How a Podcast Built a Business: The Lou Mongello Story

Do you have or want to start a podcast?

Are you wondering how your podcast can lead to bigger things?

To explore how a podcast went from a hobby to a full-time business, I interview Lou Mongello for this episode of the Social Media Marketing podcast.
More About This Show

The Social Media Marketing podcast is a show from Social Media Examiner.

It's designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.

The show format is on-demand talk radio (also known as podcasting).

In this episode, I interview Lou Mongello. Lou hosts WDW Radio, a podcast focused on Walt Disney World, which has won Best Travel Podcast 8 years in a row. He's also authored many Disney-related books including the Walt Disney Trivia Book I and 102 Ways to Save Money For and At Walt Disney World, and blogs at DWDRadio.com.

Lou shares how he began pursuing his passion.

You'll discover how podcasting helped turn Lou's passion into a full-time opportunity.

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Here are some of the things you'll discover in this show:
Building a Podcast Business
What Lou was doing before and what led to his podcast

For a number of years, Lou practiced law in New Jersey and had an IT consulting company on the side, but always had a love for Disney and Walt Disney World.

He'd been going to Disney parks every year since 1971 with his parents. Because he was in the service business, he had this idea for making something once and selling it. He shares that what he really knew all about was not law or computers, but Disney World.

In 2002, Lou gave himself a personal challenge. He wanted to write a book, get it published and get it validated by somebody. When the book came out, he thought that was the end of it. But his two-page brochure website turned into articles, which turned into a thriving discussion forum.

In 2005, Lou realized podcasting was more powerful than anything he could write. That's when he started podcasting, doing videos, creating other products, doing events, etc. He's been doing this full-time since 2007.

Listen to the show to learn how Lou found a publisher to work with.

How Lou moved from the book to the blog

When he started the book, he was on things like Usenet news groups and early discussion forums. He says this showed him there was a community of people out there interested in Disney in the same way he was.

Because he was responding to so many similar emails, he decided to write the responses as articles (which is what blog posts were back in 2003). He also created a discussion forum on his site; 29 people signed up on the first night! That number organically grew from 29 to 1,000 to 5,000 to 10,000 to 50,000 and the community is still going strong.

Listen to the show to find out what Lou built his discussion forum on.

How building his community led to the podcast

Lou says he started working on his second book the day after his first book came out. His community was very active and he shares that in 2005 he started hearing about podcasting and how anyone could use podcasting to broadcast their message.

He shares that he started without knowing what he was doing and if or how people would find the show. Within the first week, the podcast had a few hundred downloads then a few thousand. Lou believes this is because people interested in Disney were and still are hungry for content.

Listen to the show to hear Lou's experience moving from the first wave of interest in podcasts into the second wave of interest.

When the podcast turned from hobby to profession

While Lou had things like AdSense and affiliate programs making some money on his website, it wasn't enough to quit his job. Lou says he'd left his law practice and sold his IT consulting company.