About our Case Study:

Ben is a U.S. Marine Veteran turned blogger, life coach, speaker, and now podcaster who seeks to bring Military Veteran Dads home to their families. He resides in Janesville, WI, with his wife and three beautiful kids! He went through what most transitioning veterans go through of redefining identity and rediscovering your passion and purpose for life. A seminar changed it all for him and realigned him to his passion for leadership. Since then he has been on a mission to master leadership principles & use his passion for leadership to help dads understand who they are, develop the skills to overcome adversity, and own their life and choices truly come home to their life.

Traction: Initially, Ben started with his creative pursuits by trying to be a life coach and a speaker but was having trouble finding the “who” behind what he wanted to do. It took him three attempts to find the ideal audience member that had a visceral and emotional reaction to the value that he was trying to bring to the world, at the Military Influencer Conference. He recognized the raw emotion that he struck a chord with because he knew that there was market demand for what he wanted to offer: support for military veteran dads. Once he realized that people were desperate for this content because of the emotional reaction that he noticed, he knew that there was something there. That, combined with his leg up with experience listening to podcasts in the past, gave him the ability to hit the ground running while knowing exactly who to attract. He knew exactly who his avatar was, because he was that person, and that gave him the ability to find those communities and target them very precisely. 

Growth: One of the most impactful actions that Ben took while doing the podcast was making himself available to his audience. He realized that he had a free 30 minutes to and from work that was going unused. He took that time and put it on a Calendly link and let any of his listeners setup a time to chat with him any morning or afternoon. Since then, he’s established deep connections and rapport with his audience, gotten new ideas for episodes, and met new guests to have on the show. Being so transparent and accessible increased the trust that his audience has in him, along with the perceived value that they receive. Most importantly, his audience conversations gave him the encouragement to try new episode formats, which they also wanted to hear. Not only did he receive feedback on what they wanted more of, but they felt more appreciated in the process. 

Income: Ben has intentionally opted not to monetize because the time is not right. He has looked into providing community and by adding value to military veteran fathers that miss the sense of connection and camaraderie that they had in the military. He has toyed with creating this as a program that listeners can pay into, along with a few other ideas. We also spoke about the possibility of doing a mastermind with other dads that are going through the same struggles of fatherhood at various points along the journey. Lastly, we also considered the possibility of providing father boxes that could be sold with highly recommended products to make dad-life just a little bit easier. 

Ben has a fantastic podcast and is off to a great start with TGI. For more about his podcast, check out Military Veteran Dad. 

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