“A good interviewer makes sure the conversation goes down a great rabbit hole that could have never been scripted. Those candid moments, right? It’s like an art, you get to pull it and play with it and make it like a beautiful shining pearl.”
Hello hello! Welcome to another episode of the Flying Cat Marketing Interview Series. For episode 73 of the Flying Cat Marketing podcast, we’re with Wil Slickers, founder of Hospitality.FM, a podcast network for hospitality businesses.
When Wil first started podcasting, he was working full-time as a hotel manager. In 2019, when his podcast started really taking off, he was doing up to 5 episode recordings after a full day’s work at the hotel. That’s when he started thinking about monetizing.
Want to know how he did it? In this episode, we talk about establishing a voice within your podcast niche and attracting paying partnerships through guest appearances. You’ll hear how Wil went from having zero content structure to running a 10-episode podcast series with top names in the vacation rental industry and hospitality tech space.We discuss how Chili Piper’s Demand Gen Chat podcast is getting it so right, how you can use podcast interviewing strategies to get the most out of your guests, and whether content quality or production quality is more important. To wrap things up, Wil shares how he built Hospitality.FM from the mic up.
In this episode:
- The difference between a podcast as a marketing opportunity and as a business
- How to monetize a podcast
- Chili Piper’s Demand Gen Chat podcast: What makes it so good?
- When to plan your content vs allowing for candid moments
- Whether production quality is more important than interesting content
- How Wil built Hospitality.FM to support business owners
About the guest
Wil Slickers is the Founder of Hospitality.FM, the first podcast network dedicated to the hospitality industry. Wil got started with his career as a front desk agent and worked his way up to become a manager until taking the leap to full-time podcasting right before 2020. From then, he also started Recreation Rentals, a vacation rental management company based on the pillars of experiential hospitality.
Timestamps
02:32-04:51 When does a podcast become a business?
04:52-08:31 How Wil began to monetize his podcast
08:32-11:46 Example of a podcast doing it right: The Demand Gen Chat podcast by Chili Piper
11:47-14:08 Why choose different voices to platform on your podcast?
14:09-17:06 How much should you plan your content?
17:07-19:37 Giving space to candid moments while interviewing
19:38-21:39 Is quality production more important than interesting content?
21:40-24:12 How Wil built the Hospitality.FM network