Building a podcast takes time, and success isn’t just about downloads. Avram and Rachel aim to grow sustainably, make meaningful connections, and keep things manageable. In this episode of Babies and Business, they look back at the past six months—what worked, what didn’t, and how their strategy has changed. They share how increasing their publishing schedule impacted their growth, what metrics really matter, and how they’re making data-driven decisions. Whether you’re growing a podcast, a business, or any long-term project, this episode is full of insights on tracking progress and making adjustments along the way.

Show Notes

Key Highlights from this Episode:

• Why Avram and Rachel changed their publishing schedule and what they learned from increasing their episode frequency

• The key podcast metrics they originally tracked and why they decided to focus on different data points

• How they’re using blog content to grow the podcast and why it’s been more effective than social media

• The ways Babies and Business has helped them connect with listeners and build relationships

• How they realized total downloads weren’t the best measure of success and what they track instead

• Why unique listens give them a better picture of real audience engagement and how it impacts their strategy

• How SEO is helping them bring in new listeners without relying on traditional marketing

• How their growing team has made podcast production easier and more sustainable

• The surprising impact of in-person events and how meeting listeners has shaped their approach

• How they’re balancing podcasting, business, and family without burning out

• What’s next for Babies and Business in 2025 and the changes they’re most excited about

Mentions & Resources

Digital Harvest – Avram and Rachel’s Digital SEO marketing agency

Orange Theory – A high-intensity, science-backed fitness studio in Albuquerque offering heart rate-based workouts for maximum results.

Episode Transcription

 Avram: It’s February, at least that’s when this podcast is coming out. We are revisiting one of the hot topics that we started in 2024 with a recap of the last six months of the Babies and Business Podcast strategy for growth versus previous six months. Today, I’m not only joined by my co host Rachel, but we have our youngest son August with us here today.

He’s not napping. He’s decided I don’t want to take a nap and mom and dad you still need to record. So i’m going to be here.

Rachel: So he’s eating my water bottle as we record, so if you hear some tapping in the background or some cooing.

Avram: That’s just part of the game here at Babies and Business Podcast. A couple things we want to talk about today and why we’re talking about this is because Life continues to move forward. The projects and things that you put in place a year ago, six months ago, are still moving forward, and it’s our intentionality and the small changes that we make over time to our strategy that will help us reach our goals.

We’ve talked about this at length in previous podcasts. If you try to do too much too soon, You’re going to fizzle out. You’re going to burn out or things are just not going to work.

Rachel: Right. You know, if you go from zero to a hundred all at once, you will break down pretty quickly. You know, think about a car that isn’t meant to do that. You know, we’re taking it easy and excited to be here.

Avram: That’s right. And so one of the big things that we looked at in the, a year ago in our strategy was, you know, how do we grow the podcast and, and, uh, earn more subscribers and.

Rachel: how do we measure that?

Avram: do we measure that? we’re going to talk about how some of the data that we were looking at, we actually want to look at some different and maybe more impactful data so we could have chosen some of the wrong metrics to look at. It’s not really a big deal

Rachel: And that’s neither here nor there, but you know, it is to say that we are looking at what is meaningful and seeing that some things just don’t quite add up at times. so we’re just trying to find out what those data points are that we can rely on and that are true, um, maybe significant show of growth or, listenership or whatever that looks like.

Avram: So one of the things, and we’re going to put these charts in the show notes. So if you go to babiesandbiz.com/70 7 0, I think that’s this episode. You can see the charts that we’re going to include that have the performance of the Babies and Business Podcast in the first six months of 2024 versus the second six months.

And we’ll link the past episodes there. We’re not going to go through all the strategy and stuff in depth and the changes and why we made them. Those are in past episodes, but we’ll link them up. And. The big change we made from the first half of the year to the second half was we decided we were going to increase the quantity of publishing, the frequency of publishing.

Rachel: Yep. So we went from every other week to once a week. And I mean, it’s exciting.

Avram: It is exciting.

Rachel: putting out so much content now

Avram: Mm hmm. And that’s a big part thanks to our team, our growing team at Digital Harvest, the company that we own, our agency, being able to support us in creating the copy and creating all of the finished files and edits that need to be out there. If we were having to do that ourselves and putting in the six to eight hours of work that each episode takes in addition to recording, it would never happen.

Rachel: No way.

Avram: Yep, so shout out to the team in that regard. Now, let’s talk about the first six months performance versus second six months. In the first six months, we were looking at the total downloads. So in previous episodes, you might have heard us talking about how we had almost 1, 500 downloads in the first half of the year.

Well, we were seeing some big spikes in the data, and that was exciting to us. In the second half of the year, we realized that these big spikes, for whatever reason, are happening. In the first week of every single month and not necessarily correlated to the episode that’s getting dropped

Rachel: Sure.

Avram: So we were looking at total podcast downloads and that’s not actually a good indicator of the real listenership.

Rachel: Right. So we, we looked a little bit deeper and saw that the unique traffic that was coming through was really where it was at to actually track the number correctly, so we did change we did change what number we’re looking at

Avram: Mm hmm, and so what we’re looking at now is, okay, the first half of the year we had 761 unique listens. for a total of about 13, yeah, we’ll just let him, he can be in the background, he’s having fun. we had 13 episodes published in that time. Okay, so let’s call it 750. The second half of the year we published 26 episodes.

Rachel: so cool. Very

Avram: cool. So doubled the episodes and just got over a thousand unique listens. One thousand and nine. So what we learned was that increasing the frequency does increase total downloads and listenership, but it’s not a one to one.

Rachel: Yeah, we saw that it increased it a little bit But yeah, we were just excited see the change

Avram: yeah. Well, it increased our downloads by about 50%,

Rachel: So cool

Avram: right? So, it’s like, well, if the goal is to get more subscribers and more downloads, is the, is, you know, do we, do we add more episodes to the plate? I think the answer is no.

Rachel: no but you know what we have done is really cool content opportunities we have started to have our team go back through the episodes that have been previously published, which are 70 7 0 and create some blogs around those topics that can be found and just talk about some of that stuff.

So we’re creating different kind of content instead of all the social media stuff that we had begun with. We still do the announcements, but we do, um, just spin off content.

Avram: Yeah, we found and discussed at length in previous episodes that social media for the podcast and the fact that we’re not doing video with it right now means that the content that we create is a lot of work for very little effort. I’m sorry, for very little

Rachel: Very little, yeah, gain. We don’t get much from it, but it is so much work.

Avram: It is so much work. So we know it’s like, well, we’ve harped on this like the entire podcast.

You have to really rely on your strengths and the resources that you have.

Rachel: And, and part of our goal, too, in growing this was not increase the time that we dedicated to it or put towards it. So we’re seeing that even though we are recording kind of double the episodes, um, That doesn’t increase our time because it’s when we have the time. You know, babies can be napping or on the rare occasion in the recording studio with us.

 but we’re just finding that that doesn’t increase our time significantly.

Avram: Yeah. Yeah. So when we look at what is the, what is the goal moving forward? What is the thing that we’re testing in the next six months to a year? I don’t think we’re going to do another six month review. We might just wait for the year and give you the update. Unless there’s something, unless there’s something significant

Rachel: Or exciting.

Avram: that we want to share with you, but we do want to keep you in the loop and, and tracking and growth and goals are a big part of this podcast.

Rachel: And, and one of the things I think that’s really cool about sharing this is this is actually, is not even kind of, it is one of our strengths in our agency as a search engine optimization agency. We look at data and we see trends and then we refine what we’re looking at and things like that. Uh, so it’s really cool.

You just get a little bit of a snippet of some of the strategy that we deploy with our podcast, but we do that for businesses to help them get found. So I just think it’s really cool that we get to see real time and live for us.

Avram: It’s true.

Rachel: For our podcast.

Avram: It’s true. So, in looking at the next six months and looking at our goals, it was interesting. Somebody at the B2B Expo that we were at, we did a podcast about that a couple weeks ago, we were exhibiting for the Babies in Business podcast, asked me, you know, what’s the goal of the podcast? And his assumption was that we just want to be like a Joe Rogan Podcast and just have this huge thing.

Rachel: And like have these guests that are like big name people. Like he’s had Elon Musk on there. Like so many people.

Avram: it was just like, oh, I mean, not everybody has the same goals. Our goal is to not be prolific and in everybody’s ears. Our goal is, from the beginning, we have enjoyed doing something together.

Rachel: Yes, so much. Well, and, and we love having these conversations and we have them regardless and we thought if we could help just one, one person, one family, one business. That would be enough for me, you know, just knowing that we could create connection. And be a resource, you know, we don’t have to be, like you said, in everybody’s ear to do that.

We’re here in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We want to make a difference here.

Avram: yeah, and connection. That’s what right so connection for you and me. We’re doing something together That was the selfish part of it right and the other part of it is connection with like you’re saying these people and individuals, maybe we know them. Maybe we don’t know them yet that are seeing some kind of benefit value from us sharing

Rachel: Well, and I thought, uh, it was really cool. This is kind of a, a spin off benefit is, you know, we go to Orange Theory. We’ve talked about that. We’ve had a couple episodes. There is this lady. You were on a call yesterday.

Avram: Okay, yeah, so so somebody calls in yesterday And they’re asking me questions about our services as an agency and what I didn’t know was that the co founder was also in the room on speakerphone

Rachel: Yes.

Avram: So I’m answering all these questions, giving them some resources. And then the co founder chimes in at the end and she’s like, so I’m also here and I got a really weird question for you.

And I was like, Oh, I like weird. Like let’s, let’s yeah, let it rip. What’s up. And she goes, do you go to orange theory? I was like, yes. She’s like, Oh my gosh, I’m sitting here thinking I totally recog this has gotta be the guy she had listened to that day or the day before. The podcast that we shared about our fitness journey this year so far.

Rachel: the transformation

Avram: transformation challenge of Orange Theory and she had just listened to it and was like that’s a funny full circle moment You know, and that’s just one of the cool ways that we’re seeing the the building of connection especially in the communities that were already a part of that we create some content that specifically catered towards them in this case It was anybody in our Orange Theory crowd, even if they don’t have young kids or that’s a thing of the past

Rachel: Right. Or a business,

Avram: They’re i
nterested in that particular piece of content that we created, so we shared it, they found it interesting, and now people are coming up to us at class that we didn’t even know, or they’re calling in, and they’re like, did I just hear you?

And that’s pretty cool. That’s, that is literally the goal for us. For us, that’s

Rachel: I think that that’s a huge success and it’s a lot of fun. We have so much fun doing this. And I, our, our team, um, Barbara and Kim that are really majorly involved in this, they really love the podcast. They love listening to it, editing it, creating the, the content that goes along with it.

It’s just a really awesome connection piece in so many ways with our, our team. They feel like they know us a little bit better, get some kind of like inside view. So I think that’s really cool.

Avram: Yeah, so plans for this year, they’re gonna help us on the, on the search engine side by creating articles and things that will rank. And show up on Google search or AI search, that’s kind of where things are going. And that will help promote the podcast and bring people into our ecosphere based off of things we’ve already talked about.

So that’s the big move. The other thing that we’re going to be doing this year is just building on more of that connection. We saw just how easily it was, or easy it was to connect with people at the B2B Expo this year. And so we’re looking at one or two other events that they may not be a hundred percent business related, but we know that parents, busy parents will also relate to this podcast, even if they’re not business owners

Rachel: right correct because you know the strategies that we use with kids come from our business but every parent can benefit from a little bit of help if they’re looking for the help, you know. Sometimes it’s a different perspective or just the permission to do exactly what you feel like you should

Avram: it just seems pretty impossible to cut through the noise online these days. We’re going, we’re going old school. We’re staying grassroots, connecting with people here, creating content that we know that the people that we know. Will like and appreciate and connect with and that’s where we’re headed for the next year. Just more of this, 52 more episodes, who knows, we might have a couple of guests, we might have a couple of special episodes, but um, we’re gonna continue the trend, watching things grow, it continues to grow, we appreciate your listenership in a really big way.

What we’re going to ask you for is if you haven’t already to go on Apple, Spotify wherever it is you’re listening give us that five star review so that other people can see this podcast and say you know what? I’m going to listen to that too we don’t have a community question or anything this week because Unless you have a podcast you you may not have some stats and things that you’re like I’m not going to ask you.

How’s your podcast going? Maybe you don’t have one But we do encourage you to go check out babiesandbiz.com/70 for the show notes You’ll also be able to catch the previous episodes where we’ve tracked and talked about the growth and even created a whole strategic game plan. Like we did these four episodes last year that were all about the strategy and how we execute it.

And we never missed a single podcast this last year. I think we had one or two that were published on a Wednesday instead of a Tuesday.

Rachel: right a little bit later, you know with baby being born in June.

Avram: Mm hmm, but all of the stuff that we, that we put in place, in those strategic planning all, all paid off, allowed us to be consistent and get the thing done. So all that stuff’s gonna be in the show notes. Don’t sleep on the show notes. We got excellent stuff over there every single episode. So with that, we appreciate you listening.

We’ll catch you on the next one.

Rachel: Bye for now