Why you Should Start a Podcast & the best way to grow your podcast w/ Roy Couglan aka The Podfather

OPENING - EPISODE 28 PAUL WRIGHT Hello everyone and welcome to the Link Thru Social Podcast. My name is Paul Wright, and we're on episode number 28 today. And we do have a fabulous guest, Roy Coughlin, also known as The Pod Father. Now, Roy's entrepreneurial spirit and innovative approach continue to inspire and impact audiences worldwide, making him a leading figure in both the podcasting and business communities. His website is RoyCoughlin.com, and we will have that interview right after this brief message. SPONSOR MESSAGE - TICKETPORTX SPONSOR MESSAGE You've worked hard to build your audience. So why send your customers somewhere else? Introducing white label digital storefronts from TicketportX. Now you can process tickets, registrations, donations, merchandise sales, and collect valuable customer data directly on your website or custom landing page. Increase brand visibility, create a stronger connection with your customers, deliver a seamless user experience, and monetize your brand with high-converting pages powered by TicketportX's secure hosting, payment processing, and event technology. Perfect for festivals, conventions, classes, retail storefronts, charity events, sporting events, and even free events. Manage entire event series from a single storefront and spend less money marketing multiple links and event pages. One platform, one link, endless possibilities. TicketportX, powering your brand, your events, and your growth. INTERVIEW - ROY COUGHLAN / THE PODFATHER PAUL WRIGHT & ROY COUGHLAN And welcome back to the Link Thru Social Podcast. We have a wonderful guest for us today, Roy Coughlin. And he is a seasonal serial entrepreneur with an impressive track record of founding 20 companies across five different countries. As a podcast coach and host, Roy has successfully launched and driven six podcasts to the top echelons of the industry, with all consistently ranking in the top five percent. Roy, wow, what a what a track record. Welcome to the show. Thank you very much for having me. I look forward to the conversation. Yes. So your website is RoyCoughlan.com, and you're known as the Podfather of Podcasts. Why don't you give us a little bit of your history? how you got here. I suppose how I got the name of The Podfather is I help people get on shows, and I for I think around 50 he says to me, Wow, you're the podfather, and I was like, Oh, I like that. And then I created a podcast called The Podfather, which is to help podcasters, and yeah, I'm I like I grew up in a Ireland for two years, mechanical contractor, biggest mechanical contractor in Ireland, and then kind of moved to Poland. I was doing a lot of real estate, done 200 renovations and managed hundreds of properties, built 30 apartments, got wiped out, then kind of overcame all of that, and then kind of my mission was to expose all the fraud and corruption I saw, but I didn't like public speaking, so I said, All right, I need to overcome that, joined a Toastmasters, then joined another, then formed my own Toastmasters club, became a coach of a Finnish club, TEDx, opened my TEDx. I did open comedy, and I just kind of went from there. And during that process, I said, All right, a podcast. I met a guy at an event, and he kind of said, Hey, I have a podcast, I'll teach people, and a hundred people turned up, and I was like, Oh, I can do this, and it was always about kind of the exposing fraud and corruption. But I said, Okay, I'd probably be attacked for that one. And then I've just kind of evolved from there, and I've got now ten of my own, and I've got a network as well because I'm trying to help podcasters to make money, so I have the Podfather network, and what it is dynamic ads, so now there's there's five or six, and taking my time making sure all the things are lined up, and it's it's an enjoyable process. I've done over 2,000 episodes myself. Wow, that's that's incredible. And you know, there are so many podcasts out there, and as I know firsthand, it's very hard to stand out. what's the what's the best way to grow your podcast? There's a few things. Like sometimes people think there's the magic sauce that I got so many into, like there was four got to the top half percent, and some of them saying, What is it? And they get kind of get peeved when they think it's not one magic little pill, because that would be fantastic if it was one secret ingredient, but it's not. It's one is have a very good conversation, you know. Make sure that you have a good conversation, make sure the audio is very good because there's more people listen on audio than on video, but you can also put it out in a few video channels. So I put mine out on YouTube, bit shoot and rumble. To do it if we talk about someone starting off. If you look at my logos, if you're watching this, they're all ones that kind of grab your attention. So what happens is people design their logo, but they design it on their screen and they think all this looks great, and they might have loads of information on it, or whatever way they do it. But when it's on Spotify, that's all you see, and does it grab your attention? So that's another thing. Another one is I've got domains that make sense. Like sometimes people they'll have a really complicated name, and if you've got podcasts, I've got a.org, I've got learnpolish podcast.com, speakingpodcast.com, meditation. Like, I've got the domain names for what they do, the sovereignmanpodcast.com. So straight away they're easy to find. And if someone's doing a search, like if they're doing a search on a sovereign man podcast, I rank up higher. So you know, the strategy with that. I for sure like I try to s systemise everything because you'll hear a lot of people they'll say, Ah, I don't have time, it takes too much time. And I mean, if I did the shows now like I did before, there's no way I could do that many because when I was editing, I was going through the whole lot, taking out pauses and you know, like awesome ums, things like that, and I didn't know it just I record and it goes out as is. I do audio enhancement, I put it through Adobe for the for sound quality, sure, and that's it. And like because people think, Oh, I'm saving them time by reducing the pauses, but you're not getting them in their creative thinking mode because sometimes someone's contemplating what you've just said, whereas if you reduce that, they're gone, yeah. And so leave it natural, and I think that helps, and then say with the marketing, because like a lot of times people what they're doing is they form a podcast, they have a podcast, whatever episodes, and then they said, All right, I'm gonna post it on all these different places. So, where do they post it? They post it on podcaster groups, all podcaster groups. And I tell people it's like going to a doctor's convect convention looking for a patient, it's the exact same thing. You've a thousand podcasters, they're all in there going, Hey, listen to my podcast and do a podcast. You can start to follow. So, what you need to do is go into groups that are relevant. So, for example, my Polish one, I'm in foreigners in Poland, I'm in Polish in the UK, Polish in Chicago, big community of Polish people there. I'm in about 50 groups. So when I post it, it goes to the right groups, they engage, and it's all simple things, like everything combined adds up. So there's no secret sauce, but it's all there's nothing hard either. It's just be consistent with what you're doing. Amazing, amazing. Now, I was reading some information about you before we did the podcast today, and you're reading a hundred books yearly, very impressive. Tell us about that. I've always been a reader, and like one of the things, you know, because being podcasters, sometimes authors come on my show. And there was times I'd go in and I'd buy the book, and then I thought, hey, I'm promoting this guy. Why should I be buying the book? So then I say, if you want me to be promoting the book, post it there. And people say, Oh, I'll send you the PDF. And I said, No, I want to get away from technology, so I like to have a physical book. And it's not that I read just one genre, I like to kind of read on health, like now, like sovereignty is a big one. I've read over 20 books on sovereignty, and then if it's a good book, because okay, but I'll never read it again. Now I have a box at the front of my house, and anyone that comes in, there's books there if you want them. So I continue the life of the book as the boss to put it on the shelf with dust gathering. Isn't that the way it's supposed to be? I miss those days where you know you can't wait to open that book and physically touch it and read it, and then yeah, you why put it on the shelf? Unless you know you're you're gonna refer back to it in the future. S spread the wealth, give it to somebody else. I think that's that's a wonderful idea. Now you miss mentioned you read a lot of books on sovereignty. why did you start learning about sovereignty? Tell us about that. Okay. So I mentioned I've done a lot of real estate in Poland, and I had a few syndicates. So I had about three properties. I was like the small buy, some of them were worth 10 million, 20 million. Everything was working well, I had about 10 people working with me. So I was doing well in Poland. The crash happened in the States, it took a while to come across the pond, and then they started to get in trouble in Ireland. And I thought it was a hiccup. I didn't think it was going to be as bad as it was. So what I said is, all right, if you can't pay your share on, say a commercial, because we had 80% mortgage on a commercial. I said, I'll put in the money and you can pay me, and I'll charge you 10% at the end of the year. If you can't pay me, I'll increase my share. They're all happy with that. They got wiped out, and eventually I wasn't able to pay everything, so I got wiped out, and yeah, that's kind of how the whole thing happened. And I was like, How did they do that? Because I could see corruption with bailiffs, with banks, with and it was just, I know I kind of was like, What's going on here? So, my awakening podcast is exposing fraud and corruption, but with solutions. And I got a guest on her name was BB Backis, and she was basically she was from Florida doing very well in real estate. And what happened is doing like grants or for low-income earners, and they were pocketing it, the red the government, you know, the local authorities, and she exposed it, and they got they locked her up for something else, and she got eight years in jail, so she spent the eight years studying how they done this to me and how they could stop. And I went away done her court after she came on my show. I done her course, I learned a lot. Unfortunately, she's passed, but it kind of stirred something in me, and then I realized I was born free. And if you look at how the system works, it's like you have a car, you have to register your car. Why do you have to register it? You're not the owner of the car, you're just minding the car, the signature, and when you go deep into this, you'll be like, Wow, everything. So I'd encourage everybody just start looking at it, don't get too deep into it, don't let it kind of affect you, but just start learning. Because if we look at, say, the signature, every time they do something, sign that. And why? Because when you sign it, you've just agreed to what was on the paper. So just learn little techniques. And I've applied it with a lot of stuff, and they've backed up me. There was times I was just constantly bombarded by the city and everything, and I have won loads of things with them with my knowledge. So, yeah, that's why I created the submarine. I want to help more people to understand it, and it's it's not something that you just kind of do and it's very fast. That's what I would say. It's something it takes some sometimes a few years, create the notes and do it. But the thing is be careful with who you're learning from because there's a lot of charlatans out there that are you know charging five and ten grand, pretending, hey, you don't have to do this, you don't have to do that. You know, take your electricity meter out, you don't have to pay for that. Not this there's a lot of stuff I've seen. For example, they say go into the courts and say, Sh prove you've got jurisdiction over me. And my model is don't go into the court because there's ways of actually not going in. Because when you're summons, it means you're being asked, you think you have to go, right? And when you're in there, you're under their jurisdiction. You can't go in there and say, prove you've got the jurisdiction, because the minute you walk in the room, you've already done it. And when the judge they say stand for the judge, as soon as you stand, you're already under their control. And there's so many little things like that, and when you kind of understand it, you go, okay, but just I'd say take it on as a like a pet project, and once you get it, you'll never go back, you just start getting better and better at it. No, no, absolutely. You're you're you're totally right. So you have all these dozens of podcasts that you that you host, and you're helping so many more. how is a virtual assistant help you grow your business? I'll tell you how by having that company, how it's kind of came about. at one stage, you know, I'd use Fiverr and I'd use Upwork. So with Fiverr, you I'd make sure I check the reviews and be like, all right, and then at the start, they'd start off grand, and then it's like, what's going on? And then you just get someone else, and it's like you're trying to change them and you're giving them passwords, and you're going, What's going on here? Then Upwork, because they've got the screenshots, same thing. You check all the reviews, you're going, okay. This unfortunately, most of the reviews come from their own people because they do five dollar kind of things, get good reviews, making it look good, and you think they're okay. But when you kind of start working with them, same thing, first month it seems okay. Then you loads the screenshots, but you don't see anything happening, and it's like, so yeah, I mean I had a recruitment company in Ireland before when the Polish were coming to Ireland, and so and you know, when I was working for the H O Neils and Mechanical Cliff, I hired loads of people, so I was kind of used to doing that anyway. And I partnered with my business partner, she's in Pakistan, Karen, and we've got a big team, and we can do websites, we do lots of social media. So, what we do is more plans and helping people you know grow their business and everything, as opposed to how much it is for an hour, because that's what most people are saying. And then they're going, I can get somebody in the Philippines, and then they're going, I'm on my 10th person because they're not that good. And you're going, yeah, but that's why if you're trying to pay three bucks or five bucks an hour, you're getting a three bucks or five bucks per hour if you want quality work, you have to pay it because we have different we have different levels as well, and they think just because they're in the Philippines or they're in Pakistan or something, that you just throw a dollar and they're going to be happy, and that's not the way it is. But if we're doing stuff, we sit down with the client, we give them a plan of exactly what we're doing. But say we're doing the website, we can do very high-level websites, including courses, payment systems, and everything. But what we'll do is we'll teach, we'll spend an hour teaching you how to do changes and stuff like that. A lot of the times people don't want to do that, they're just saying all okay. But for example, if you were organizing an event and then you had to postpone it or something, you don't you can just go in and change, so we teach you how to do it if you want it. We're not kind of the ones that are holding your password and you look you need a new page, and we're like, oh, that's another you know, 500 bucks or something like that. We're we're in it for the long haul, and then we do a referral system as well. So our clients, if they refer people to them, you know, we give them a commission for that as well. Just and yeah, we tend to we hold on to our clients and they're happy because the way I do it is I look for the long haul. You know, I'm in the business that I want to be working with them in 10 years' time and I want them to be successful, and when they're successful, they'll want more of our services and telling their friends, and it works that way. Wonderful. And with the emergence of AI, I'm sure that you're using some of those tools as well. how has AI changed the way that you run your business? When it came out first, I was playing around with it and it just annoyed me because it just kept lying. And I was like, what's all this about? It's like it's it couldn't even find information on me. It was just giving, just making up stuff, and then I kind of but then I started delving further, and now I've paid for a lot of different ones, and I've kind of tried different things, so I've realized which ones are good for what. I like sometimes for the show notes for the titles, sometimes I'll create my own, but sometimes I go, give me five titles, give me the show notes. Timestamps was a hard one, you know, trying to get that to do it that it gives you the accurate timestamps, same thing, just make it up, and you're gone. Well, that's not good for me because if I'm putting it on YouTube, I want the timestamps because not everybody's interested in the whole episode. They could be interested in a certain thing and hit the chapter, but if they're they're making it up, they're hitting the chapter and it's bringing them to the wrong place. So, but it took a while for that. But what I find is I don't I don't pass over my creativity to AI. I still write, say if I want to do an introduction or whatever I'm doing, more professional, and then and then even at that I'm checking is it okay? But what I do is I'll make sure that I remove the exclamation marks, I remove the dashes, because people know that it's done. I mean, I get pitched because I have so many shows I get pitched constantly, and it's like I listen to this episode, and you know, it's light, you know, and it's it's written by AI, and you're like, you know, straight away you're like, meh, you know, either words you know when somebody genuinely writes, and straight away I'm interested when somebody's writing to me and they're interested in doing it. I'm going, okay, yeah, I want them on. So we can use AI to help us to speed things up. Like sometimes I might get a documentation and it's in a different language. I said, give me that in English, it's done like that. Perfect, it's exactly the exact same thing. Things like that, it's fantastic. regarding scheduling, posting, like you have to read it. I've heard people say, and I agree with that, you put in so much, you can put in, say, 10% input, let it do about 80%, and then spend another 10% checking everything. But people sometimes they don't even check it and they're posting stuff, and you're looking at it and you're going, that's lazy. And I think I think what's happening with AI is eventually it's going to go to more paid models because I'm seeing more and more now where it's credits. Like I started you using Manus, and Manus, the Facebook one, and that was the better one for the show notes. And before a week was up, it was like you're out of credits, and you're paying another 20 bucks, and then they're telling you 20 bucks, but it's 20 plus value, it doesn't tell you that. Like, but your credit card or your debit card reflects that, and you're like, and then it was up to 100 bucks. And I was like, What's going on here? And like you're halfway through something uploading it, and then it's in your own credits, and then you try to do the next part, and it gets it wrong, and then you're trying to correct it. So you're about three times are after correcting it, and they're like, I'm just after paying for this, and I'm paying to correct it. And it's like, I just say I find Claude brilliant, I find ChatGPT brilliant for graphics, and sometimes I could use five of them or more if I'm kind of investigating something, put them all out, look at all of it, and extract the best from each one because they're all different, you know. But at the same time, like what AI does as well, especially ChatGPT. Say you ask it something and then go, Would you like to add a bell and whistle to that? Oh, yeah, that's great. And would you like a business plan? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Would you like to create the letter for this? And before you know it, you've got 50 pages and you end up doing nothing. So, my advice for people is when you ask a question, stick to it, get it done, and then move on to the next thing because you'll do nothing when you just keep going, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I've done it myself. I say 50 pages, and then it becomes a job just to read it and you don't do anything. So keep it simple, stick to the task and do it. I love it. Yeah, no, you're absolutely right, Ryan. A lot of people they fall into that funnel, and then all of a sudden they have all this information, some correct, some incorrect, and now you spend all this time going through it all, and you're you're you're just counteracting what you were out to achieve in the first place. Well, we're out of time, Roy, but I want to encourage everyone to go to RoyCoughlan.com. You can see it up there on the screen. And if you're listening, that's Roy Coughlan, C-O-U-G-H-L-A-N.com. The Podfather. why don't we just wrap things up with you telling us what they'll find if they go to RoyCoughlan.com. Well, it depends when they go because I'm always evolving and you just don't know what business is there. But they'll find my 10 podcasts, my podfather network, which is my other podcast. They'll find the virtual assistants, which is if they're looking via. I'm in business groups, private business groups, and yeah, so everything I'm doing will be in that place. Wonderful. Well, Roy, it's been a pleasure, and we'd love to have you on the show again in the future. that's Roy Coughlan, RoyCoughlan.com, and the Link Thru Social podcasts will be back right after this brief message. SPONSOR MESSAGE - SMART POST APP SPONSOR MESSAGE Tired of stressing over what to post on social media? Meet Smart Post App, your all-in-one solution to create, schedule, and grow your content effortlessly. In just a few taps, you can generate engaging posts, stay consistent, and keep your audience coming back for more. No more guessing, no more burnout, just smarter content faster. Whether you're a business owner, creator, or entrepreneur, Smart Post offers both premium and pro plans. In addition, we have new features that have been recently added that include instantly viewing public links to your posts on any network, weekly view allowing you to plan hour by hour, account groups, group your accounts to save time and simplify your workflow, and a desktop version which offers a simpler way to stay consistent. Start posting smarter today at SmartPostApp.com. Smart post app because your content should work for you.