From $500k to $1m in 6 months with a podcast agency - Harry Morton, Lowerstreet

10/31/21 • 16 min

Harry Morton is the founder of Lower Street Media, a podcast production agency that specialises in premium podcasts for ambitious companies. Lower Street are the agency behind top shows such as Secret Leaders, Technology Untangled and WFH Daily. Harry's business has skyrocketed since COVID, doubling in size of revenue and headcount in the last 6-months as more companies start to realise how effective podcasting can be. Harry also runs Single Track Conf, a 3-day mountain-biking founder retreat.

➡️ Here's my course on starting a podcast in 2 hours or less (use "bites" for $10 off)

What we covered in this episode:

Why start an agency? it's not exactly a dream business to start.
How Harry grew Lowerstreet through cold outreach
- 1st client, Ultimate Leadership Podcast
Why the productising model didn't work out for Lowerstreet
What Harry did in the early days for growth
How losing 30% of revenue was a catalyst for growth
Doubling the agency revenue in 6 months
Quitting his job with no savings to start Lowersteet
Not knowing what to do when starting the company
Addressing shiny object syndrome
Why focus vs portfolio of projects argument is BS
The secret sauce for making a sh*t hot podcast
How to make a show that stands out
Starting a mountain bike community

Recommendations

Book: Out on The Wire by Jessica Abel
Podcast: Startup
Indie Hacker: Andrew Wilkinson

Follow Harry

Follow Me

Sponsor - 2 Hour Podcast

Yes, that's right, I'm sponsoring my own show 🤯

After producing hundreds of podcasts for myself and clients, I've been pouring all of my knowledge into my new course, 2 Hour Podcast, which shows you how to start, grow and monetize a podcast that takes you less than 2 hours per week.

I know lots of people who want to start a pod and reap the rewards, but struggle to find the time, which is exactly why I made this course.

I've taken a three-pronged approach to making a podcast efficiently. The first is a step-by-step video guide to creating your show, covering everything from branding, to editing to hosting. The second part is a 90 minute tutorial where I make a my own podcast completely from scratch, recording the first episode with Arvid Kahl, using the tips from part 1. The final prong is my full Notion system for creating my show, including my episode CRM, guest and outreach templates, plus an episode briefing doc.

Head to 2hourpodcast.com to get the full course and get $10 off with the code "bites" at checkout.

➡️ Here's my course on starting a podcast in 2 hours or less (use "bites" for $10 off)

What we covered in this episode:

Why start an agency? it's not exactly a dream business to start.
How Harry grew Lowerstreet through cold outreach
- 1st client, Ultimate Leadership Podcast
Why the productising model didn't work out for Lowerstreet
What Harry did in the early days for growth
How losing 30% of revenue was a catalyst for growth
Doubling the agency revenue in 6 months
Quitting his job with no savings to start Lowersteet
Not knowing what to do when starting the company
Addressing shiny object syndrome
Why focus vs portfolio of projects argument is BS
The secret sauce for making a sh*t hot podcast
How to make a show that stands out
Starting a mountain bike community

Recommendations

Book: Out on The Wire by Jessica Abel
Podcast: Startup
Indie Hacker: Andrew Wilkinson

Follow Harry

Follow Me

Sponsor - 2 Hour Podcast

Yes, that's right, I'm sponsoring my own show 🤯

I know lots of people who want to start a pod and reap the rewards, but struggle to find the time, which is exactly why I made this course.

Head to 2hourpodcast.com to get the full course and get $10 off with the code "bites" at checkout.

Previous Episode

Taking on Google with Fathom Analytics and growing a course to $150k - Jack Ellis, Fathom

Jack Ellis is the co-founder of Fathom Analytics, started with Paul Jarvis in 2019. Jack handles the technical side of the business, but isn't afraid to get on the mic on their podcast, Above Board, or send out some spicy tweets. Jack also runs the Serverless Laravel course, which he launched back in 2020. After this conversation Jack has turned into a true friend, speaking with me for several hours after, a genuinely nice chap. You’re going to want the same thing after listening to this pod. Jack talks with great wisdom on how to approach bootstrapping a SaaS company and taking on a huge incumbent.

➡️ Here's my course on starting a podcast in 2 hours or less (use "bites" for $10 off)

What we covered in this episode:

What is Fathom Analytics
Joining as a co-founder after the company was founded
How Fathom started
How did they know Fathom was going to work
What growth tactics did Fathom use to grow?
How did they convince people to pay for analytics?
The trade-off of free software
How do you compete in a market with a huge incumbent
Starting a medium competitor, Pico
Benefits of having a co-founder
Quitting a job for Jack's first side-project
Starting a course (Serverless Laravel) that made $150,000

Recommendations

Book: 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Podcast: Huberman Lab
Indie Hacker: N/A

Follow Jack

Follow Me

Sponsor - Part Time Tech Jobs

Thank you to my friend Charlie from Weekend Club for sponsoring this episode, with his new project Part Time Tech Jobs, which is a fantastic site for finding and posting, you guessed it, part time tech jobs
If you’re looking to transistion from a full-time role to indie hacking, finding a part time role might be just the thing for you to de-risk that transition. And on the other side, if you’re looking to hire great entrepreneurial talent without breaking the bank, this is where you should post.

So if you’re looking for a part time tech job, head to parttimetechjobs.co or if you’re looking for tech talent, use the code INDIEBITES for 80% off all featured posts.

Next Episode

Leaving a $500k job to build a portfolio of small bets - Daniel Vassallo

In 2019 Daniel Vassallo left his $500k salaried job at Amazon to go indie. In the 2 years since he left Daniel has placed many small bets, something he's become known for. In particular Daniel has seen success from his Info Products and building his audience on Twitter, which has grown from 0 to 91k. He wrote a short book on the good parts of AWS, which has made $126,000, then following the Twitter growth, wrote a book called Everyone Can Build a Twitter Audience, which has made $244,000. He shares all of his revenue reports in his Profit and Loss community, which in itself has made over $30k in the past year. In total, and in just over 2 years, Daniel has made $570k in revenue and $306k in profit since leaving his job at Amazon. But he's gained something he didn't have while working for someone else, freedom.

➡️ Get the uncut, 80 minute recording with Daniel on the Indie Feast membership here.

What we covered in this episode:

Leaving a $500k job at Amazon to go Indie
The trap of judging your life based on financial value
Why the initial focusing on one product didn't work out for Daniel
Where the small bets mindset originated
How to deal with context switching with small bets
Dealing with an uncertain income
Why info products work well for a small bets strategy
How book publishers work and how we can apply their methods
The importance of the "small" in small bets
How you can build a twitter audience like Daniel
Why Daniel started making wooden cutting boards
How he made $2,600 from one tweet

Recommendations

Book: Anti Fragile by Nassim Taleb
Podcast: Indie Hackers
Indie Hacker: Peter Askew

More on Daniel

Follow Me

Sponsor - Fathom Analytics

For the longest time, website analytics software was seriously bad. It was hard to understand, time-consuming to use, and worse, it exploited visitor data for big tech to profit. I've spent countless hours in Google Analytics dashboards trying to figure even out the most basic metrics.

This is exactly why I signed up for Fathom as soon as I heard Paul Jarvis and Jack Ellis were building it.

Fathom is simple website analytics that doesn't suck. It's easy to use and respectful of privacy laws, with no cookies following your users around the web. They're also a bootstrapped, sustainable business so I love supporting them. Yes, it might feel strange paying for analytics at first, but once you realise the real cost of free Google Analytics and realising how easy to use Fathom is, you won't go back. You can install the lightweight code on as many websites as you want and quickly see the performance of all your sites.

Link → https://usefathom.com/bites