this. I'm happy. I'm successful. It's great.

Ken Freire: Let's keep going.

The Audience Growth Engine [Full Framework]

Audience growth is a retention problem too

Build acquisition across three buckets

Give people a reason to return

Elevate the relationship

My Favorite AI Tools
Transparency Note: I am an independent affiliate of these tools and may earn a commission if you click the link and sign up for them at no cost to you. I also use every one of them myself.

Resources Mentioned

Timestamps

Audience growth is a retention problem too

Build acquisition across three buckets

Give people a reason to return

Elevate the relationship

My Favorite AI ToolsTransparency Note: I am an independent affiliate of these tools and may earn a commission if you click the link and sign up for them at no cost to you. I also use every one of them myself.

Resources Mentioned

Timestamps

My Favorite AI Tools
Transparency Note: I am an independent affiliate of these tools and may earn a commission if you click the link and sign up for them at no cost to you. I also use every one of them myself.