How a podcast made Endrock $1M ARR
Introduction
This fast-rising CRO leader was in the process of being acquired when they decided they needed help with one of their biggest problems yet.
Endrock was founded in 2019 by Ned Macpherson, also known as their architect of growth, and has been known for their deep expertise in CRO, data analytics, and growth experimentation.
Beyond scaling his company to 100 employees and hundreds of clients, Ned's CV also includes high profile roles like:
CMO
Head of Growth
Head of Revenue
And has been the Lead Growth Hacker for numerous DTC brands and SaaS companies in the eCom space.
But Macpherson came to us for one thing – he needed help driving fresh leads as the company prepared for its next growth phase.
They were one of the quietest CRO agencies out there, letting their customers speak for them.
So they wanted a platform where they can talk about how they approach CRO and demonstrate core value props to show why they’re different from other CRO agencies and their successes.
At the time, their only avenue to drive new referrals was through organic efforts…
So while in the process of being acquired, they were looking for that boost to obtain a monthly average of 10-15 leads.
Challenge
Given they were in discussions of selling the agency, Endrock was eager to demonstrate that they were:
- A strong, high-growth asset
- Endorsed by high-profile third-party testimonials
- A strong pipeline of leads
AKA everything that an acquiring company would value.
And for almost 2 years, Ronak Shah and Ashvin Melwani (Obvi’s CEO and CMO, respectively), had been using Endrock’s services at Obvi.
So over the years, while they formed a trustworthy relationship with Macpherson, Chew On This was slowly being built.
Ron and Ash aren’t shy in talking about their new ventures on social media – they’re known for building in public, garnering 100k+ followers between their socials.
So once they launched Chew On This, Ned noted…
“...when Chew On This spun up, we were immediately interested.”
Ron and Ash sat down with Ned and his team to determine the ideal solution for Endrock's needs.
Solution
Ned really liked that Ron and Ash are operators in the arena.
They aren't just talking about what worked for them after an exit – and they aren't agency owners generalizing across a bunch of clients.
So the value of a podcast episode with current brand owners was obvious – being able to discuss issues they’re going through, diagnosing it, and coming up with solutions live.
“A lot of times it just flows naturally. I think there is a good blend there of I have autonomy of what I want to talk about and Ron and Ash give good direction on what [they] want me to talk about.” – Ned Macpherson, Founder of Endrock.
But, Endrock was initially concerned about ROI since the Chew On This podcast audience wasn't as big as other podcasts Ned had appeared on.
Ned decided to move forward either way and determined it was the ideal product for them given they wanted to discuss what Endrock does in a conversational setting.
From creating show notes for the podcast episode and making sure each party had autonomy on what they needed to talk about.
To giving each party direction on feedback and providing topics on what viewers want to hear that’ll push conversion.
“It put a good taste in the buyers mouth for us that they were buying a good asset, had good third party references, and was growing really fast. A good elixir to that was frankly the Chew On This podcast.” - Ned Macpherson, founder of Endrock.
The Chew on This team co-developed and produced 7 podcast episodes between August 2023 and 2024, garnering 1,000,000 views till date.
Users stuck around because of the high-value tactical CRO discussions between Ned, Ron, and Ash.
The interplay between a subject matter expert and high-level operators provided content that was insightful and actionable.
Now let’s talk numbers…
Results
From the first podcast episode release alone – Endrock had 30 high value leads and a “conversion probability of 75-85%”.
To date, Endrock has already reported over $1M ARR generated from Chew On This podcast leads…
“[Chew On This] is our #1 driver of revenue for new clients outside of organic client referrals.”
Their worries of Chew On This’s smaller audience went away once they realized how their niche audience is actually a strong suit.
“People have a misconception with the size of the podcast. It's a very concentrated audience where quality of the audience is everything. You don’t have to see this wildly large viewbase in order to generate some really nice revenue.”
Audience quality trumps audience quantity when it comes to driving qualified leads.
And the Chew On This audience is a highly targeted rifle shot of founders, executives, leaders, and operators in the DTC/e-commerce space.
“I’ve been featured on a number of podcasts, some of which have, in order of magnitude more viewership, and gotten not even 1% of the lead generation that I got from Chew On This.”
So Endrock was able to acquire clients from lower to middle market, all the way to enterprise leaders in the DTC space:
True Classic and Huel.
It was a pleasure working with Ned and hearing the Chew On This team was able to secure him $1M in ARR was extremely rewarding.
We’ll let Ned take it from here:
“Anybody in the business to whatever degree – agency freelancer, tool, SaaS model that pertains to a DTC brand that's doing couple million in revenue all the way up to several hundred million in revenue – [Chew On This] is an amazing organization to get involved in with a really good ROI for you.”
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