Mastering Podcasting and Evaluating Business Opportunities with Sarah Lockwood

In this captivating episode of The Be Helpful Podcast, join us as we sit down with Sarah Lockwood, the CEO and co-founder of Hivecast, a leading podcast production agency. Sarah shares her valuable insights on evaluating business opportunities and harnessing the power of podcasting to grow your business. Discover the benefits of cautious optimism, the art of curating podcasting opportunities, and the common mistakes made by new podcasters. Tune in to gain expert advice and learn how to make the most of this exciting medium. Don't miss this inspiring conversation with Sarah Lockwood!

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FULL VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

INTERVIEW WITH SARAH LOCKWOOD

Beginning of Episode 1 

Gboyega Adebayo: All right. Today I have the pleasure of talking to Sarah Lockwood. She is the co-founder of Hivecast.fm and Fireside Group. How are you doing? 

Sarah Lockwood: Hey, I'm doing? great. How about you today?  

Gboyega Adebayo: I'm good. I can't complain. So I'm excited to, to chat with you. We've had the pleasure of working together with Hivecast your podcast production services. 

Gboyega Adebayo: But I wanna start off the conversation like we do with every guest. What did you want to do growing up? 

Sarah Lockwood: I think I was smitten with the idea of sales and advertising. From a really young age. I definitely got a taste for selling as a child and loved, every competition and contest that involved, winning a fuzzy to put on the end of your pencil or, like the escalating prizes for selling the most. 

Sarah Lockwood: Of whatever, and a fundraiser. So I always enjoyed enjoyed the idea of selling and like being and advertising. And I think that was just immediately what I thought I would do with my life when I was being serious, maybe as a kid I had the idea of maybe being like Indiana Jones, but the female version, 

Gboyega Adebayo: I That's pretty cool that's a, that's an interesting deviation. 

Sarah Lockwood: He had such great adventures and I loved the idea of, going to Egypt and being an archeologist. And I ultimately did get to travel to Egypt and see the  

Sarah Lockwood: pyramids and do all of those things. But my career in advertising and marketing is what took me there.  

Gboyega Adebayo: No, that's pretty cool. Okay so one of the questions that I love asking guests is, Why entrepreneurship? Why try this crazy thing, this sickness that we all have, 

Sarah Lockwood: that's a really good question because it does sometimes feel like you are setting yourself up for a lot of hard work and pain and frustration and struggle. But I think that entrepreneurship is something that is in your blood. I think you either love it and find yourself constantly willing to put yourself out there and take risks or you're the person who wants to just work for someone else and you're willing to exchange lot in order to just get that paycheck. For me, I think when I was younger, if you think of the idea of a visionary and an implementer in which is a concept in traction in eos, the entrepreneurial operating system. They talk about the visionary being the person who's normally the CEO and the person who's envisioning something that doesn't exist and is really constantly, that creative imagination, problem solver. And then their sort of partner in crime is the implementer. And the implementer is the person who actually can see that vision. And then a, it has the skills and ability to go make it happen. And I would say when I was younger in my career as an entrepreneur, I fell into the implementer role. So in my first. Business, which was a web development company. My partner was our visionary and he was the person who had, a million business ideas. And I got behind that one. And for nine, 10 years almost, we built a business from a bedroom and an apartment all the way to, having, I don't know, probably over 50 employees and working with major national brands to build websites. Long before there were any type of an open source content management system I went on in my career to have jobs, working for others and helping fulfill their visions. But I always. whether I've been a founder or a co-founder or an employee, I've treated every business I've been a part of. 

Sarah Lockwood: Like it was my own. And I've made the businesses for others very successful and I've made businesses for myself very successful because of that sense of pride and ownership in what I do, regardless of the business structure. As I got older, and I think I became more confident as a business leader and as in as an executive in marketing and advertising, I've become more capable of having my own vision and seeing possibilities and seeing opportunity and running to those on my own as opposed to getting behind somebody else's idea.  

Gboyega Adebayo: Yeah. Yeah. I really like. , I really like and appreciate you sharing the evolution from the implementer into the visionary where it's like you don't always have to stick a one bucket. That is pretty cool.  

Sarah Lockwood: There's an entrepreneurial journey for people who aren't visionaries.  

Gboyega Adebayo: yeah. 

Sarah Lockwood: You don't have to be the person who is the founder to be an entrepreneur. You can be a business partner, you can have a stake in a business in any part of that business. So I don't think that anybody who's thinking about entrepreneurship should think it's only available to them if they found a company because that's not true.  

Gboyega Adebayo: And it doesn't have to be this wildly unique idea, , like it can't exist.  

Sarah Lockwood: it's a lot better 

Sarah Lockwood: for it to be, a ti. You don't wanna be the first mover.  

Gboyega Adebayo: Yeah. There's plenty of, there's plenty of studies that say First movers advantage is a fallacy in many ways.  

Sarah Lockwood: let them knock down all the trees in the jungle, create awareness of the solution, and create demand for the solution. And then you can come in with, a challenger or second, third, fourth iteration of something and still be incredibly successful.  

Gboyega Adebayo: Absolutely. So before we jump into kind of the meat of Hive Cast and start exploring your lessons and learnings as an entrepreneur, I'm curious from the businesses that you co-founded up, up through Hive, cast and Fireside, how would you compare the evolution of your first action, like the first thing you did to get the business started and go from idea to a real thing? 

Gboyega Adebayo: How has that changed as you gained more experience? 

Sarah Lockwood: That's a really good question. I think as I've become more successful in business, I've done a better job of evaluating opportunities as a first step before getting excited and passionate and en enthusi enthusiastic, perhaps without enough data to evaluate the opportunity.  

Gboyega Adebayo: Yeah. What, what does that evaluation look like? 

Sarah Lockwood: Yeah. 

Sarah Lockwood: I think you have to look at a deal or look at a, some type of a entity that you're looking at forming or joining through a lot of different lenses. Certainly you need to evaluate the market fit. Is this a solution to a problem that. Exists and that people are willing to spend money to solve. That's one one way to look at it. I think it's important to look at the competitive set and the competitive landscape and understand, what solutions exist today. 

Gboyega Adebayo: Yeah. 

Sarah Lockwood: What, who's out there solving this problem and how are they doing it? And how do they do it uniquely? is there space for you to do something different and better or for a different audience? 

Sarah Lockwood: How will you be unique? and evaluate honestly if there is space for you.  

Sarah Lockwood: And then you have to look at the deal. You have to look at, like, how are you gonna fund this? Is this something you're gonna bootstrap? Are you coming into a partnership? Do you like the deal? Do you like the terms? 

Sarah Lockwood: Do you like the partnership agreement? Do you feel like it's the right structure for you to be successful? and, think about that in the ideal scenario, but also really probably even more importantly, play out some of the ways that it can go wrong  

Sarah Lockwood: in the use cases for if it does. And make sure that your partnership agreement addresses those. Other ways to think about, whether something is a good opportunity or not, is thinking about, what parts can you bring to the solution, you and on your own. Are you and a business partner? Like how fast are you gonna need resources, whether it's capital or employees or technology. What is it gonna take in terms of resources to make the company successful and sustainable and to scale?  

Gboyega Adebayo: Yeah. No ab. 

Sarah Lockwood: lenses that I think you have to look at an opportunity through. And when I was younger, I did not do that.  

Gboyega Adebayo: Yeah. and I appreciate that wisdom and I think that there's, you highlight a an important and interesting mindset to have when you're starting a business, which is, you've gotta match your optimism with a level of PEs, pessimist, pessimism. You've gotta think through the negative things and try to process, are you prepared for those things? 

Gboyega Adebayo: What's the likelihood of those things? And I think that a lot of times it's very easy to get caught up with what's the optimal thing that's gonna happen, . And I think that being an entrepreneur is you're in a game of pivots and you're in game of adjustments and figuring it out. And I really like that perspective you shared. 

Sarah Lockwood: Cautious optimism.  

Gboyega Adebayo: Yeah. 

Sarah Lockwood: I. educated optimism a pragmatic lens on what's possible is, I think, serves you well. I guess maybe with my operations hat or like my, my the integrator hat on, I would say that in a lot of different enterprises, my job has been to anticipate problems and see around the corner. So I really do believe that it's a skill set to see those potential friction points or gotchas and try to plan bef before they happen.  

Gboyega Adebayo: Right. 

Sarah Lockwood: Some people can see that as being pessimistic. A lot of visionaries don't want to hear about that stuff.  

Sarah Lockwood: And they might hide behind the Optim. I'm more optimistic or I take an optimistic view, but I think that you have to have a pragmatic view  

Gboyega Adebayo: Yeah. Yeah. I 100% agree. Okay, so let's talk podcasting. Why did you land, land on podcasting? How did you land on podcasting? What attracted you to this niche? Yeah, I want to hear the story. 

Sarah Lockwood: absolutely. me cough for just a minute.  

Gboyega Adebayo: Go ahead. 

Sarah Lockwood: Okay. You can hear me again.  

Gboyega Adebayo: Yep. Okay.  

Sarah Lockwood: Okay.  

Gboyega Adebayo: Thank you for powering through . I'm sorry. 

Sarah Lockwood: As a. Business owner, when we, my a business, let me start over. When I started Fireside Group we began working with business owners who were looking for advertising and marketing solutions primarily for lead generation and what allowed, and we offer that service at a super affordable, fixed price. And what allowed us to do that was building this really systematic infrastructure that was repeatable and scalable and allowed us to deliver great work at a low cost. People began coming to us who had podcasts saying do you offer a similar service for podcasting? So people came to us and we had no intention of. Doing. We didn't have any intention of being a podcast production company as a person who consumed a lot of content around podcasting, I thought this is very interesting. 

Sarah Lockwood: I want to explore this a little bit more. And I started really looking at the business of podcasting and what's involved for podcasters to, create a show and deliver a weekly, podcast for example. And what I learned was that there's not a great solution for it. People essentially either go to a podcast production agency, which has traditionally been pretty expensive and. Maybe isn't exactly right for people who are just at the beginning of their podcasting journey, or people try to do it on their own and they're trying to stand up, what I call a motley crew of contractors and VAs and editors, and they're trying to pull it all together and they essentially become a project manager and a qa a QA tester. And, they're managing this unwieldy process that has a million breaking points. What happens if your podcast editor from, whatever site you use just doesn't respond this week. Or what if somebody gets sick or whatever happens, and it's this very unstable and wieldy Solution to getting a podcast produced. So I thought this is something that I can build and I can use my skillset to do really well. And because of my love of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship just was so natural that the main, the first people that we worked with and the main people that we worked with are what I call entrepreneurs thought leaders and experts. So it's generally, our clients are generally people who have a service business. They're great at what they do. They're experts at what they do, but they're certainly not experts at creating a podcast, perhaps. And they're, maybe they have a book, maybe they have, they have a huge, tremendous amount of expertise that they monetize through coaching or selling an online course or selling products that support their. industry. But really podcasting is something that we were able to make very affordable and simple, both from the mental load, but also just the time involved to get a podcast launched. Generally that's within a month, easily three weeks. And then to make it just a really low friction process that fits into any entrepreneurs kind of time blocking.  

Gboyega Adebayo: Yeah, it's it's a, it's fascinating cuz when I first learned about your business and we started working together, I was as an operator, I was like, this is brilliant. 

Sarah Lockwood: Thank you. I'll take that as a huge compliment.  

Gboyega Adebayo: Yeah. Because it is, I think you, you articulated exactly the challenges that the customer has. It's, you piece mill these things together and if you can't find people that are reliable and can support you, you're either in a bind or you turn into a project manager, right? And so it tends to take a lot of the fun and the joy out of podcasting. 

Gboyega Adebayo: And I think that is why you have some of the statistics around podcasting that people don't get past the, what, sixth episode and a lot of podcasts go to font. So it, it, when I genuinely thought this is brilliant. This is taking, this is a great outsource solution for someone that's just starting at a reasonable price point. 

Gboyega Adebayo: Because listen. Nothing's free in this world. And so it seemed like a great opportunity. And so one of the follow up questions I had is you've entered the space. What did you recognize and discover that people were doing wrong? And how did you try to like, attach yourselves to those problem statements and try to pull that into your business? 

Sarah Lockwood: Yeah. That's a great question. When we work with podcasters I think that a lot of what gets a brand new podcaster started is enthusiasm. The things that passion, enthusiasm, excitement, that fades over time. And as you said, many podcasters. Excuse me, will you just mark that I coughed there.  

Gboyega Adebayo: Yes. 

Sarah Lockwood: I'm going to repeat that answer and start over. I'm giving you a lot of edits in this episode.  

Gboyega Adebayo: It's all good. 

Sarah Lockwood: That's a great question. What we learned when we started working with a lot of brand new podcasters was that a value that we brought to the table that we didn't initially realize was a benefit to podcasters was. our team is your podcast partner. We are your production partner. And so there's a level of accountability to do the things you say you're going to do and be consistent in creating that content and having it delivered and available on time. And you have a partner in it. Even if you're the host who's starting a podcast from scratch. You have your hive cast account director who's very passionate about your show and is really your partner in making it happen. And they're gonna hold you accountable and follow up with you. 

Sarah Lockwood: And I think that third party piece of it has helped people get past just the enthusiasm maybe that they have when they very first start, but the flywheel effect of our systems. Keep you excited and help you be successful over time. So that was an unanticipated benefit that our service offers. And as a result, our brand new podcasters are incredibly consistent and don't experience pod fade. We don't have podcasters who start and quit. That could be because we just help them be successful in a way that they wouldn't be without us.  

Gboyega Adebayo: Yeah. No, that's awesome. 

Sarah Lockwood: I guess other mistakes that I've seen, you ask about other mistakes that first time podcasters make, and I think this is probably a place where there's more we can offer and that we will be offering to our podcasters which is that they. sometimes don't fully make the connection between the opportunity that their podcast creates for their business and actually delivering on the podcast in a way that drives business results. Podcasters sometimes get in that mindset of being an interviewer and having conversations, and they lose the plot in terms of how to make sure that they are being seen and make sure that they are sharing enough about themselves, the services they provide, their areas of expertise, and then very importantly, creating calls to action that take people from being a listener into being part of the marketing ecosystem of that host's show. 

Sarah Lockwood: Because that is really one of the primary ways that our podcasters, monetize their podcast, which is by turning listeners into paying clients or customers, either they're signing up for services with you or they're buying some type of a product or service that you sell. And that doesn't happen if you aren't actively thinking through each episode and how you're gonna get that listener to take a discreet action that's gonna create value for your business.  

Gboyega Adebayo: Yeah. No that's such a good point. And we've talked about this. I've lived it. The art of having these conversations has been just so rewarding and fun for me that. I don't think I actually asked people to do anything. I don't think I had a specific call to action. 

Gboyega Adebayo: And, when you forget that you then start getting the fatigue of podcasting because if you're doing it for your business, you're not getting any lead generation. So I think that is that is a good point. And I don't think that I don't think that when you walk into podcasting, cuz you're trying to deliver value, you think about the simple thing that you want them to do for you. 

Gboyega Adebayo: And I think that for me, I've been so focused just, throughout the seasons on getting these stories out that I don't actually shine the line on myself. I don't tell my own respective story. And that's something that I've heard enough listeners tell me that they want to know more about what I'm doing. 

Gboyega Adebayo: That I'm like okay. I'll talk to my about myself for a little bit. 

Sarah Lockwood: I think it's a really natural situation that hosts find themselves in. But it does create that, problem. After a while, you start saying what is my return on this? And, am I doing this for my business or is this, or is this just personally rewarding or personal growth? Most people that I know or that work with us are looking for a business result from their podcast and the place that or the habit or discipline that is keeping them from enjoying the business results that their podcast could be driving as a failure to think ahead. To create the calls to action and connect them into the show topic and discussion so that you're being strategic about the conversations and you're really giving your listener a clear instruction about what they can do that's going to connect into your business value. 

Sarah Lockwood: And that could be, becoming a newsletter subscriber. It could be downloading a white paper or a resource. It could be filling out a survey. It could, there's a lot of ways that you can take a listener and bring them into something that is going to create value for your business. Join a mastermind, listen to a free webinar. Download an ebook. Who knows what that would be for your business or the listeners of this show.  

Sarah Lockwood: But you all, I think when you fail to think about how each episode. is going to serve your listeners and how that service is gonna connect to your business. That's the discipline  

Sarah Lockwood: that makes the big difference.  

Gboyega Adebayo: Yeah. No,  

Sarah Lockwood: And that's something that, you know, and that's something that we try to shine a light on when we see it not working,  

Sarah Lockwood: But individual coaching and, business results Acceleration is a service that Hive Cast is going to be offering.  

Gboyega Adebayo: Yeah, no, that's, that, that's awesome. And I think that's gonna be incredibly important because it is, we're in a space where, everyone's got a podcast now and everyone wants to start a podcast, and that type of coaching and, advisory service would be super valuable. 

Gboyega Adebayo: What are some of the, when you were starting this business, and you talked a little bit about discovering the value or the unintended or not obvious value that you were providing. What were some challenges that you faced? Just standing up the business itself and trying to build the plane as it was flying, so to say. 

Sarah Lockwood: Yeah. 

Sarah Lockwood: For me, this business aligned very closely to the things that I'm most passionate about in terms of businesses that interest me.  

Gboyega Adebayo: Yeah. 

Sarah Lockwood: So I already knew when I started Hive cast that the things that were gonna make us successful. were very much in my personal wheelhouse in terms of things that I knew I would be able to do and do well. And you and I have talked about these things often. It's about building a team that is extremely cohesive and understands the mission, and is passionate about the mission and kind of motivating them in the right ways to be very invested in our client's success. And every single person that works at Hive Cast cares so much about putting out an incredible product for our clients and making our clients look amazing. And, timeliness in what we do is crucial,  

Sarah Lockwood: absolutely crucial. Doing what we say we're gonna do when we say we're gonna do it is table stakes.  

Sarah Lockwood: And these are things that I knew that I would be able to build a team that would deliver that. Things that I didn't know at the beginning and I got better at over time were qualifying the clients who were gonna be best for us. That was something that at the beginning, I probably didn't do a good enough job of setting an expectation of partnership  

Sarah Lockwood: At the beginning. Some of the people that we worked with treated our staff and our service in a way that didn't feel respectful.  

Gboyega Adebayo: Okay. 

Sarah Lockwood: Or just almost I'm trying to think of a, the right way of saying this, but maybe just a little bit of just go do it. Just  

Sarah Lockwood: go do your piece and you're not like, important to me. It's just go dig the ditch. Go move that rock from here to there. 

Sarah Lockwood: It was just not the level of partnership and respect. Maybe that was important to me to have in this business.  

Sarah Lockwood: What I learned over time was setting that expectation from the beginning with clients of, what our values are, the way that we work. We're not, we can't care more about your podcast than you care about your podcast.  

Sarah Lockwood: We're always gonna match your energy and probably bring more, but I can't, we can't do it for you.  

Gboyega Adebayo: All right. 

Sarah Lockwood: We make it our mission. We're thinking of you and we're thinking about the promises that we've made to you, and we're thinking about the timeline of your show every day, all the time. If we ask for things to be done by a certain amount of, in time and to a schedule that should be respected,  

Sarah Lockwood: as much as we, as much as we honor what we say we will do, we want our partners, our clients, to also do what they say they're gonna do.  

Sarah Lockwood: And so we can only help them be successful when they are bringing their part of the teamwork to the table.  

Gboyega Adebayo: Yeah. Yeah. No abs. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. 

Sarah Lockwood: I've gotten really good and my team has gotten really good at setting that expectation and being quick to make an adjustment if that's needed early. Because the truth of every relationship, whether it's a business relationship or a friendship or a love relationship or a parent and child relationship, is you teach people how to treat you. And you should, you start, how you start is often how you end.  

Sarah Lockwood: So we try to make our onboarding process well, our sales process and our onboarding process when we're really showing our, values and our culture and our our commitment, and we want that in return.  

Gboyega Adebayo: Yeah, no, that's, no, that thank you for sharing that. That's a really good perspective because it brought me back to my consulting days where, we would always talk about, I would serve CIOs and IT organizations and I would said, Hey, you don't want to just be the task doer that's just looking for Hey, build this thing for me. 

Gboyega Adebayo: You want to be a position of a trusted advisor and a true partner where you can say Hey, we can do these things better. Hey, I'm gonna hold you accountable. You can't just change your mind. And I think that you bring up this point where, If I'm starting a podcast is, I'm excited. I want to try this thing. 

Gboyega Adebayo: I want to do this thing. I don't know what discipline in this space looks like. I don't know what, consistency truly looks like. And I think that's an important that's an important thing to bring to the table. And so as you drilling in a little bit into that kind of challenge of qualifying your leads my question would be in the world of lead generation, right? 

Gboyega Adebayo: How do you, let me think about how I want to ask this question. I would say in the world of lead generation, 

Gboyega Adebayo: how would one think about. Trying to narrow down this lead funnel that they need to create. Because a lot of times, for example, you want to build a website, I have, Yencil, my my tech startup and at one point we were just like, we need as many people to just go to the website as possible. 

Gboyega Adebayo: We just need traffic, we just need eyeballs. We need people to do that. And at a certain point you're just like, wait a minute, we need certain eyeballs, . And there's this evolution of trying to filter down your audience. And sometimes it actually isn't as easy to just say, okay, I wanna look for these people and this is specifically where I know that they exist. 

Gboyega Adebayo: So like, how do you figure out that balance? How have you learned over your career to figure out how to build these kind of qualified lead funnels? 

Sarah Lockwood: With a podcast, I think it starts at the very beginning one of the mistakes that people make when they start a podcast is often being, having that desire to appeal to a very wide audience. And I think that's analogous to what you were talking about with, we just need traffic. Anybody who will come to our website, we'll take that, we'll take that visit and it's gonna be in our web stats and gosh, we're gonna feel good about the traffic with a podcast. It, I actually think that's a really big mistake that ultimately will cost you listenership and discovery the clearer you are even before your first episode, even before your trailer, even before the name of your show is becoming really clear on who. who is your ideal audience? Who are you trying to serve? And what are their needs? What are their problems? What are their pain points? And are you the right person to speak to their mindset, to speak to their life stage or their business stage? Or what are you going to offer them that's gonna make them loyal? And not listen once, but listen to the whole episode and to listen to be a subscriber and not listen to one episode, but to listen to many episodes. Understanding the foundation of your show and the topic of your show helps you from the very beginning qualify your audience. So of the people who find you, because they're looking for what you're talking about, and who then prefer you because you're delivering value. You start with the right audience from the very beginning. And then you know, how you qualify those leads or how you get those people from listenership into your sales funnel, I think is more of an off podcast topic, right? It's like telling them what you want them to do, but then you need to build the infrastructure for them to have a prescriptive sales process.  

Gboyega Adebayo: Yeah.  

Sarah Lockwood: Just like anything,  

Sarah Lockwood: You have to be clear on what your identified path is through your sales process in any business.  

Gboyega Adebayo: Yeah,  

Sarah Lockwood: that make sense?  

Gboyega Adebayo: no, absolutely. That makes sense. It's get them to show up to the open house. And once they go up to the open house, you should have a prescribed method on working them through whatever the ultimate action is that you want them to take. 

Sarah Lockwood: right? Yeah. 

Sarah Lockwood: So I think it's not enough to just have a podcast  

Sarah Lockwood: and then say this podcast is gonna get me, is gonna build a relationship with my audience, and then magically they're going to do what do you want them to do?  

Sarah Lockwood: So think having having a really, clear, maybe even documented path through how people are gonna come into your sales cycle into your sales stages and become a qualified lead. And then how you'll move qualified leads into customers and close them is something that, like any business really should be clear on.  

Gboyega Adebayo: Yeah. 

Sarah Lockwood: And your podcast is just a way to have this like engaged audience that treat that is inviting you into a relationship with them. I can't think of any other marketing tactic gives you the intimacy that podcasting offers. You are truly having a weekly conversation with somebody that you believe is an expert with somebody that you rely on to bring you a benefit every week that you listen.  

Gboyega Adebayo: Yeah. 

Sarah Lockwood: Right? It's amazing when you think about it. What sales or marketing tactics do you know where it's I'd like to invite this conversation weekly for 20 minutes. It's amazing and it's intimate. It's, it's your voice. It's a relationship with you. People get the chance to really get to know you and understand you as a human being and as a host and as an expert. And being able to action that though and take them from being takers, who are just listening and hopefully benefiting, to actually moving them into some sort of like a more active stage I think is something that a podcaster should really think through.  

Gboyega Adebayo: Yeah, absolutely. I wholeheartedly agree.