[Fully Managed] Doug Cunnington Ep. 137

Daniella: Hello, everybody. Welcome to the first one hundred podcast. This is the podcast where we explore the journey of entrepreneurs, business owners, agency leaders, and so many other cool people as they share with us the strategies, the challenges, and the triumphs that have led them to secure those first one hundred followers, customers, whatever it is. Today, we’re very excited. I have a very special guest, Doug Cunnington. Hi, Doug. How are you?

Doug: I’m great. Thanks for having me on. I’m pumped to be here.

Daniella: Pumped to have you. This is the first podcast that we’re filming of the year at the time of filming. It’s January second today. So, you know, you’re the first guest that we have this year for first one hundred.

Doug: All right. That’s big shoes to fill, but I’ll do my best.

Daniella: No, I think you’re going to do great. Just to give us some context on who you are to give the viewers who are not familiar with you a little, tell them a little bit about you. Can you tell us about yourself and what you do?

About Doug Cunnington

Doug: Sure. Yeah. Currently, I run two podcasts and YouTube channels with email lists and there’s not really much of a blog out there these days, or at least I’m not blogging that much. And it’s been a few year, actually several year journey from me getting laid off in 2015. I had a couple side hustles going and I got into SEO affiliate marketing niche sites and online business that sort of thing and slowly grew it into a blog course platform or at least I had several courses in the niche site space, a YouTube channel, one podcast and then I layered on even more. So definitely have spent some time like growing audiences, like I said, starting with a blog and going on from there.

Daniella: Awesome. Yeah. I did take a look at all of your platforms. You’re pretty big on YouTube and you have two different podcasts, which is pretty cool.

The Journey from Zero to Success

Daniella: Now, Doug, this is called the first one hundred podcast because it kind of looks at the first milestone. Right. And you mentioned how you got laid off in 2015 and then it sort of grew into this. How are you able to or how did you manage to create this into a lucrative business from I’m assuming starting from like a place where you’re at zero?

Doug: When I think back about it, I am baffled how I did it because like I said, I got laid off and turned this into my full-time job and ended up making like more money than I thought was possible for someone like me. And then like slowly just stepped it down because I was like, I don’t want to do more work.

So when I look back at that sort of first, it’s not a novel idea and you’ll hear other people say it, but really all I did was network and get in front of other people’s audiences. And then people either connected to my story or they had a similar background as me. And I did that over and over again. Some of those sort of guest appearances on say another podcast or a guest post on a blog sometimes it didn’t work at all but you have to keep trying and do more and more of those. So really that was the root of it and I could be very specific about it if you want me to.

Daniella: Yeah well I mean I’m curious what were you doing before you did this like what was the job that you got laid off from?

Background and Target Audience

Doug: It was management consulting. So it was sort of like the Bobs from Office Space, if you remember that. So it was kind of like that. I have a project management background and a computer engineering background. So it was lightly IT system implementations, which it turns out when people start growing an audience, you usually attract people that are similar to you either with your background or where you are in your career or maybe even your geography because we talk a certain way.

So I ended up attracting people that were also in IT which is great because a lot of us were unhappy at our job. And then we also had like dispensable income because we had relatively high salaries. So people could buy courses that I produced later on because they had enough money to pay for them.

Early Days of Affiliate Marketing

Daniella: Yeah, that’s huge, I think, which I’m also curious and I wanted to ask you about this. You started this hustle in 2015 when I think affiliate marketing was not as big as it is now. It was kind of getting its beginnings. I think very little, like very few people actually knew what affiliate marketing was. I remember being on the internet at that time and seeing people promoting products and not having any idea that the codes and the links that they’re using are affiliate links, right? Or what an affiliate even means. And you are very big on this particular side of marketing. How was it to join something that was so sort of new at the time?

Doug: It’s so funny because I thought the same thing. So I actually started when I found Smart Passive Income, Pat Flynn’s podcast. And even back then people were like, it’s too saturated. Like whatever thing, whatever business model that you’re thinking about, at any given time people are saying it’s too saturated. There’s too many people. People are probably saying that about AI right now like there’s AI products or AI supported products and that sort of thing and it’s like you know what we’re just too late and the thing is we’re just starting like we’re just at the very beginning.

So keep that in mind like whenever you hear someone say it’s too saturated, it’s probably not. It’s probably just the beginning. So all that to say, I found affiliate marketing and stuff in 2013 and started dabbling. So I had like a foundation in 2015 when I did get laid off.

The point is there was affiliate marketing and niche sites and SEO going on for like eight to ten years before I even got involved. So every few years people were saying like, it’s too saturated. So anyway, the point is in 2013, it was sort of a mini mature sort of business model and the niche sites were really taking off like more and more people were using Google. Our phones were becoming one of the primary sources of surfing.

So before that people had desktop computers, but now most of the time people are on their phone just searching for something really quick and fewer people have laptops or at least use that as their primary search method. So to get back to the topic, it was really cool to get started sort of early, but it didn’t feel that way. I heard from a lot of people saying that it was too saturated. But as time went on and I was getting started, it was really cool to see the growth and the potential.

And I started this whole thing thinking it’d be great to earn like three hundred dollars per month. Yeah, just extra on the side. I’m like, that could be my car payment or whatever. And within like six months, I was making like thousands of dollars per month. And within that retail season, that first retail season, I made like six thousand dollars in the month. Now that was just one month. It was a roller coaster ride, really sloppy to get where I am. But there were a couple specific data points that made me think, hey, I could do this.

YouTube Strategy and Success

Daniella: That’s amazing because I feel like you know, I don’t think that it was saturated back then. I know that affiliate marketing has always existed, but I don’t think it was as popular as it is now. You know, it was like some people knew about it, but a lot of people were not aware that they were even being marketed to. Like, I remember, you know, like being like a lot of, a lot of sort of, also I think social media had a huge impact in it because influencers and just stuff like that started to use the affiliate codes and all of that when they were promoting products and doing sponsorships, which I think just wasn’t a marketing thing back then. So it’s really interesting.

And I know that you are also really big on YouTube. You have a pretty, pretty successful YouTube channel, which makes me wonder how did you manage to also start to get a following and views and how did you make your YouTube channel successful?

Doug: Thinking back again and where I am now, I’m just shocked that anything worked at all. So in the beginning, I looked at the content that I was consuming on YouTube, which is a little bit different now. And again, it sort of feels more saturated, but it’s one of the best places to grow and have sort of like a steady compounding effect that you could have by producing videos.

So back then, and I think this still works now, is to have tutorial style videos where you’re like showing someone how to use something. And to use a specific example for affiliate marketing, again, you can still do this exact same thing today. And it’s exactly how I got started. And you could go back and look at all the videos that I had starting in like I sporadically would produce content, but all the videos are out there.

Basically there would be a software product and I would show someone how to do something probably that I just learned myself because I needed to solve some problem. And because I had to figure it out, I had the information right there and there probably wasn’t a good piece of information to show people how to do it before. Again, you could do this for products that have an affiliate program and find great examples of this where maybe it’s reoccurring affiliate payouts because it’s a subscription model. So those are super helpful. And that is primarily what I did.

In other cases, because eventually I was selling my own online courses, I was covering success stories for people that either took the course or that I helped out in some way so that they would be an example that people could follow. Like, hey, I could earn some money online too.

Content Evolution and Staying Relevant

Daniella: That’s amazing. Yeah. I mean, so it kind of just sort of started to grow into this thing. And I think like at the time also, it wasn’t like tutorials and help me videos were not as popular as they are now. I think nowadays it’s a lot more popular to see people making, you know, help videos on a bunch of different things, right? Like whether it’s like using a software, like I think if you Google like illustrator, how to do a circle, and then you’ll find like a million videos of people telling you. So it definitely is a really huge change that I’ve noticed with stuff like that.

But you’ve still managed to stay relevant within all of these changes, right? And you’ve also gotten your podcasts and all of this, which actually makes me wonder, I think social media and affiliate marketing and things along these lines, they’re very, they’re sort of things that they are not, you’re not guaranteed to get a payoff from. And it’s sort of, you also don’t know when or if it will come and how much it’s going to be, right? It’s sort of a gradual process. And a lot of people give up on the way there. You know, they’re like, yeah, this is not making me money, I’m just going to quit. I’m investing more than I’m actually spending. That I’m actually, sorry, I’m investing and spending more money than I’m actually getting in return.

Which is actually a big question that I have for you, which is how did you actually manage to monetize all of this? And make it lucrative for you and sustainable because I think like you mentioned earlier that like you made six thousand dollars in one month and then you know that’s great but if you cannot keep making some kind of regular income, it can be really difficult for someone. And we do get a lot of listeners who are aspiring content creators or who want to make these podcasts get popular or want to get their names out there. And it’s a struggle because they are having a really hard time actually monetizing and getting money from it.

Keys to Monetization and Success

Doug: I have a couple initial ideas. Number one, I think now looking back over the decade that I’ve been doing this, you have to get a little bit lucky, right? I mean timing has to be right and when I was a little bit younger and less wise I think I probably attributed a lot of that luck to me being very good or smarter than other people. It turns out I’m not. It turns out I’m not smarter than other people. And I probably got a little lucky. So you do have to take your at-bats and try and produce the content and test different things and figure out what works. So you can’t discount the luck, but you have to keep going and trying. So that’s number one. I know I got a little bit lucky and I didn’t want to admit it for a long time, but now I think it’s pretty clear.

And the other part is around the consistency. So one thing that I am very good at, perhaps because of my project management background, is not only planning a project, which we know the plan is going to change, so it doesn’t have to be too rigid. Basically, I complete projects. So a lot of people will get things like ninety percent done and then stop and then it’s not done and they’ll do that like five or six times and they’ll have a bunch of projects that are like ninety percent done. They never actually shipped anything or finished it.

Again, if you look back at my YouTube channel, you’ll realize that I’m not a perfectionist. And I was like, I just have to ship some stuff, be consistent, produce content, go over and over, try to get like half a percent better each day or week or whatever, whatever timeframe you need to look at, but just try to do a little bit better.

And the final thing is around the final thing is really just being sort of flexible to pivot a little bit, but also not working on like six projects at a time. So that’s another thing that I made some mistakes with early on. I had a full-time job and I was trying to do this stuff on the side and I was thinking, well, I could outwork other people. And it turns out like, I probably can’t. Some people might be able to, but like most people don’t have the, I guess, the drive and the time because we have families or you have other obligations.

So it’s just like, there’s only so much that you could do. And if you spread yourself thin and work on like six different things at a time, because you’re aware of all these different business models, it will just spread you way too thin. And again, you’re not going to be able to make much progress in any one spot, any one project because you’re spread among six different projects. So focus is really key. Again, I’m very good at focus and finishing stuff.

And to wrap it up, remember there’s some luck involved, but I wasn’t purely lucky. I mean, you have to sustain it, but there was some good, you know, upward momentum with the growth of the market, for example. So it’s like, you can’t ignore that. Like I could be, you know, in the median sort of performance area, but if I’m in a huge industry that’s growing a bunch, well that’s good enough. I don’t have to be the best. I just need to be like around and like participating in the growth of the industry.

The Importance of Providing Value

Daniella: No I do agree with you that there’s a little bit of an element of luck but I don’t think like you said that it’s the only thing because I think nowadays we’ve seen so many people who have randomly who will just go viral for one thing and then they fail to take that virality and make it into an actual thing. Because the luck that they had from that one thing that made them popular clearly was not enough to keep them relevant, right?

Doug: Right, a hundred percent. Yeah.

Daniella: So it definitely shows that it can’t just be… I mean, yeah, like you said, luck is a little bit, but I do think that providing value is huge. Or like entertainment, whatever it is that you’re providing, but you need to provide something. Because I think we see way too many people who have that momentum and then don’t know anything to do, don’t know what to do with it and then you know they just sort of fade into oblivion, especially nowadays with like all of the new social media platforms and changes and all the stuff that happens, you know, it’s really easy to get lost in all of that noise.

Doug: Oh yeah. Yeah, for sure. I never, and still don’t play much on social media or anything where the life of the content is very short because again, I’m good at long-term projects. I don’t want to produce content that is irrelevant or algorithmically not surfaced in a week. So that’s just not the thing I wanted to do.

Long-Form Content Strategy

Daniella: Which actually I’m curious because you focus mostly on your courses, podcasts, and YouTube videos, which I think are arguably what people have sort of focused on less nowadays because most people are doing short form content, right? Which is the type of stuff that, like you said, it’ll get lost within the algorithm after a week of getting posted. There’s not a lot of longevity, whereas a YouTube video is always going to be there for you to see. But I’m curious about how you are able to sort of develop yourself within this world of YouTube videos and podcasts, because I feel like they require a little bit more skill than short form videos, more preparation, I guess, because I think everything requires skill, obviously. But with long form stuff like this, you do need a setup, you need sometimes a script, you need to plan, you need to like, you know, have a little bit more prep.

Live Streaming and Skill Development

Doug: Yeah. When I first got started spending more time on YouTube and I was going to make a push and I made a decision, editing was pretty time consuming for me. Oh yeah. And I actually kind of enjoyed it. A lot of people say oh I enjoy editing and really you know really sculpting exactly what you want the video to be but it was taking me too long.

So one thing that I did is live streams and in fact when we finish up I’m going to do another live stream. I do them about once a week or so. So I have done hundreds, like literally hundreds of live streams. So that removed the editing process and people are a little bit more forgiving. The other thing that it taught me was talking to a live audience and believe me in the beginning there would be sometimes zero to three people there. So I would do the live stream and no one would be there but I just filled the time and talked and it was extremely painful to do and felt awkward but I showed up and I think I did it every week for a quarter. Like that was my sort of challenge that I was going to do and slowly like more people started showing up.

The reason why I bring it up is because it does develop the skill of talking. And I was not a strong communicator before and probably had a lot more filler words and trailed off. And I don’t even know how it went. I mean, it was pretty rough in the beginning. But by doing those over and over again, it really developed the skills.

So one thing that I did, because I did start the blog first, I had topics that I knew were decent and I already wrote them. So I would take a blog post and then sort of I had to migrate it over and transform it into some bullet points that I could talk through. And if you do look back, I was for some reason reminiscing and looking back at some of the old videos from 2015 or so. And I saw they were way too long for even that time frame. And they were like thirty to forty-five minutes, which was a little bit long for those days, but they still got whatever hundreds or thousands of views back then. And it was really just sort of talking through a few bullet points.

And I rarely scripted things out and I still don’t script many things out. I’ll do some bullet points. Occasionally I’ll script something out, but I knew the topics that I could cover and I knew sort of my expertise. And again, a lot of it was ad-libbing on live streams. And I think, I mean, live streams have continued to be relevant, I think. And because they’re a little bit scary to do, it’s a great way for people to just like jump in. And I mean, if you look at YouTube and you look at the search results, if there’s something live going on, it’ll sort of short circuit the whole search result page there and you’ll be on the top. People can check it out. I mean, again, not that many people do live stream. So if you do it, like you’re kind of standing out in the crowd.

Benefits of Live Streaming

Daniella: Yeah, it’s true. Livestreams have, I don’t know why the algorithm always pushes them. Cause like if I Google or someone just on Google, not even YouTube, but if I Google them and they happen to be doing a live stream at that time, it’s like, go watch them live.

Doug: Yeah. And you can’t go in like, it’ll send you directly to the live before it sends you to the actual person’s channel.

Daniella: Yeah, yeah. I mean, there’s something a little bit exciting. And I mean, still, every, you know, couple weeks or something, I’m doing a live stream, and there’s a normal audience there. And someone will say, is this really live? And then you just answer them back. So the fact that there’s like a little bit of a dialogue is kind of a big deal.

Daniella: Yeah, I guess it’s also a really great way to show like a more raw version of yourself that’s not as scripted. I think in a video, it’s easier to sort of see the edited version of a person.

Doug: Right. Yeah, totally. Yeah.

Podcasting Learning Curve

Daniella: Well, it’s very creative and I think like not a lot of people know how to do this because at least for me the podcast was a learning curve when I started doing this. The first few guests that I have, oh my gosh I feel so bad for them because it was really uncomfortable. I mean, I didn’t know how to keep a conversation if I would kind of stumble over my words a little bit more but I talked too much or too little like it was it’s you know you have to sort of find a sweet spot and like you said as I kept doing more like practice kept making me a little bit better but it definitely took me a while to sort of find a place where it was like okay this is where I’m at. How many episodes have you done now?

Daniella: Oh my gosh we’ve done about we’ve done I would say about a hundred. We have our first hundred, but yeah, we’ve done about a hundred. We have different podcasts, so we have different iterations of it. So for first one hundred, I would say we have one hundred because this one, we started it later, but we also have fully managed. We have another one that’s called Unified Purpose where we have like a lot more. So I think if we count them down to me and my co-host, we have about three hundred to four hundred episodes filmed.

Doug: Awesome. Yeah. And it’s funny. I mean, when people ask about podcasting or YouTube, I’m like, yeah, you need to do about fifty or a hundred of them and then you’ll feel a little bit comfortable. But it really takes like a lot of reps. And I mean, each episode, I mean, you’re spending what, thirty minutes to an hour chatting with someone. So like it takes a long time to get the reps in, but you just have to do it over a long stretch of time.

Adapting to Different Guest Personalities

Daniella: I don’t know if you experienced this, but for me, a big curve was adapting to people’s personalities. Cause not everyone has the same sort of, not everyone is chatty. Not everyone wants to talk a lot. A lot of people are very quiet.

Doug: Yeah. Yeah. I was gonna sneeze and I didn’t, sorry. But yeah, it was like a huge learning curve for me to sort of learn to talk to people that were just, you know, giving me one word answers. And I was like, you’re in a podcast. I need you to answer more than just yes.

Doug: Yeah. And that’s, yeah, that’s an interesting thing because typically people know they’re going to be on a show so they could bring their, bring some stories to us. And two things have been pretty helpful. One is, you know to your point like adapting if you need to but sometimes the person is just they’re not they’re not there for it for some reason or another.

But the other odd thing is I was having an off day a few weeks ago, which honestly is pretty rare. There was like a you know confluence of many different things that came together and the guest on the show was a big talker, like stream of consciousness. And she was super excited and she kind of railroaded my narrative that I wanted to do. And because I was having an off day, I just kind of stayed out of the way. I did have a guest host. So they kind of had their thing going on, but it was, it was kind of odd because I was just like, this person is not taking a breath. Like I can’t even, I actually had to interrupt her like, interrupt a couple of times just to interject.

But yeah, there’s some sweet spot for answers as people are, you know, guests on shows. There’s a sweet spot where you don’t want it to be too short, but you don’t want it to be too long either. So it’s like an interview question, like one to three minutes and then stop.

Managing Interview Flow

Daniella: Yeah, no, I agree. I’ve had like, I had guests who would like, you know, and it’s great. I love it when they have a lot to say. But it was the same thing where like, you know, they talk for so long that I don’t know what to do. Like, that was a huge thing for me as well to learn how to like sort of manage that because you know, it’s like, oh, it’s been ten minutes, and I haven’t said a word except hello.

Doug: Yeah. Yeah. And a quick follow-up. So I learned this from a big podcaster friend that I have, and she was on a guest on some other show, and the host said, I will probably interrupt you. So I want to make sure that you know that I’m not intending on being rude, but we have a specific way that we want to sort of tell the story. So once I get the point, I may interrupt you. And I’m, again, not trying to be rude. We’re just trying to be efficient. And it was great advice when she mentioned it to me and it helped her out when she was the guest. And I keep forgetting, but that should be like one of my preliminary things. Like we were just saying, sort of, not too short of an answer but not too long also I might interrupt you because we have we have to move on.

Daniella: Yeah we have a pace we can’t stay with the conversation for too long. No yeah I totally get that’s actually a great advice because I might do that myself as well for guests. I think you know you you do that sweet spot is hard to find. There’s people that have great chemistry with that I’ll just have amazing conversations with and there’s people that I have to sort of navigate away because I think the thing about podcasts is that you’re having a conversation with someone that you have never met before. A lot of times it’s not like it’s you. I mean, sometimes you do have people that you have spoken with before, but a lot of times it’s a person that you have, you just met or that you’ve spoken to once or twice before. And now you have to have this long conversation with, and it’s not that it’s bad, but you need to learn how to keep that interesting and engaging for people.

Doug: Right. Definitely.

Rapid Fire Questions Game

Daniella: Yeah, no, but Doug, it’s been amazing having you. We’re almost out of time for our show, but I do have something prepared for you. So I do this with all of my guests and essentially it’s a game. It’s a rapid fire question. Well, it’s twenty rapid fire questions where I’ll just ask you there. These are fun questions. They’re not about marketing. They’re not about work. They’re just fun questions. And I want to set up a one minute timer. I’m actually putting my timer here and we’ll see how many we can get through within a one minute timeframe. Does that work for you?

Doug: Let’s do it.

Daniella: All right. So I’m going to start it right now. Coffee or tea?

Doug: Coffee.

Daniella: Early bird or night owl?

Doug: Early bird.

Daniella: Favorite social media platform?

Doug: Probably YouTube.

Daniella: Go to karaoke song.

Doug: I’m not a karaoke, but I would say a poison, nothing but a good time.

Daniella: Books or podcasts.

Doug: Podcasts.

Daniella: One word that describes you.

Doug: Calm.

Daniella: Dream vacation destination.

Doug: Yellowstone National Park.

Daniella: Most used app on your phone.

Doug: Probably the health app.

Daniella: Favorite emoji.

Doug: Thumbs up.

Daniella: Hidden talent?

Doug: I have very healthy blood pressure.

Daniella: Amazing. Go to comfort food?

Doug: Lasagna.

Daniella: Ah it’s time so we got through ten questions.

Doug: Not bad.

Daniella: Just so that you feel a little bit better, nobody has gone through twenty, so we just have a bunch of guests who have not won this game.

Doug: Yeah, it’s not too bad.

Daniella: Yeah, the twenty minute, maybe the one minute timer is too short, but I like to keep people on their toes, so…

Closing and Plugs

Daniella: Yeah, it was great having you today. I mean, I love all of your insight and all the things that you had to say. But before we finish this interview, I do want to give you the space to plug anything that you want to plug. If you are looking to connect with people, if anybody that heard anything, had anything that resonated and wants to hear from you, the floor is yours.

Doug: So you can check out the YouTube channel just at Doug Cunnington. I’m sure we’ll link all this stuff up. One thing that I didn’t talk about at all was my other podcast, and that is called Mile High Fi for financial independence. And like these days, like we talked about like the work and stuff that I’ve done, but I’m semi-retired. So like I’m just doing stuff for fun these days. My wife just retired a little while ago. So if people are interested in that sort of personal finance and financial independence, retire early stuff, definitely check out Mile High Fi and that’s on YouTube, any big podcast platform or anything like that. So, and if you just Google me, you could find a bunch of stuff out there. Thanks.

Daniella: Amazing. Yeah. And I will be adding, like you said, the links is going to be on the description of the video so that everybody watching can go and find you. And for anybody listening, go to the video and you can find the links. Doug, thank you so much for doing this.

Doug: Thanks. Thank you for being here.

Daniella: And everybody else. I will see you on the next episode. Bye-bye.

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