Revenue Remix podcast at (Almost) Two Years: What Changed, What I Learned, and What's Coming
- Summer Poletti
- May 13
- 11 min read
If you're new here, welcome. I document the Revenue Remix podcast journey every six months or so because I built this show with intention, and I think watching strategy evolve in real time is more useful than any "how to start a podcast" guide you'll find online. You can catch up on the early, messy stages here and here and here. The show launches its second year in July. This update covers what's happened since December: the good, the uncomfortable, and the evolution I'm already smelling coming this summer.
In this post:
The Visibility Gap I Didn't See Coming
I launched this show in July 2024 knowing exactly what I was building and why. CEOs don't take calls from people trying to sell them things. So I needed a clever way to get in their orbit: give value first, create awareness in the right circles, and let the work speak for itself. The podcast was always that vehicle.
What I didn't anticipate was that a year+ into hosting, I'd realize the show alone wasn't enough to move the credibility needle. I was producing all my own content. Which meant I was only ever in rooms I controlled. That's circular. And since I let my guests shine, I accidentally looked like "just a host". Eventually that hits a ceiling.
So in 2026, I made an objective to get seen on stages I don't own. Not randomly, not the "any show that will have me", but aligned ones. B2B shows, marketing shows, founder and business shows with audience overlap. It was a PR strategy, honestly. I worked in PR early in my career so I could execute this myself without budget. And it was me taking my own advice:
I'd tell any founder to put themselves out there, get visible, and not just produce content in their own sandbox.
The timing mattered. Rise of Us was both a career change and a move out of the niche industry where I'd spent most of my career. Where I worked had also been sold so my public persona: blogs, webinars, speaking gigs... all gone. My show had finally earned me enough authority that when I asked to guest somewhere, people took me seriously. I wasn't some attention-seeking rando with a new podcast anymore.
What I Found When I Went Looking
Easier said than done. Finding active, aligned indie shows that will read your pitch to join or swap... is quite the task. Not all of them survive (I knew the "death rate" before I launched, but even AI searches can't tell the dead one from the active ones.). And when I turned to a podcast matching platform to speed up the search, I hit a wall almost immediately: almost every show I looked at, even the small indie shows like mine, charged guests to appear.
Uh-oh moment.
I want to be careful here, because I get that podcasting is expensive and people are trying to recoup costs. But here's my math: I've calculated that the time I put into each episode is about $1,000 worth of billable time. Most shows charge a fraction of that, which means they're not covering their costs. And the half-life of an episode is about a week unless you actively re-promote it. So paying $100 to appear on a show that won't promote you aggressively, whose audience may not overlap with yours, and that won't lead to a real relationship? That just doesn't make sense to me. "Ad dollars" let's call it what it is, can get you more lift if used strategically with LinkedIn or Google.
More than the math, it felt gross. Podcast guesting, in my opinion, should be mutually beneficial. If I'm going to invest an hour and then promote your show to my audience, I want a real exchange: a pod swap, a blog or some other genuine collaboration. Not a transaction.
And once I started guesting I saw another uncomfortable truth in action. The podcast interview thinly veiled as a sales pitch.
I hate to admit that my former advisor tried to turn Revenue Remix into one of those shows: lure guests on with the promise of exposure, then pitch them almost as a pri quo pro for recording. It felt gross to do. Thankfully, they were not great at booking conversations, so when I fired them in December and evolved the show into what I'd always envisioned, there wasn't much to undo.
But I did eventually guest on a show that turned out to operate that way. I said yes because it was aligned enough for a "be visible on stages I don't own" play. After we finished recording, the pitch came. And I remember thinking: Oh. This is why I had trouble booking guests early in my show's journey. This is what shows do when they don't charge.
Frankly, both sides of that felt gross. Which is why I've had my show's intentions clearly laid out in the guest info doc from day one:
this is what you get, this is what I expect.
As the show has evolved, I've kept it updated. But the core has never changed.
There's also a lesson about differentiation I learned the hard way, and this one's on me.
While I was reading about shows in the matching platform before I pitched them, I kept seeing the same phrases on almost all of them. The same descriptions, the same positioning, the same "this B2B podcast is different" language. And they sounded like the description that was on mine.
Uh-oh.
I knew my show did things differently. But for a new reader? It blended in instead of cutting through.
Mine would get lost in a sea of B2B podcasts.
I stopped my outreach that day and pivoted that time block to rewriting the description.
Here's the irony that does not escape me: I spend a lot of time cautioning founders against vibe-coding their GTM strategy with AI tools. I know what to ask, I know when the answers are generic or BS, I know when to push back, and I know what to edit because this is my area of expertise. And still. I let AI help me write something very common. I had generic positioning on my show for more than a year before I caught it.
I'll never know exactly what that cost me. But I know that when you're not differentiated, people don't feel seen and they move on. Guests, collaborators, listeners? Definitely. Clients? Unlikely yet. But the visibility cost of blending in for a year? That I can't get back.
The fix: rewrite and reposition. Done in one afternoon. But it's a good reminder that even an expert needs an outside set of eyes. And that DIY has a price. Even with great AI tools.
The Famous Guest Reality Check
While we're being honest: I thought famous guests would move the needle. I deliberately picked someone in my orbit with a big platform. Great, I thought. This will get lots of views on LinkedIn. People will tune in. The show will get a boost. I'll get some new followers.
Literally none of that happened.
It performed the same as every other episode. It was more discoverable though... I got a lot more sales pitches that week.
Revenue Remix, like most podcasts that aren't run by celebrities, has had slow but steady organic growth. There's no magic bullet. Famous doesn't equate to trust. And trust is what actually matters. So now my rule is simple: I'll say yes to a famous guest if there's genuine audience overlap or they have a story my people care about. But I'm not chasing the name for a visibility boost that isn't coming.
What I have started doing is deeper research before every interview. The first time a prolific podcast guester pitched me and said "here's what I usually talk about," that was my cue.
Perfect, that's what we're NOT going to talk about.
I never want to produce something generic. So I do extra research, find what they say on other shows, and make that my blueprint for what we won't cover. I want to give my audience something they can't get anywhere else. And I want the guest to have more fun than saying the same stories over and over.
One guest recently asked me, "How'd you find that?" That's what I'm going for.
(The research stays internal — I share the conversation flow doc with guests before we record so there are no on-air surprises.)
How Guest Selection Got Sharper
The show has earned the right to be choosy. Here's how that looks now:
Feature interviews are reserved for founders, authors, or operators with a specific story my audience needs to hear.
Panels are for people in different seats along the customer journey: marketers, CS experts, partnership consultants, finance execs, change management consultants, executive coaches. Leaders who are seeing similar challenges I am, but solving from a different angle. These people aren't just guests. They're collaborator candidates. I wrote about the strategic conversation design behind this here.
Everyone is a potential collaborator. No one is just a guest.
When I started having guests back for second and third appearances, something shifted. I started seeing how they think. Patterns emerged. And when a topic came up that deserved its own conversation, I'd invite them back for it instead of going down a rabbit hole mid-recording. It's the podcast version of not derailing a meeting with a tangent. You book a separate conversation for it.
What I found is that repeat guesting works out in one of two ways: either the synergy isn't really there and I quietly take them off the roster, or it deepens and we start exploring what else we can do together off the show. That's the signal I'm looking for. Rise of Us is an indie brand, just like those owned and operated by my guests. We don't produce content for content's sake and we repurpose everything.
I also ditched the press kits. Early 2026, I realized almost no one was actually using them, except my CMO friends, who thought they were cool but wrote their own posts anyway. I was spending an hour or more on something that wasn't working. I switched to a structured prompt they can take into their AI tool of choice. Less time for me, more flexible for them. And no more guests who don't help promote their appearance. That win-win was sitting right there waiting for me.
The needle moved in a big way this year - not just on sales pitches, but on guest pitches too. For inbound pitches, I now send them to the guest info page and ask them to book an intro call if they think it's a potential fit. That alone has weeded out enough misaligned requests that I consider it one of the better process decisions I've made. Not every show is for every person, and that's fine. There are enough B2B podcasts out there.
The Planning Rhythm That Finally Works
I tried planning a whole year of panels in advance. Sounds great - strategy and structure! But it was too rigid. You meet someone with real potential and they've picked a July topic, so now you're waiting six months to see if there's any real potential? Too slow.
I tried a full quarter. Great for activating the collaborators I just met, but still too slow. I am a prolific networker and soon realized that with all of 2Q planned out I'd have to wait until July to start working with someone I met in April or May. New relationships need to be tested sooner, not slotted into a calendar spot three months out.
Now I plan two months at a time. I choose topics, have one or two people in mind, send out a meeting poll, and lock the date. I deliberately don't lock more than two guests per panel so I have room to bring in someone new I've just met. A two-person panel is still a perfectly good panel in case I don't meet another right-fit potential collaborator. I'm still striking the balance between winging it and being too rigid, but this feels closest to right. We'll see through Q2 and Q3.
The Community Seed I Didn't Expect
I've built community before. With my last business, it happened pretty quickly. So maybe I shouldn't have been surprised when I noticed in early May that Revenue Remix had quietly become my collaborator seed project.
The show's original job was orbit-building: get in the right rooms, give first, create awareness in circles that matter. That job hasn't changed.
But something more is happening now.
I recently moved two guests with real synergy into a 90-day collaborator experiment: low lift, early ways we can help each other. No pressure. Just: let's see. And I realized that's what the show has been setting up all along. I warn people when they come on: if you come on my show, you're going to become one of my people.
It gets a chuckle, but what does that mean in practice? It means we find ways to work together again:
do each other's content (show, blog, webinar)
support each other on LinkedIn
introduce the people we should both know
Sometimes it moves into something more intentional like doing a project together or referring potential clients. Not always. But the possibility for more has to exist. I am not looking for one-and-done interviews with people doing the podcast circuit.
There's a bigger reason this matters right now. Indie brands are stronger when they band together. We don't have the budgets for content strategies that will get us found in AI searches.
We need to work together to be the referred resource, the one a trusted colleague mentions before the buyer opens their LLM to start researching a problem.
That's partner-led growth. And I'm specifically looking for the people who get it.
What's Coming (and Why You Should Subscribe Before It Does)
I've been given the gift of storytelling amd you're going to see me use it more deliberately. Starting this summer, the show is moving toward threaded stories instead of standalone episodes.
More miniseries. Deeper dives. Version 2 episodes that pick up where a previous conversation left off and link back to it.
Bonus pods that show what the work actually looks like in practice.
Not just the strategy, but the execution too.
I've started doing this on air already: when I notice a pattern emerging across conversations, I'll ask the guest before we wrap if they'll come back for a deeper dive. When they say yes, that's the seed of a thread. The goal is a cohesive story for the audience. One where each episode adds something and leaves you wanting the next piece.
In June, we're going deep on partner-led growth: why it matters, what it looks like in practice, and what gets in the way. Stay tuned.
Subscribe to the show so you don't miss how the threads connect. The topics are going to start building on each other in ways that are harder to follow if you're only catching one here and there. [Apple Podcasts] [Spotify] [YouTube]
And if you or anyone you know wants to be part of something that's more than just a podcast, hit me up.
Before You Launch
If you're thinking about starting a podcast, the honest summary is this: it takes a lot of work, you won't make money as an indie B2B podcaster, so launch with a clear strategy and be willing to evolve it.
What I am laying out is my journey and what I have learned along the way, but this is all what works for me. There are a lot of shows out there that are great, serve their producers and audiences well. Other than "I should do a podcast", figure out first the job you want yours to do for you. And then realize that if you're not a famous actor or recently-retired professional athlete, your show is going to take a year or more before it really starts doing its job.
And that leads right into the thing I wish I'd done sooner. Think about differentiation the same way you'd think about it for a product or a business. What makes it different in the eyes of others, and why would they care? Not in your own head but in the description someone reads when they're looking for new shows that can help them solve their problems.
Don't get caught up in pod bro speak like I did and blend in while trying to stand out. You'll lose time you can't get back.
And if starting your own show still sounds like too much?
TL;DR: Guest on mine instead.
Until next time,
Most revenue strategies are designed for someone else's company. Rise of Us, led by revenue architect Summer Poletti, works with B2B SaaS, fintech and professional service companies navigating the messy middle between $2M and $30M ARR that are spending money on strategies, hires, and frameworks built for generic B2B businesses regardless of stage, industry or founder vision. Through the Revenue R.I.S.E. Framework, we diagnose what's stalling growth, stop the waste, and build the architecture that fits this company. If any of our themes resonate, let's talk.
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