How a podcast for entrepreneurial parents generates $200,000 a year
Sarah Peck explains why she didn't chase scale when building her Startup Parent podcast.
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It’s often assumed that if you want to run a successful media business, you first need to achieve massive scale. Most of the articles that profile successful creators focus on YouTubers, podcasters, and other content producers who reach enormous audiences each month and then convert that reach into seven figures in revenue.
But there are some creators who have managed to build strong businesses with relatively small audiences. They’ve accomplished this by drilling down into lucrative niches and then selling high-priced products to just a few customers.
Case in point: the Startup Parent podcast. When I interviewed host Sarah Peck last May, it was generating only around 2,000 downloads per episode, and its newsletter following was even smaller. Despite those low numbers, she was on track to generate $200,000 in 2021.
Where does all that revenue come from? Well, the podcast sells sponsorships, of course, but the real monetization driver is the Wise Women’s Council, an intense six-month “leadership incubator” geared toward female-identifying and non-binary parents who are also entrepreneurs. Peck charges participants anywhere from $4,800 to $7,800 to enroll, and she often receives far more applications than she can accept into the program.
In an interview last year, Peck walked me through why she launched the podcast, how she designed the incubator, and why dozens of women have signed up multiple years in a row despite its high price tag.
Let’s jump into my findings…
Designing high-priced products
Like many successful creators, Peck began building an online audience while working in a completely unrelated field. In her case, she got a master’s degree in landscape architecture and landed a role at a major architecture firm in 2008.
Two years into that job, she launched a website at sarahkpeck.com and started blogging as a side hustle on a wide range of topics. The exposure she got from the blog led to an opportunity to teach a storytelling course for General Assembly. She enjoyed the experience and came away from it wondering if she could cut out the middleman and develop a similar curriculum online.
The writing course she ended up creating was intense. I actually interviewed her about it back in 2017, and here’s how she described it:
“I sent out new material every day, five days a week,” she said. “They did writing assignments, and I read them and reviewed one of their assignments every week.” She wrote over 35,000 words of materials for the course, conducted live Google Hangouts, shot pre-recorded videos, and answered emails. “The overwhelming feedback I got was that it was great, but it was too fast. So I slowed it down and did a second one that was six weeks long.”
Peck sold the course for $500, but didn’t know whether there would be much demand. “It was a small group writing program for 30 people,” she told me. “It sold out, which surprised me. I didn’t think I had a big enough email list to do that.” The success served as an eye-opening lesson for her: sometimes it’s easier to sell a high-priced product to a small number of people than it is to sell thousands of low-priced subscriptions or ebooks.
She continued to build this side business for a few more years, and then in 2013 she managed to sell $30,000 in online courses. “I was like, hey, if I leave my job, I can probably double that and scrape by,” she said. “And that’d be pretty exciting.” Peck pivoted to a career as a freelance writer. When she wasn’t developing courses, she wrote thought leadership content for high-level executives. “I got a couple key retainer clients. I really loved doing it.”
Then in 2014 Peck took a job leading communications at One Month, a Y-Combinator-funded startup that specialized in developing online courses. “They were a company that taught people how to code your first website or app within 30 days,” she said. “They were focused on javascript, python, ruby on rails, html, css. They were doing quite well and wanted to expand their portfolio of courses to include things like content strategy and marketing.” She spearheaded the content marketing and other growth strategies for attracting both students and teachers.
Peck loved the long hours and hustle of startup culture. At one point in our interview she talked about how much she missed waking up at 6 a.m. on a Saturday and working until 6 p.m. But then in 2015 something happened that would change her ability to work crazy hours for the foreseeable future: she got pregnant. “I was pregnant while working at a startup, which is insane. I kept thinking, why am I doing this? This is actually much harder than I thought.”
As those thoughts kept swirling around in her head, they eventually solidified into an idea: what if she were to write a book about her experience working at a startup while pregnant? With so much media coverage about the lack of diversity in tech, the idea had a certain news hook to it. “I pitched a proposal to a literary agency in downtown Manhattan. I got an agent. With a 3-month-old baby, I left the startup to start working on a book.”
Paywall incoming…
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