Build A Profitable Online Education Business

About This Episode

In this episode of the Maximize Your Brand Podcast, we discuss brand positioning and the steps to building a profitable online education business.

My special guest, Olly Richards, shares his inspiring journey from a jazz musician to a successful entrepreneur in language learning. Olly discusses the importance of having a passion people are willing to pay for and offers practical advice on starting an online business, including building a foundation while maintaining a day job and learning from industry leaders.

You will learn:

• How to position your brand with a unique selling proposition (USP)
• How to build an audience
• How to scale your business effectively.

Olly Richards emphasizes the value of creating content with a purpose and shares strategies for choosing the right content format to engage audiences. With insights on focusing efforts and leveraging resources, this episode is packed with actionable tips for anyone looking to build a profitable personal brand business.

Who Is Olly Richards

Olly Richards had a series of random careers, from jazz musician to English teacher, before eventually starting a blog on his passion – language learning – and growing it into a $10 million business. Today, he writes a newsletter teaching other online entrepreneurs how to scale their businesses to 7+ figures, using StoryLearning as a “living case study”.

Olly, from the UK, started his career as a jazz musician in the UK, playing professionally for seven years. He decided that career wasn’t for him and instead trained as an English teacher. At 28, he took a teaching job in Japan and started a new career, later moving to Qatar and Egypt.

Throughout all this time, Olly’s passion was learning foreign languages, and he taught himself eight languages. While living in the Middle East, he decided to channel this passion into creative output, and started a WordPress blog teaching others techniques for learning foreign languages.

Today, Olly is involved in multiple successful education companies as an investor, mentor and advisor, but his passion is still teaching and working with others. His newsletter focuses specifically on helping 6-figure business own.

Watch The Interview

Key Topics Olly Covers

Links and Resources

Episode Transcript

Markeith Braden: What does it really take to build a profitable personal brand business? Today, my guest and I will explore the importance of brand positioning and dive into a fascinating case study on building a multi-million-dollar online education business that complements your personal brand. This is going to be an incredible episode, so sit back, relax, and enjoy the conversation!

Markeith Braden: What’s going on, everyone? Welcome to another episode of the Maximize Your Brand Podcast! I’m so excited to have you with us again this week. It’s been a little while since we’ve connected, but we have an amazing episode lined up for you.

As you know, I’m all about helping mid-life career professionals—what I like to call “Gen-Xers”—build profitable personal brands that replace their corporate income. Today, we have an incredible guest to discuss this very topic.

His name is Olly Richards. Olly’s journey is fascinating—he’s had a series of random careers, from being a jazz musician to an English teacher. Eventually, he started a blog centered on his passion for language learning, which he scaled into a $10 million online business.

This episode is not just for you but also for me, as I’m deeply committed to building a profitable online business. Today, Olly writes a newsletter at OllyRichards.co, where he teaches other online entrepreneurs how to scale their businesses to seven-plus figures. He uses his concept of StoryLearning as a living case study.

Without further ado, let’s bring in our guest, Mr. Olly Richards. Olly, thank you so much for joining us on this episode of the Maximize Your Brand Podcast!

Olly Richards: It is an absolute pleasure, man. Great to be here. It is fantastic to be speaking with you.

Markeith Braden: I am so excited about this topic because I have been on a journey this past year focusing on transitioning my business to an online-based education business. I’ve interviewed you and John Meese, who also discusses online education. I’m just trying to get all of the great nuggets and surround myself with those doing fantastic in this area or niche of business.

Olly Richards: Awesome. Well, yeah. Let’s get into it. I’m excited.

Markeith Braden: Awesome. Well, I gave a brief introduction, but I always like my guests to go ahead and share a little bit more about themselves. So go ahead, take it away.

Olly Richards:

Yeah, as you mentioned, I’ve changed what I do quite a lot over the years. I started my career as a musician—I was a professional jazz musician throughout my late teens and into the first half of my twenties. However, I eventually realized that the musician lifestyle wasn’t for me.

At around 28 years old, I decided to change careers. I completed a TEFL qualification, which is a program where you train to become an English teacher. After that, I moved from the UK, where I’m from, all the way to Japan to teach English.

Starting over from scratch at age 28, I began developing my career as an English teacher. Over time, I transitioned into managing language schools and building my expertise in the field. Around 2011 or 2012, I moved from Japan to the Middle East. I took on a middle management position, spending a few years in Qatar before moving to Egypt for a year.

During that time, I found myself growing frustrated with the work-life dynamic of being a middle manager. The role felt very bureaucratic.

You know, everyone listening knows what this is like—I had this deep desire for creativity. I needed to do something creative, so I decided to start writing a blog about something I had always done in the background for fun: learning languages. I’ve learned eight languages, and it’s always been my real passion.

Around that time, I read a book called The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau, and it was transformational. The book featured case studies of people making a living from their passions. One example really struck me: a guy who had a language learning blog and was traveling the world, living off the income from it. I thought, Man, I can do that. If he can do it, why can’t I?

So, I decided to give it a try. I started writing a blog and committed to posting one blog post every week for nearly two years. I focused on teaching valuable content and being as helpful as I possibly could—just doing the blogging thing.

Then, in 2015, my daughter was born, and my wife and I decided we didn’t want her to grow up in Cairo. We both quit our jobs, and we moved back to the UK. I was 34 years old at the time, with a newborn baby, no job, and just a blog. Honestly, it was terrifying, but it also motivated me to take things seriously.

I threw myself into learning how to turn my blog into a business. I went on a learning spree—joining expensive masterminds, taking courses, and absorbing everything I could. By 2015, I was working on it full-time. The last eight years have been a wild journey of growth, learning, and scaling the business.

Today, that blog has evolved into StoryLearning, which is now my main business. We teach languages like Spanish and French through stories. It’s a fully developed business with a management team, and I’m mostly hands-off, working just a few hours a month.

Now, I’ve come full circle and am starting fresh again—this time with a newsletter where I share everything I’ve learned over the last 10 years. At heart, I’m a teacher; that’s what I do. This new chapter is about embracing that role again. And that brings us to the present day.

Markeith Braden: When you talk about having a passion and turning that passion into a business, I’m sure there are people listening who are thinking, Of course, I have passions. But the question is, how do you really know that you can turn a passion into a business—especially one that could become a multi-million dollar business?

Olly Richards: At its core, any business idea needs to be based on something people are willing to pay for—something they already routinely spend money on. If people are paying for it, and there’s a large enough market, there’s no reason it can’t scale to almost any level.

Take the language industry as an example. When I first started my blog, I had no idea it would grow into what it eventually became. But I did know a few key things: people learn languages, they pay for language lessons, they hire teachers, they buy books, and they attend expensive courses. I recognized there was demand in this space.

So, whenever you’re evaluating whether a business idea has potential, it really boils down to two questions: Are there people willing to pay to learn or use this? And is there a substantial number of them? If the answer is yes, then you’ve got the potential not only to make a living but possibly even to achieve significant financial success.

Markeith Braden: Nice, nice. Let’s jump right into it. How do you start? What are the first things someone needs to think about if they’re the type of individual I often work with?

Let’s say they’re in their corporate career—maybe they’ve worked 10, 15, or even 20 years in that role—and now they’re ready to pivot and do something new on their own. They want to take the skills they’ve developed and start building an online-based business.

What are some of the initial steps they need to consider before making that transition?

Olly Richards: Yeah, so I think there are two key things to consider.

The first is that, in almost every case, it’s better not to jump ship immediately. When I started my blog, I spent two full years working on it while I was still in a full-time job. That was a big deal because it meant I didn’t have to stress about making money from the blog right away. My job wasn’t super lucrative, but it was enough to cover my needs. This allowed me to dedicate my evenings and weekends to creating a really great blog without any pressure.

By the time I quit my job, my blog had grown to 30,000–40,000 visitors a month, and that became the foundation for my business. People often assume it must have been scary at the beginning, but it really wasn’t because I gave myself the time and space to build it.

When I hear people say, “I’m going to quit my job and start a business,” my immediate response is, “No, don’t do that.” Keep your job for a couple of years, even if you dial back your hours, and use your free time to learn how to start a business. Because once you quit, you’ll essentially be working two full-time jobs—your old one and your new business. You might as well keep the stability of your current income while you’re figuring things out.

The second key point is understanding that starting a business involves overcoming a huge knowledge deficit. There’s no inherent difference in value between someone like me, who has built a successful business, and someone just starting out. We both have skills—mine happen to be in languages and business, while theirs might be in accounting or financial services. The real difference is knowledge.

When you’re just starting, you don’t know what actions are most effective. You don’t understand how to manage your behavior, the importance of networking, or how to price your services correctly. You might undervalue yourself or lack skills like copywriting, which are crucial for making sales. This lack of knowledge often leads to wasted time and effort.

That’s why focusing on education and learning is the most important thing you can do early on. And again, this is why I believe it’s critical not to quit your day job too soon. Your salary can fund your education.

When I quit my job in 2015, I did something that many of my friends thought was crazy, but it turned out to be a game-changer. I had saved about $25,000 from working in the Middle East for three years, and I invested it all in a private mastermind with Russell Brunson, the founder of ClickFunnels. At the time, Russell wasn’t as well-known as he is today, but I knew he had the knowledge I needed. My thinking was simple: if I was going to succeed, it would be because of what I learned. And if I failed, it wouldn’t be due to ignorance.

That decision made a huge difference. Being in the room with people who had already walked the path I wanted to follow gave me clarity and direction. It lit the way for everything that came after.

So, the number one thing is to take the time you have to educate yourself. Learn about the different options and business models, and use that knowledge to set yourself up for success.

Markeith Braden: Different options definitely present themselves, and in my personal experience, I had a unique situation. I was laid off from my job in 2010, and that became the catalyst for me to make the decision to go full-time into building something of my own.

To be honest, I wasn’t sure I was ready, and I didn’t have all the answers, but after about 10 years of working professionally, I knew one thing for certain: I didn’t want to go back to the corporate world. Looking back, I’m actually grateful for the opportunity to have been laid off, because I’m not sure I would have made the transition on my own had I stayed in that job.

Olly Richards: Yeah, yeah. So that’s the other piece, right? Along with education and learning, you also need to take action. That’s the critical difference.

For me, I think what set me apart was my disposition. I wasn’t just learning—I was also taking consistent action. I’d stay up in the evenings and spend my weekends writing blog posts, creating products, making affiliate sales, and sending emails. I was actively doing the work.

You have to honestly assess yourself and ask, What kind of person am I? If the only way you’ll take action is by burning all your bridges, then at least you’re self-aware—but know that it’s going to be an incredibly stressful few years.

For most entrepreneurs, one of the defining traits of success is the ability and willingness to take consistent action every single day, no matter how hard it gets. That’s the difference-maker. The people who succeed are the ones who can push forward consistently.

On the other hand, anyone who isn’t able to take action day after day simply won’t succeed. It’s not possible. Consistent action is a non-negotiable, and it’s the one variable we can’t account for when talking about entrepreneurial success.

Markeith Braden: Yeah, and what’s so interesting is that I’m at a similar stage now. Last year, I invested in a program to get back into blogging—but this time, not just blogging to share my thoughts or randomly posting content. Instead, it’s a program that teaches the business of blogging—how to blog strategically and build a business around it.

What’s fascinating is that we’re talking about blogging here, and you’re sharing how you started your blog on languages. My question is this: in 2023, and now heading into 2024, is it still possible to build a profitable business with a blog?

Olly Richards: Well, what is a blog? What is YouTube? What is a podcast? What is an email newsletter? What’s packing out a conference room with guests? It’s all traffic.

There are people who still go door to door—that’s a form of traffic. My wife is a great example. I often tell people who are anxious about AI, “Look, my wife still buys her clothes from mail-order catalogs.” How is AI going to disrupt that? People behave in lots of different ways. Some people watch videos, some listen to podcasts, and yes, many younger people have shorter attention spans. But there are still plenty of people who prefer to read.

If you’re a reader, what are you reading? Maybe Twitter, but if you’re serious, you probably avoid spending too much time on social media. So what does that leave? Blogs and email newsletters.

A blog is fundamentally a traffic source. You can grow it using SEO and other techniques to drive significant amounts of traffic. For instance, we get over a million hits a month on our website, and that number has grown year after year since we started. There are blogs and websites with even more traffic than ours.

If anything, as people become more obsessed with video platforms like TikTok and YouTube, it opens up opportunities in areas that might have become “less trendy,” like blogging. Personally, when I see everyone focusing on TikTok and YouTube, I think, “Great! I’ll keep serving all the readers out there.”

We’re also seeing a resurgence of email newsletters. Email newsletters have been around since the early 2000s—or even earlier—but now they’re back in vogue, often as editorial-style newsletters. People are subscribing specifically for high-quality email content, rather than just following a blog that happens to have an email list.

This resurgence shows that email is as powerful and central as ever. If people are reading their emails and clicking on links, they’re visiting websites, which means blogging still plays a critical role in the ecosystem.

The internet is an incredibly vast place with a wide range of audiences. If you’re a writer who communicates effectively through the written word and wants to target readers, then a blog remains the single best platform for you.

Markeith Braden: Great. Yeah, I’m really enjoying learning the process and implementing what I’m learning in the hopes of building traffic to my website.

So, let’s say I’ve taken your advice. I’ve considered my time with my job, and I’ve decided, “Okay, I’m going to stay for two years, work on building this business, and start taking consistent action.”

How do I begin to position the brand I want to create?

Olly Richards: Yeah, this is such a fundamental question, but also a challenging one. Let me start by sharing what we do at StoryLearning, as it might provide some inspiration.

We teach languages, like many other businesses out there. Everyone knows Duolingo and Rosetta Stone—these are massive companies we simply can’t compete with at their scale. That means we need to do something demonstrably different. If someone is going to pick us over Rosetta Stone, they need a clear reason why.

For us, that reason is our unique selling proposition (USP): we teach languages through stories. There are no other major businesses that focus solely on this method. It’s our thing, and we shout it from the rooftops. From our YouTube channel to our blogs, podcasts, and even our 25+ books available in Barnes & Noble stores across the U.S., everything we do centers around stories.

This approach works because when people search for language-learning solutions, they’ll find us alongside other options. Some may think, “Learning through stories? Not for me,” and head straight to Duolingo. But for others, the idea of learning a language through stories will resonate. They might think, I love reading, and stories are a natural way to learn. Stories are fundamental to how humans communicate—it’s how politicians win elections, how cavemen communicated through cave paintings, and how we connect with each other. It makes sense to learn a language this way.

For that segment of people, we’re a highly attractive option because we offer something different. And that’s the key: differentiation. While we’re not for everyone, we’re deeply appealing to a specific audience.

If you’re a small business or a solopreneur just starting out, your biggest advantage is to be different and unique. That’s how you stand out and offer a credible alternative to larger competitors. Within your industry, ask yourself: How can I be different? What makes my offering unique enough to capture attention?

It sounds simple, but finding your niche takes time. When I started, I was focused on my personal brand—it was essentially “The Olly Show.” I didn’t want to niche down. I wanted to teach whatever I felt passionate about, so I avoided narrowing my focus for years.

Eventually, I realized that what resonated most with my audience was the concept of learning through stories. Once I saw that, I knew I’d found the niche everyone talks about. We began rebranding the business, shifting our focus entirely to stories. We changed our name to StoryLearning, moved to StoryLearning.com, and fully embraced this method.

But here’s the kicker: it took me over six years from starting my business to making that change. The takeaway? You don’t have to get it right from the start. It’s okay to take your time. A niche often emerges over time as you learn more about your audience and your strengths. The key is to stay observant, and when you spot your niche, double down on it and pursue it relentlessly.

Markeith Braden: And so it takes time for a business to mature. It’s not this social media, overnight-success situation. Instead, it’s about implementing, taking your time, and truly understanding key elements of your business.

First, you need to recognize your own skill set. Then, identify who your ideal client is. What are their pain points? Where do they spend their time? You have to figure all of this out as you build your business.

Once you have that clarity, the next step is to position yourself as the expert in that particular area. I’m a firm believer that there’s nothing truly new under the sun. There’s even a scripture that says so—there’s nothing new under the sun.

What makes your offering unique is you. No one else can do or be you. That’s your differentiator. At the same time, you have the opportunity to tweak your idea, put it out into the market, and see if it’s something people truly want.

Olly Richards: Yeah, and within the context of an education business, it’s fascinating to see how this can develop. The biggest unfair advantage you have when starting out is your personal brand—because no one else can be you.

For example, if your name is Catherine and you teach leadership skills, the best way to begin is by creating something like Catherine’s Leadership Academy. No one else can replicate you. If your name, face, and personal brand are at the core of what you do, people will connect with you. If you speak at a conference, for instance, and someone likes what they hear, it’s easy for them to look you up and work with you. At the beginning, building around your personal brand is a huge advantage.

But as your business evolves, this dynamic can become a challenge. Let’s say you’ve established your personal brand and your business is generating mid-six figures in revenue. At that point, you might think, This is great, but I’m working really hard every single day. How can I step back without the business suffering?

This is where the bottleneck appears. With a personal brand, you are the brand, which means you’re essential to the day-to-day operation. While this isn’t a concern when you’re just starting out—because, honestly, you’ll deal with that bridge when you cross it—it’s worth keeping in mind for the future.

The key to escaping this bottleneck is creating a method or system that defines how you deliver your services. For example, if your brand is Catherine’s Leadership Academy, you’re always going to have to be there to teach. But if you develop a method—say, teaching leadership through storytelling—and give it a name like “The 1-2-3 Method,” your business moves beyond just you.

Now it’s not just leadership with Catherine; it’s leadership through storytelling with the 1-2-3 Method. That structured, branded system allows other facilitators to step in and teach it. This codification creates a scalable framework that others can use, letting you step back from the day-to-day operations.

What does this mean for you? It could mean reclaiming free time, launching another business, or focusing on higher-level strategies to scale your current business from six figures to seven figures—or beyond.

For anyone starting with a personal brand, it’s essential to think about this transition. Being on the lookout for methods and systems that you can adopt and brand early on is crucial. These frameworks will eventually become your ticket off the hamster wheel, enabling you to step into more of an owner role rather than staying in an operator role.

Markeith Braden: So good, so good. I’d like to transition now into talking about your case studies. Can you share more about what you’ve learned from conducting those case studies and reading about others who have started online-based businesses—or those who aspire to?

What are some of the key factors that made these individuals or businesses successful?

Olly Richards: There are so many differences and similarities among successful entrepreneurs, but one thing stands out consistently: audience building.

I occasionally work with other entrepreneurs who run education businesses and want to grow. I’ve had the chance to observe, up close, what they excel at, what they struggle with, what works, and what doesn’t. Across the board, the most significant advantage—one that helps them make the most money and enjoy the process more—is having an audience.

When I look at the most successful people I know, they’ve all built substantial audiences in some form. For instance:

• One person has over 250,000 followers on Twitter.
• Another is a renowned copywriter in the email marketing space.
• Someone else has built an entire B2B business from the speaking circuit.

What unites them is that their audience acts as a launchpad for their business. Their audience provides leads, sales, and validation for their ideas.

On the other hand, people who are product-first often face a significant challenge. They might think, I’ll create an academy, an online course, or offer consulting services, and quit their job to launch it. But then, they’re immediately faced with the question: Where do I find customers?

Starting with a product and no audience is incredibly hard. You haven’t proven your idea, you don’t know if people want it, and you’re starting from scratch to find your market.

The beauty of building an audience first is that you can test and validate as you go. If you’ve built a social media following, for example, you can:

• Pre-sell a product to gauge interest.
• Create a quick prototype over the weekend and sell it to see if it resonates.
• Gather instant feedback to determine product-market fit.

This feedback loop is incredibly powerful. It allows you to adapt quickly and refine your offerings before scaling. Plus, once you have an audience, growing it becomes easier—you just keep doing what works.

That’s why, when transitioning from corporate to online business, a parallel track to learning the ropes is to focus on audience building. That’s what I did when I started my blog. I spent two years building my audience before launching my business, and it made all the difference.

Many people transitioning into online businesses go heavy on social media to grow their audience. For example:

• Twitter is great for building large followings quickly.
• LinkedIn is especially powerful for B2B and professional services.

Almost everyone I currently work with has a LinkedIn presence, and many have tens of thousands of followers. For some, LinkedIn is their primary source of traffic and customers—it’s a huge driver for their business.

Ultimately, audience building is one of the most powerful tools for solopreneurs aiming to grow multi-six-figure businesses. If you take the time to focus on this early, it will give you a significant advantage when it’s time to launch.

Markeith Braden: Yeah, wow. So LinkedIn is a powerful tool. People don’t talk about that a lot.

Olly Richards: Yeah, are you a big social media guy?

Markeith Braden: I am. I am on all the platforms, but I can admit that I’ve not mastered any of them.

Olly Richards: Yeah, this ties perfectly into the second point I wanted to mention—so thanks for the segue!

When I meet entrepreneurs, they usually already have established businesses. I tend not to work with people in the very early stages. What’s interesting, though, is that once entrepreneurs have an established business, they start making very predictable mistakes.

Here’s a common scenario: someone has built a big following, whether it’s on LinkedIn, a blog, or another platform. They’re generating low six figures in revenue, and they’re thrilled. They’ve quit their job and can’t believe they’ve achieved this. They’re proud, but at the same time, they’re scared.

They start to think, What happens if LinkedIn changes its algorithm and I lose my audience? What if my traffic dries up overnight? This fear often leads them to overcompensate by diversifying too quickly.

Instead of focusing on one solid traffic source, they add more. They go from just LinkedIn to launching a YouTube channel, starting a podcast, creating a Twitter presence, and writing a blog. Then, they crash into product creation mode, releasing four or five products in a year.

What happens next is predictable chaos. They’re spread too thin, trying to manage five traffic sources and multiple products. As a result, none of these efforts are executed well. Marketing funnels are ineffective, customers aren’t properly looked after, and the business becomes overly complex.

For many entrepreneurs at this stage—mid to high six figures—the biggest barrier to scaling to seven figures isn’t a lack of opportunity but rather too much complexity. To unlock scale, they need to strip back their efforts:

• Narrow down traffic sources to one or two.
• Streamline their product suite so it serves a clear customer journey.
• Avoid selling to multiple avatars at the same time.

One of the most common mistakes is diversifying too early. In my view, as I explain in my case studies, diversification should not happen until you’ve reached at least $1 million in revenue. Why? Because you can scale to $1 million with just one traffic source and one well-designed product suite.

It’s not necessarily easy, but it is straightforward if you have product-market fit and a solid offering. One traffic source, such as LinkedIn, paired with one product, like a certification program, is all you need.

So why don’t more people do this? The answer is simple: when the going gets tough, they look for distractions rather than doubling down on what’s already working.

As Alex Hormozi often points out, when you hit a plateau, the best move is almost always to get better at what you’re already doing. If you’re using LinkedIn and a certification program, and you’re stuck at half a million in revenue, the solution isn’t starting a new traffic source—it’s improving your LinkedIn strategy.

This is where it gets hard because you’re now competing at a high level. But the beauty of social media and online platforms is that traffic sources are virtually unlimited. You just need to refine your approach, unlock more growth, and tweak your products where necessary—whether it’s repositioning, pricing adjustments, or adding extra tiers.

The key to scaling is to focus on what works, resist the urge to diversify prematurely, and stay disciplined when things get challenging.

Markeith Braden: I like that word focus. I learned from John Lee Dumas, Follow One Course Until Success.

Olly Richards: Yeah, it’s great. It’s such a great acronym. Yeah, follow. It’s one of those things, man, it’s so easy to say, and we all understand it, but it’s but, you know, five years down the line, when you built the successful business, and you find yourself there, it’s so easy to forget, you know, because I you got, there’s million excuses always, there’s always a reason why. There’s always a reason why not. But the truth is that the people who really succeed and succeed quickly, they they stay brutally focused on the on the task at hand.

Markeith Braden: Yeah, and, you know, that’s a message for me, because I have a tendency to be, you know, have the podcast, and I just recently started doing weekly YouTubes, and I have my social media and, you know, do speaking and getting into affiliate marketing. And I’m like, okay, markeith, you have to, I think they all can work in tangent, but I need to pick the one that I can create the half a million, million dollar business in, yeah, and then add as I grow.

Olly Richards: Yeah, it’s such a great acronym. It’s one of those things that’s so easy to say, and we all understand it, but five years down the line, when you’ve built a successful business, it’s easy to forget.

There are always a million excuses, always a reason why you should or shouldn’t do something. But the truth is, the people who succeed—and succeed quickly—are the ones who stay brutally focused on the task at hand.

Markeith Braden: You can get money.

Olly Richards: Oh, well, that’s a different story. Some of them are, but my point is, if the game you’re playing is traffic—and it sounds like you are, with starting this new content—then YouTube can be incredibly powerful. The gods of YouTube can bring you all the traffic you could possibly need.

Markeith Braden: But you’ve got to focus. You have to focus.

That’s actually one of the reasons why I haven’t produced as many podcast episodes in the latter part of this year—I’m shifting my focus. I always tell my clients, you’re lying to yourself if you think you’re multitasking. We can’t truly multitask. What we’re really doing is something called time splicing. You’re stopping one thing to do something else, then stopping that to do another thing, and in the process, you’re actually slowing yourself down.

As someone who was a former track athlete in high school and college, I know this firsthand. One thing we were always taught is that paying attention to the runner in the lane next to you will slow you down.

Olly Richards: Yeah, it’s incredible to stay focused in the heat of a race. I often think about how much more focus I seemed to have when I was younger—around 20 or 21. These days, at 42, I find I have to work much harder to achieve that same level of concentration.

But on the topic of content, what’s interesting is that everything comes down to knowing the game you’re playing. On the strategic side, if traffic is the problem to solve, then fine—identify the best path forward. If you’ve decided YouTube is your platform, then fully commit to it. Take courses, hire a consultant, study what works, and execute. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel—the answers are already out there. It’s just a matter of finding the right people with those answers and figuring it out.

However, it’s equally important to understand the purpose behind the content you’re choosing to create. For example, I often hear people say, “I want to grow my traffic, so I started a podcast.” My response is, “Okay, but what’s the purpose of your podcast?”

In my view, the main purpose of a podcast is to create intimacy. Podcasting is one of the most intimate content formats available. Growing a podcast to achieve massive traffic is incredibly hard—it’s rare. While there are examples of wildly successful podcasts, they’re the exceptions that prove the rule. Most podcasts have relatively low traffic.

But let’s say you’re already driving significant traffic from a platform like YouTube or a blog. If you’re selling high-ticket items, such as coaching or consulting, what do you need to convert those sales? Intimacy. Traffic from YouTube or a blog provides authority, but intimacy is often missing.

A podcast can fill that gap. If someone listens to you for an hour at a time, they start to understand your message, trust you, and believe in what you’re offering. That’s when selling high-ticket items becomes easier. In this case, traffic is almost irrelevant. If you already have enough traffic, a podcast can supercharge your sales by building that deeper level of trust and connection.

Every piece of content serves a specific purpose. For example, when I meet people who are very active on social media platforms like Twitter or LinkedIn, I often recommend they start an email newsletter. Why? Because they already know how to write short-form content. By creating a newsletter, they can extend their writing into long-form content, which builds authority.

No one will believe you’re an expert if you’re just another voice on Twitter, lost in the sea of opinions. But if you publish a long-form email newsletter where you teach valuable concepts, people will start to see you as an authority. With that authority, you can then sell more effectively.

Each medium—whether it’s YouTube, podcasts, blogs, social media, or email newsletters—has its own purpose. The key is understanding how that purpose fits into your overall strategy.

Markeith Braden: So many moving parts—we could go on for another hour! But there’s been some incredible content shared here, and so many valuable pieces to take away.

First, identifying and knowing your skill set is crucial. You need clarity on what you want to do and what you’re bringing to the table. Then, as you mentioned, it’s about building community and audience before creating the product. That’s such an important point because, without that community, you don’t really know what people want, need, or what their pain points are. You don’t know what problem you’re solving for them.

Building that community is critical, and it gives you the ability to test your ideas and offerings with the people you’re serving. I believe that community-building is one of the most challenging aspects because it requires you to resonate with individuals who align with your message, your brand, and your potential offers.

For me, building community around my business has been a key focus because, without a community, you don’t have anyone to sell to. Community is the foundation that makes everything else possible.

Olly Richards: I think some people are naturally inclined to build communities, while others aren’t. Personally, I’m not a natural community-builder. My personality type leans more toward novelty—I thrive on new ideas and projects, so I struggle with coming back to the same thing repeatedly. A lot of entrepreneurs share this challenge.

That’s why I know a membership site wouldn’t be the right fit for me. For others, it might be perfect. However, when you’re just starting out and trying to connect with your audience, understand their pain points, and learn their struggles, building a community can be an incredibly natural and effective approach. It’s also a quick way to gather valuable insights and truly understand your audience.

Markeith Braden: Yeah, well, we’ve come to the end of our conversation, but before we go, I’d love for you to share how people can learn more about you, your business, and your websites. How can we connect with you, become customers, or engage with any upcoming projects you have?

Olly Richards: Thank you, Markeith. The best way to hear more from me is to sign up for my email newsletter at OllyRichards.co. It’s completely free, and I typically send out one long-form email each week, diving into topics around entrepreneurship.

When you sign up, you’ll also get a free copy of my 118-page case study. It’s a deep dive into the nuts and bolts of how a successful online business operates, and people find it really valuable for understanding the pathway to building their own business.

You can also find my videos on YouTube—just search for Olly Richards. And if you’re curious about my language business and want to see how it all works, visit StoryLearning.com. Everything you need is there.

Markeith Braden: Awesome! Well, Olly, thank you so much for joining this episode of the Maximize Your Brand Podcast.

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Until next time, remember this: always shoot for the top because the bottom is overcrowded. Take care!