How I Tripled Revenue for My Mental Health Podcast Network [Update]

Gillian Tietz

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Published: January 6th, 2024

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Gillian Tietz

Founder, Sober Powered Media

$5K

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

Sober Powered Media

soberpoweredmedia.com

from Boston, MA, USA

started June 2022

$5,000

revenue/mo

Founders

Employees

Discover what tools recommends to grow your business!

Discover what books Gillian recommends to grow your business!

Want more updates on Sober Powered Media? Check out these stories:

1. Leaving A 6-Figures Career In Biotech To Start A Mental Health Podcast Network (2022) ➜

This is a follow up story for Sober Powered Media. If you're interested in reading how they got started, published almost 2 years ago, check it out here.

Hello again! Remind us who you are and what business you started.

I’m Gill and I’m the founder of Sober Powered Media. I started my business in June 2022 after growing my podcast, Sober Powered, from no audience at all to a top 100 mental health podcast in 2 years. I shared my business story when I was very early into being a full time entrepreneur here.

My business grosses about $10-12k/month, not including my side hustle (more on that below).

Here’s how I make an income:

Membership community for my listeners. I offer a group for people working on their sobriety. We have ~3 virtual support meetings per week and a private community.
Podcast ads.
Group coaching. Since we last spoke I’ve become a certified anger management specialist and a certified professional recovery coach. I am now beginning to offer small group coaching programs for quitting drinking and managing anger. I’m working on my professional food addiction coach certification and will offer emotional eating groups in the future.
Podcast network. I monetize other mental health podcasts through my network, Sober Powered Media. For my work, I receive a portion of their ad revenue.
Teaching. This isn’t part of my business, but I am very proud of it. Entrepreneurship has given me flexibility in my schedule so I could pursue a lifelong dream of becoming a professor. My side hustle is working as an adjunct chemistry professor at a university in Boston.

Tell us about what you’ve been up to. Has the business been growing?

I was able to triple my revenue in year 2 of my business (year 4 of showing up online) compared to year 1. This was also the first full year of being a full time entrepreneur. Because of the increased revenue, I was able to hire a team! I still work 6-7 days a week, but I am improving work life balance.

Here are my marketing channels and what has worked:

Instagram

Unfortunately, Instagram still continues to be the largest driver of traffic and sales for my business. I say unfortunately because the algorithm is brutal and if you want your page to reach anyone, you have to spend a significant amount of time on the app and you have to be continuously changing your content to stick with the trends. However, if you can manage to keep adapting and working hard at it, you get rewarded.

YouTube

I started experimenting with putting video clips of my podcast on YouTube, but I do not think this has resulted in any growth anywhere else. Based on my analytics and tracking on my email list and website, I believe my YouTube audience is going nowhere else.

I have made a considerable effort there to grow my channel, monetize it, and raise awareness for my podcast (which is monetized) and my membership. I even tell people in response to their comments that the full episode is in their podcasting app and it’s way better than what’s on YouTube, but they respond that they don’t listen to podcasts. I am about 400 watch hours away from being monetized on YouTube so I am going to continue the grind and see what happens with YouTube ads.

Email List

Doubling down on Instagram resulted in email list growth this year. I also created a page for my free resources which increased sign ups.

I had a lot of PR this past year. The most exciting ones were a news feature on CBS Boston and an interview on All Things Considered WGBH Boston. This was enough to earn me my blue checkmark on Instagram, about a week before they decided everyone could just buy their own.

What have been your biggest challenges in the last year?

I’ve had many challenges this year, but now I’m feeling hopeful that I can solve them moving forward.

Instagram Frustration and Burnout

I was so sick of Instagram this year. I was tired of the algorithm and my almost non-existent reach. My podcast growth suffered a lot this year back on Instagram, which hurt my potential income.

It felt like a waste of time to post there, but at the same time, I knew Instagram was the main driver of sales and conversions. I ended up hiring my friend to write 2 posts a week for me and that was one of the best decisions I made all year. Even though the posts were based on my podcast episodes and work, having someone else write them removed the personal attachment I had to my posts and how well they performed. It also created consistency again.

Before, I was stuck in, “what do I post today?” and it was impossible to succeed. I struggled with the ever changing algorithm and my posts not getting seen. More on this in the next section.

Work-Life Balance

I have worked 7 days a week since I started my podcast in June 2020. There’s only so long you can go this hard until you start to have consequences. I was so tired this year, filled with anxiety, and the inspiration I had relied on to create content had disappeared because of it.

I kept feeling burned out and I couldn’t recover from it. Expanding my team has helped. I hired 5 people this year. Struggling with anxiety is new to me, and my racing heart keeps me up at night sometimes. I hope next year will bring more balance and better mental health.

Taking My Business Personally

It’s hard running a small business. With my membership, people reach out to me for technical issues, to tell me they’re canceling, to ask that I cancel their membership for them, or they just report the charge as fraudulent to their bank because they forgot to cancel. This happens at all hours on all channels- inside the membership, via email, or in my Instagram DMs.

This all took a significant toll on my mental health and impacted the fulfillment I get from working with my members. I felt rejected. I put a very personal touch on my membership and if people wanted to cancel, then it must mean they don’t like the membership, which means they don’t like me. It took a full year and lots of bringing this up in therapy to find a workaround. I hired my operations manager who runs a customer support email for me and tracks cancellations/MRR for the membership.

Now, I don’t know who is canceling and how much the membership makes a month besides the very last day of the month when I add that number to my spreadsheet. This change has only happened in the past couple of weeks and it’s already had a major impact on my mental health.

What have been your biggest lessons learned in the last year?

What Got Me Here Won’t Get Me There:

I know a lot about how to grow on Instagram, but Instagram is always changing. This year I had to accept that my posts sucked. I was still trying to grow with what was working 2 years ago.

I resisted this for a long time and complained about the algorithm, but eventually, I became more adaptable. I started analyzing what was working for other pages and trying to implement this on my page.

embed:instagram

Vs.

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I Can’t Do It Alone:

I am a very frugal entrepreneur and I struggle to trust other people. I had this toxic belief that I could do everything better than anyone else, so even when I tried to be open to hiring help, I could never move forward.

It took me most of the year to work through this, but I have hired a lot of help and it’s improved my mental health and stress levels. Here are my recent hires:

Scientific consultant to help me with the research for each podcast episode (I host a science show about addiction and the research is very time consuming)
Operations manager to help me with my membership, scheduling posts on social media, and managing the behind-the-scenes of my website
Writer to help me with social media posts
Meeting hosts to run some more support meetings in my membership

Prioritize What is Working:

I spent time evaluating which areas of my business make the most money, which areas I enjoy, and what potential there is for the future. I stopped spending a ton of time focusing on things that made me very little income and instead doubled down on what was working. I will continue to do this next year too.

What’s in the plans for the upcoming year, and the next 5 years?

2024 Goals:

Increase monthly revenue to $15-20k/month for more security so I can hire more team members or make some current team members full-time
Monetize YouTube
Get podcast downloads to 100k/mo (and beyond!). This will increase my ad revenue and decrease my stress levels
Work on my anxiety, stress, and burnout

Next 5 Year Goals:

Write and publish a book
Continue to teach at the college
Take vacations without working or checking email once!
Be a guest on the Huberman Lab Podcast to talk about the science of alcohol
Be on TV more, get more PR

Advice for other entrepreneurs who might be struggling to grow their business?

Patience

Growing a business takes time. Yes, I tripled my revenue this past year. However, I made $0 in year 1 of showing up online and $6000 in year 2 (before expenses!). Try not to rush into creating a course, buying a bunch of business coaching, and writing a book.

A lot of business success comes down to mindset and the way you think about your business. That takes years to develop. All of my challenges this year were mostly due to my mindset and trying to do everything alone.

Be Honest With Yourself

If your social media isn’t growing is it because your posts just aren’t what people want to see right now? If people aren’t buying your stuff, then eventually you need to listen. I think you should commit to 1 product/service for 6 months before you let it go, but if you’re continuously launching new things that no one buys then ask yourself these questions and be honest:

What kind of audience have you built? What made them follow you? Is it the same thing you’re trying to sell or something else?
Are you consistently showing up or do you only show up to sell?
Are you confident in your offer? If you’re not, then people can feel that and it’s a turn off.
Are you skipping steps? Social media tells us that we can just create a course with under 1,000 followers and make 6 figures. However, this information is mostly coming from people who are trying to sell you courses about creating courses. Have you spent enough time developing your expertise? I showed up online for 2 years basically for free just developing my expertise and learning what resonated with people. It takes time to build your perspective.

Is Your Website Professional?

My website was a huge priority for me this year and I changed my branding to have a more professional vibe. If your website runs slowly, is mostly words, looks like it was written by AI, or looks like a DIY project, then potential clients/customers are going to form a certain opinion about your brand.

Think about how you want to present yourself to the public. My website is completely DIY by the way, so it’s possible to have a great DIY website, you just don’t want it to look DIY. I invested in a branding photoshoot this year and I wish I had done it sooner! It is such an upgrade to have professional pictures on my site instead of selfies. We even reserved some time at the end to do some fun pictures featuring my tattoos.