How I Started And Grew This Podcast To Over 300,000,000 Downloads

300 million downloads. That’s how far The $100 MBA Show has come, but it didn’t start that way. How does a podcast go from struggling to find listeners to crossing hundreds of millions of downloads? And what can you take from that journey to grow your own show or passion project? In today’s episode, Omar shares the behind the scenes story of building The $100 MBA Show. You will hear about the early missteps, the pivotal shift that changed everything, and the principles that keep listeners coming back. Instead of hype, this story is packed with lessons you can use to grow your own podcast or business idea. Press play at the top and learn from the podcast that did it. Discover what it really takes to grow your show and your audience to hundreds of millions of downloads. MBA2740 How I Started And Grew This Podcast To Over 300,000,000 DownloadsRecommended episode to explore:MBA2726 Q&A Wednesday: How Do I Increase My Email Open Rates? Watch the episodes on YouTube: https://lm.fm/GgRPPHiSUBSCRIBEYouTube | Apple Podcast | Spotify | Podcast Feed Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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• 1:26Speaker 02

  Let me start with a confession. This podcast wasn't my first podcast. And honestly, it's one of the most important reasons why this podcast has worked. Before the $100 MBA Show, we launched a podcast called People Who Know Their [BLEEP]. Catch a name, fun idea, but unfortunately, the podcast was [BLEEP].

• 1:46Speaker 02

  We published 46 episodes, and our best episode, which featured Gary Vaynerchuk as a guest, did a little over 400 downloads. Now, for context, my average blog post at the time was getting more traffic, and our average episode here on the $100 MBA Show can hit over 80,000 downloads. So yeah, the podcast sort of bombed. And Nicole and I were extremely frustrated because we were putting so much effort into that podcast and got very little results, got really embarrassing results.

• 2:23Speaker 02

  Welcome back to the $100 MBA Show. I'm your host, Omar Zenhome, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, to help you start, grow, and scale your business.

• 2:37Speaker 02

  I got a quick favor to ask. If this show has helped you in any way, leave me a quick review. You could do so wherever you listen to podcasts. This helps me and my team reach even more people who need the same no-fluff, practical business advice that you're getting from the show. It only takes a few seconds, but it makes a huge difference. Thanks for being a part of our journey to help others on their journey. That podcast didn't work because we were trying to be something that we're not. We were an interview show, and I was not good at interviewing. And we just did what everybody else was doing, because that's what all podcasts were like. They were all interview shows back in the day. Remember, this is 2014, and I remember vividly going to this conference called New Media Expo

• 3:21Speaker 02

  in Las Vegas. Nicole and I went to this conference. This conference doesn't exist anymore, but it was a pivotal moment, because it was the first time we saw other people doing this podcast thing. You know, we never even considered starting a podcast. We listened to a lot of podcasts. We were avid fans of the medium. But we never actually saw a podcaster up in person. And we met people like Lewis Howes there, and Amy Porterfield, and John Lee Dumas from Entrepreneurial Fire. And we realized, oh, this is a possibility. We can start a podcast, and this could be a way for us to reach our audience. And by the way, if you're curious about what are the best conferences to attend in 2026 in your business, in your industry, in your stage in business, I'm actually working on that episode right now, and we'll be releasing it really soon.

• 4:05Speaker 02

  So make sure your subscribers don't miss it. So we left that conference and started that podcast called People Who Know Their So that conference was like from January, and we started immediately. And for the next five to six months, we were just struggling with this podcast. It just was not doing well at all. And like I mentioned, best episode ever on that podcast got 400 downloads. So we really felt like something was wrong. And then Nicole and I had an honest conversation on a road trip. We drove from San Diego to New York. We had to do a gig. Nicole was still doing video work back then. She was a videographer. And we decided to drive, just to have the open road, to figure out what's going on with this podcast. Why is it not working?

• 4:49Speaker 02

  Now, before I go deep into the story and tell you what happened on that road trip, I want to make it super clear. This is like a disclaimer, right? This episode is titled "How I Started and Grew This Podcast." But to be 100% honest, I could not, I absolutely could not do this on my own. And I didn't do this on my own. Nicole, who is my co-founder and wife, she's also the producer of the show, helped me build and create both podcasts. So this is not a solo project here. I've done it with the collaboration and the help of Nicole. So she's one of the biggest reasons why the show even exists or has any success. So I want to make sure that's clear. So the road trip, we're driving down and we're asking the question, "Why is this show failing? Why is this podcast just not moving the needle?"

• 5:34Speaker 02

  And then we asked a very honest question. We looked at all the top business podcasts in Apple Podcasts back then. That's all there was when it came to podcasts. And we asked a very important question. "How are we supposed to compete with the best podcasts in the world?" We're looking at all the top podcasts and podcasters, and there was Tim Ferriss, who has four New York Times bestsellers. Okay, how am I going to compete with that? Got to be honest. How? We saw people like Jordan Harbinger who started podcasting in 2006. That's before the iPhone. Companies like NPR, who started a podcast called Startup and had a massive brand and experience in podcasting and radio. Nicole and I had like a honest conversation about, "We're not going to compete with these

• 6:18Speaker 02

  people trying to be an interview show and trying to do what they are doing, because we're not leveraging any of our strengths." And that was the pivotal moment. And this is really the biggest takeaway of today's episode. If you take anything away, take this away. I asked the question, "Who am I?" Right? Nobody knows me. I don't have credentials. I don't have a New York Times bestselling book. I don't have fame. I don't have any leverage. What am I going to do? And then Nicole and I came to the conclusion, "Hey, we're educators. We taught in the classroom for over a decade. I literally taught five classes a day, five days a week, for a decade." So I thought to myself, you know, maybe I'm not the best interviewer in the world, but I'm probably the best teacher.

• 6:59Speaker 02

  Teacher out of all these people that I'm competing against in the podcasting world. So instead of interviewing people, I decided to teach and that was the pivot. We scrapped the old show and we started this one, the $100 MBA show, which shares the same name as our business. We launched it on August 11th, 2014. I remember the day and we started to teach business. Short, focused lessons, one clear takeaway, one clear outcome for every episode. Now, I know that sounds kind of obvious today, but back in the day, that was different. No one was doing that. Everybody was doing either an interview show or even like a group discussion banter type of show. But almost nobody was teaching, especially in the business genre.

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  Here's a little insight about something that a lot of people don't know about our podcast. The inspiration didn't come from other business podcasts. It actually came from a language learning podcasts. Nicole is a fan of language learning and one of the podcasts she listened to frequently was a podcast called Coffee Break French and there's another one called Coffee Break Spanish. And it was short, daily bite sized lessons that compound over time to help you learn a new language. And we thought, hey, what if we did the same, but for business, for building and growing a business? Not long lectures, not rambly conversations, just clear, practical lessons that you can actually use and implement right away, just like learning a new language. And that became the DNA of the show.

• 8:27Speaker 02

  And I encourage you to discover what the DNA of your show will be or is if you run a podcast. What really is your show about? What's the unique value you add to the marketplace or to your audience when they're listening? Today's episode is supported by Cash App. When it comes to Bitcoin, you may be surprised to learn that it was invented way back in 2008. But you still haven't made the jump to Bitcoin yet? Cash App makes it easy. When you buy Bitcoin on Cash App, they hold real Bitcoin for you one to one and you can withdraw it anytime. It works more like real money and less like something locked in an account. No extra steps, no restrictions, just access and control when You need it. With Cash App, you can actually do that.

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• 9:53Speaker 02

  But of course, Nicole's family is Italian and I'd love to have some quick Italian conversations with her mom. And Rosetta Stone just came out with Rosetta Stone Sapphire, their biggest launch in over a decade. One of the coolest features is chat missions, which turns conversation practice into a game. With chat missions, you're put in interactive scenarios and given three objectives. A mission to accomplish, like asking how much something costs, ordering a cold brew coffee, or getting a wifi password. Along the way, you get real-time corrections and feedback to help you sound more natural and confident. It's a supportive way to build confidence before putting your language skills to use in real life. I've been using Rosetta Stone for over two years and I actually can have some small Italian conversations with Nicole's mom now.

• 10:38Speaker 02

  Just the other day, she asked me, "When are you traveling?" And I said, "Dopo domani mattina", which means "after tomorrow morning". She was incredibly impressed I was able to answer in Italian. How could you put a price tag on a happy mother-in-law? If you want to take your language skills to the next level, don't wait to try Rosetta Stone Sapphire. The $100 rate show listeners can get 20% off the Rosetta Stone Sapphire subscription when they sign up today. This gets you access to Rosetta Stone Sapphire in 25 languages.

• 11:05Speaker 02

  When we decided to start the $100 MBA show, we were all in. We fully committed to the podcast, which meant we had to say no to our client work. We had to take like about two months to work on the show, to build it out, to create the first 20 episodes before we launched, so that we have some episodes batch recorded. I was freelancing and building websites and Nicole was doing film work and videography work. And we stopped it all. We said no to money that we desperately needed. And we really dedicated ourselves to making this an amazing show. And that buffer of creating all those episodes before we launched really mattered to us, because we wanted to make sure that the show is sustainable, that we can continue to record

• 11:49Speaker 02

  and create great work on a regular basis. So when we launched the podcast, the response was strong. We hit number one in new and noteworthy in business. New and noteworthy with a category that Apple had where you had eight weeks to get a little bit of exposure in this section called new and noteworthy. And we were number one for eight weeks straight. And for us, that was like super validating that, okay, we actually have brought some value to the business world, the business podcast world. But it was also terrifying because we knew that new and noteworthy will end after eight weeks and we felt like that exposure will no longer be there and we'll like sink like a stone, right? But when those eight weeks are up, we were still growing and the show started to continue to grow.

• 12:34Speaker 02

  And I remember the day when we hit like 5,000 downloads an episode, then one day we had 10,000 downloads an episode and I felt like this is incredible. But it was funny because those first six months, I really wasn't obsessing about the stats that much. I was really just obsessing about creating the best show possible for our audience. And I think that really helped. Even though we had traction, I wasn't entertaining any sponsorship or anything like that or trying to go after sponsors. I thought to myself, if the show is good enough, sponsors will come to us. And that's exactly what happened. You know, in, I would say, December of that year, 2014, that's when we got our first sponsor. Something else happened in 2014 that It was really significant in our growth.

• 13:16Speaker 02

  And in order for me to share with you, let me tell you a little bit about what happened a year before that. In 2013, Nicole and I were going to a lot of conferences and talks. And one person that used to speak on a lot of stages about podcasting was a guy named John Lee Dumas, who has a podcast called Entrepreneurs on Fire. Since meeting him back in 2013, John and I and his wife Kate have been close friends of ours. But one of the things that we used to see when he was on stage is that he would be announced as a Best of Apple winner, or Best of iTunes, back then it was called. And it's an award called Best of Apple Podcasts. And it's awarded to about a dozen podcasts a year. It's like winning an Oscar in podcasting.

• 13:57Speaker 02

  And every time we would hear that in his intro, Nicole would nudge me and say, "Don't worry, we're gonna win that for our podcast one day." I was like, "I don't know, let's just see what happens. I'm not sure that's even in our hands." I used to just downplay it and be like, "Yeah, whatever, Nicole." But in December of 2014, exactly a year later, when we had our own podcast, The 100 MBA Show, and been around for about six months, we woke up one morning with the announcement on our phone. You know, we got a message saying that we won Best of Apple. And it was huge for us because it allowed us to get incredible exposure. We're on the front page of Apple Podcasts. And we were there for a bit of time because, you know, they make this announcement and they keep it up for a few months.

• 14:42Speaker 02

  And on top of that, we also won a couple of other awards from Apple, like the Work Smarter Podcast. And it really allowed us to get some momentum. But to be honest with you, the biggest win was we just got some validation that we built something that actually works, that people like, that actually resonated with people. And it was really an honor to win this award alongside some of the biggest podcasts of all time, like Serial and Startup and The Tim Ferriss Show. So it was really a great moment in our history. But we really felt like, "Okay, this is great and all, but how do we keep this momentum going? How do we keep this show going and we're not just like a flash in the pan?" From that point on, I felt like our job became harder. We had to improve the show every single time we published.

• 15:27Speaker 02

  We wanted to improve the audio quality and refine the pacing and sharpen up the topics and make sure they're appealing to our audience. We wanted to improve the delivery, my own delivery on the mic. I wanted to evolve the formats of the different types of episodes. We rethought our broadcast clock, you know, the format of the actual show, what happens at every minute mark of the show over and over to make sure that, you know, it's not only engaging for the audience, but also adds a lot of value to the experience for our sponsors as well as our listeners. And that's a really hard thing to balance, by the way, but we worked hard at it. But above all, we are obsessing about making sure the show had unique value because I'm

• 16:07Speaker 02

  highly aware of the fact that our listeners and now viewers on YouTube can consume any kind of content. It's not just podcasts. They can consume music, they can listen to audiobooks, they can watch the news, they can listen to the radio. Radio still exists, other podcasts, right? Netflix. You are constantly competing with other pieces of content. So this is why you've got to take your show seriously. You've got to see your show just like a TV show with a clear promise and a consistent tone and strong, familiar characters or even structure. You know, believe it or not, you know, your podcast has characters. You know, when I refer to Nicole, she's a character. I'm a character in the story. Basketball is a character, something I enjoy. I talk about poker. Poker's a character.

• 16:51Speaker 02

  So you've got to see yourself as creating a show, a production, something that is worth people's attention. So if you're looking for a growth hack to market your show, the number one thing you can do is create an incredible show so that if one person listens to it, they have to share it with other people and that creates that virality. So that's the number one hack that you can do. Now, in terms of other marketing activities you could do that has worked for us, let me share some. Number one is you can appear on other podcasts. If someone hears you deliver great value on an interview in another podcast, it's easy for them to want to check you out and check out your podcast since they're already on the medium, right? They're already on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. So it's easy for them to go and check out

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  your show and subscribe. So try to get on other podcasts as much as possible. I also spoke on a lot of stages. Nicole too spoke on many stages. Remember one year I spoke 13 times in 12 months and I was traveling a whole bunch and it was quite exhausting, but it was quite powerful and impactful for the show. It really got people that never heard of us familiar with what we do and the show and our promise, and it created a loyal following. Number three, paid marketing. Listen, the podcast for us is our product, right? We see this as our business and we want to expose our product, our show, to as many people as possible. When it comes to paid marketing, you have to test because every show is different, every production is different. You want to make sure that

• 18:17Speaker 02

  you test all kinds of different ads, podcast ads, like you're sponsoring other podcasts, Facebook ads, display ads, Spotify ads. Some worked for us and some didn't. You need to test it out. And through a lot of testing, we figured out what are the things that do work for our show and we leverage those things as much as we can. But if you want a loyal following, you want to build a relationship with your audience. And one of the best ways to do that is through email newsletters. So we make a lot of effort into growing our email list so that we can continue to share with our audience the episodes that we published last week through our newsletter. That habit kept listeners engaged and coming back for more and more content. Now, it's not all sunshine and rainbows. I made mistakes and

• 19:00Speaker 02

  I'm sharing them with you today so that you don't have to make those mistakes. There are two big mistakes I made. The first one is I ignored social media for a very long time. I made zero effort to grow my social media following. I only started to take it seriously about a year ago. A big reason why I didn't do it is because I didn't really love it. I didn't understand it. I didn't have time for it. I was running a Daily podcast, the show, by the way, was daily for nearly eight years. And I was also building a software company for 10 years, which was no joke, and building a team and trying to make sure I don't screw that up. But I wish I started earlier. I made time for it because especially when it came to video, our reach would have been much bigger today. But hey,

• 19:43Speaker 02

  can't dwell over it. Just got to start and make it happen. And that's why we started about a year ago to start working on social media. The second mistake I made is I didn't start with video earlier. We only started publishing our episodes on YouTube in 2024, late 2024. So we've been doing this for about maybe 18 months. And to be honest with you, I think the show would have benefited a lot, especially when it comes to the marketing of the show. If we published video episodes at least four or five years earlier. The reason why I say this is because it's very hard to to market a audio podcast without video. I mean, how do you market an audio podcast on social media without video?

• 20:22Speaker 02

  And by having video, you're able to really leverage the power of video and reels and stories and all that kind of stuff to drive traffic to your show. And again, same reasons why I didn't do it. I didn't really dedicate the time and effort, but I should have figured that out because I'm now making up for lost time and we're like beginners again on YouTube, but it's all good. We're going to try to crack it as well and grow through video as well. Now, if I was starting a podcast today, this is what I would do. I would obsess over the concept of the show. I would define what my unique value is as a podcast. I would plan every episode, understanding that the more time I use in the planning, the better the outcome will be, the better the episode will be.

• 21:07Speaker 02

  That includes like scripting thoroughly and understanding the concepts and understanding how am I going to deliver these concepts in a way that really resonates with my audience. And I would treat prep as a non-negotiable. This is what I would do, and this is what I do today. So I want to make sure that you understand that this stuff matters. Winging it rarely works unless you're some sort of trained improviser or stand-up comedian like Amy Poehler or Theo Von, and most of us are not. I believe that podcasting doesn't get easier over time. It actually gets harder because the bar rises, not only for yourself, but the whole podcasting world every year gets more and more competitive. But that's also a good thing because it makes you better. And it's also still worth doing because I believe it's one of the best decisions Nicole

• 21:51Speaker 02

  and I have ever made is to start podcasting. It's made me a better communicator. It's helped me grow my audience. It's helped me express myself creatively in so many ways. And after 300 million downloads, I genuinely feel like we're just getting started and that we can do better. Before I go, I want to thank you. Honestly, I want to thank you for listening right now, for being a part of our story. I want to thank you for every single time you listen to the show, every download, every message you've sent me. It's mean a lot to Nicole and I. It means so much that you are a part of our journey. I don't take this lightly. When I plan and record an episode, I'm thinking about you, literally, the person who's going

• 22:32Speaker 02

  to hit play and is hoping to learn something useful from that episode. So my job is not only to earn your trust, but to keep it. And I don't take that in vain, and I really take it seriously. So thank you so much for being here. And if you found this episode interesting, we got a lot more for you to listen to on the podcast. As you know, we have over 2,700 episodes in our back catalog. One episode you might be interested in that published a couple of weeks ago is called, "How Do I Increase My Email Open Rates?" I think you'd find it really important because I find that if you're sending out emails and no one's opening it, it's kind of a waste of time and energy. In that episode, I give you a full detailed plan on how to get more opens in your email

• 23:14Speaker 02

  list and share with you everything that has worked for us over time. So check it out. Thanks again for tuning in. I hope today's story, today's lessons were helpful, and I hope to see you in the next one. If you found today's episode helpful and you want more practical business lessons to help you start, grow, and scale your business, the best thing you could do is subscribe to this podcast. Hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app, the one that you're using right now, whether it's Apple or Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. By hitting subscribe, you get our next episode automatically, and it's the best way to support the show. It's absolutely free, and it's a way for you to commit to growing your business. And now that you've subscribed, I'll check you in the next episode.

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