3 Changes Small Business Owners Need to Make for Their Podcast Needs to Thrive

If as we settle into the next big block of the year, you're feeling like your podcast is not quite hidden the way you need it to, either resonation with your audience or nailing what you wanna say and who you're talking to or on your own side, like your process is feeling heavy, your production steps feel never ending. I wanna talk about that today. We're gonna talk about three changes you can make to really shift your podcast from functioning to thriving. Let's get into it.

Welcome to the More Profitable Podcast with Stacey Harris. I'm Stacey and this is the spot to learn more about the strategies, tactics and tools you need to build your more profitable podcast. My team and I work every day with podcasters like you to shift shows from frustrating time sucks to productive members of your sales team because your show should be built to generate and convert leads. So let's get into it.

Hey, hey, I'm super stoked to have this conversation because I know we're kind of in one of those times where we're all sort of shifting from one season to another and we're all sort of like looking ahead and saying, am I where I wanna be? Is this performing the way it needs to? I know we've been talking a lot about this in the Profitable Podcaster Mastermind, data collection and reviewing our stats and paying attention to what these numbers mean for us and looking ahead and planning and what can I be putting on the docket to be delivering the results I need, not just right now, but in the coming quarters, in the subsequent quarters as I move into from one calendar year to another, what are the things I need to be looking towards? And oftentimes we start and end this conversation with content. We start and end this conversation with a content plan. And what I want to do in this conversation is talk less about the episodes you need or the structure of a podcast flow that you need. And I wanna talk more about the three places I consistently see podcasters really struggling and when they figure these out and not even just all of them, like any one of these, they'll start to feel better. Each one will incrementally redirect your show so that you can start to shift from chop wood, carry water, do the thing, check the box, it'll all get done, to enjoying your show again, to be supported by your show again because there is a difference. Before we jump in, I want to let you know I have reopened the podcast audit applications for the free podcast audit that we do over on the podcast newsroom. If you have not yet subscribed to the podcast newsroom, make sure you do, podcastnewsroom.com. We're gonna have a new episode dropping soon with the three things you need to know this month. But as we look ahead, I wanna be doing some more of those podcast audits over there. They're super fun. If you head to the show notes, the description, or the website, you will find a link to that audit application. I will then reach out and say, hey, yeah, let's do it. And we will get it scheduled. What we're looking for here is your best sales asset episode. I will then take a listen, do a little review, come with what you did well, come with what you can improve, and you will walk away with a better idea of how to build a sales asset episode that works for you. These conversations, rather, are recorded and released on the podcast newsroom. So you gotta be comfortable with that. We've done a couple of them. Again, head over to the podcastnewsroom.com. Make sure you're signed up for the feed. Take a listen to those. Submit your application. We'll be rolling those out in the next few, next several months. I'm really excited to open this up again because we have not had the capacity for much of this year to do that. And we do have the capacity for a limited number as we roll through the next quarter. So I'm super stoked. Again, podcastnewsroom.com is where you sign up for the feed, and I will also include in the show notes the link you need to head on over and get the audit. It's uncommonlymore.com slash audit if you happen to be sitting in front of your computer and wanting to type it in. But I'll see you over at the podcast newsroom either way. With that, let's jump into this. Let's talk about these three things because I want this episode to be somewhat short because I want you to go do some stuff. This is one of those episodes that I want you to action. If you listen to the whole show and you hear the outro, you know how often I talk about listening to this podcast is not enough. Listening to any podcast is not enough to create change. You know that as a podcaster because the work and the content you're putting out on your show is not enough to get the results that your clients get working with you. The same is true here. However, you also know that that doesn't mean that some steps can't be taken from the podcast. It doesn't mean that somebody can't be moving in the direction and in all reality, when they start to work with you, they are in a better place if they have started taking action in the podcast content. I know that has been like proven over and over again for us. The people who listen to the show are the people who get the best results from our podcast strategy intensives. They're the people who get the best results from our production services. They're the people seeing the most impact in the profitable podcast or mastermind. It's just proven itself out again and again. So prepare yourself to take some action with this episode because these are three things where if you fix any one of them, you will start to feel incremental relief, incremental ease, incremental flow. The first one I wanna start with is probably the most airy-fairy. It's probably the most woo-adjacent, but quite frankly, it's the most strategic. It's the linchpin, and that's understanding your podcast promise. This is all about knowing your niche. This is all about creating content that speaks to your niche and what they need to know now to move forward. And that movement forward might be better work, like just getting a better result, but it is more frequently working with you. But they can't do that if they don't know what they need to know to do that. And when I say what they need to know, and this is what I wanna be really clear on when we start talking about a podcast promise, this podcast promise is not to you. This is the promise you're making with your podcast to the listener. What is the purpose of their time listening to your show? If you don't know that, you have to start here. This is your homework. If you don't know the purpose for your listeners, you will never build content that consistently converts because you're throwing spaghetti at a wall and hoping it sticks. You're peppering them with the things that you think would be interesting to talk about, or you think might help, or you heard me talk about, and so you went and made that episode, I have seen it happen. I pay attention. I know what's out there. We've talked about that on this podcast recently. You have to be looking at what is the promise you're making with this show. Let's use this show as an example. Let's break this down. The promise of this show is to help you have more clarity on what you need to build your more profitable podcast, what you need to be generating, educating, and converting right fit clients with your podcast. This is not about building a podcast that's going to be sellable to sponsors. This is not about building a podcast that you can do in one hour a month. This isn't about building a podcast that will generate you millions of dollars in affiliate revenue. That's not what this podcast's promise is. That's not the promise of this show. The promise of this show is very simply to help you as a podcaster use your show to generate, educate, and convert right fit clients. So everything we talk about here runs through that filter. Will this help the listener generate, educate, and convert right fit clients? Will the information I'm giving them help them make a decision that will move them closer to their goal of generating, educating, and converting right fit clients? Do not turn me saying that into a drinking game. It will kill us all, right? So I want you to be really clear, but I rattle that off. I can pull that out because I know who this show is for and why they're listening. And then I can build the content that supports that. I can make the decisions about what we need in an intro, what we need in an outro, what we need to be selling, what we need to be talking about, at what frequency we should release episodes, how often we can repurpose, what we need to repurpose, what assets I need to promote the podcast because I know who the show is for and why they're listening. And that's your podcast promise. I need you to understand what yours is. This isn't something that you'll write once and forget. This isn't something that you'll write once and never need to revisit again. Mine has changed. Mine has evolved. Mine has evolved since the rebrand of this show to the more profitable podcast. I get more and more clear. I get more and more firm in what this show needs to be delivering because I can keep coming back and tweaking that. I can keep coming back and playing with that. I can keep coming back and filtering my ideas, my shiny objects. Full disclosure, we all have them, through that filter of the podcast promise. And that's what I want you to be able to do with your show. And so if you don't know the promise, if you don't know easily, quickly retrieved and recited in your brain, almost like the elevator pitch for your podcast, if you don't know what that is, you're gonna struggle to write intros, you're gonna struggle to write outros, you're gonna struggle to plan episodes, you're gonna struggle to market episodes because you're throwing spaghetti at a wall. You have no filter to run your wonders through, right? But I wonder if this might work. I wonder what would happen if we did that. We need a filter for our wonders. It's critical. Number two, and this is probably the most contenty one, because again, I see this come up again and again and again and again and again and again and again. But you're looking for your content ideas in the wrong place. You've gotta start listening to your clients and your warmest leads, and stop listening to your biggest fans. I'm gonna say that again. You need to start listening to your clients and your warmest leads, and stop listening to your fans. Our egos love when we get one of those DMs or we get one of those emails, and they're like, I listen to every episode, it's such a good show, thank you so much. I'd love if you could talk about A, B, and C. And you're like, oh my God, this person loves me, they clearly represent everybody who listens to my show, I'm gonna just throw these onto the schedule right now. Without filtering them through your podcast promise, without filtering them through, will these ideas deliver on that podcast promise, without filtering them through the, hey, do these fit into my strategy and what I need my show to do in my business? I've 100% made this mistake, we all have, because we love hearing from our biggest fans. We love hearing that our show is impactful, we love hearing that people are taking action with our show, it feels good, it feels like reciprocation, which we all know is hard to come by in podcasting, it can often feel like you're sitting alone in your office, talking to yourself for hours on end. I say that in the middle of a batch day, I get that feeling, I get that feeling hard. And, and, you're gonna find yourself further and further and further away from the results you want if you keep focused on the people who feed your ego and not the people who you're sitting on sales calls with, not the people that you're delivering work for. When I'm looking at content ideas, I don't look at my biggest fans, almost ever anymore. Unless they've paid me. Because some of my biggest fans are absolutely my clients and I love you, I will say that. But because they're paying me, because they're all the way invested in our work together, they now more closely resemble my ideal audience. They resemble my ideal listener. Because my ideal listener is the ideal client I wanna be working with. Because that's the purpose of this show for me. Internally, in and inside of Uncommonly More, the box this show checks is to generate, educate, and convert right fit clients to be a member of my sales and marketing teams, right? That's the purpose of this for me. Not my podcast promise, but my internal strategic business purpose of this asset. And so if I'm constantly running in the direction of my biggest fans who love me and binge every episode of the show, but have never once opened their wallet, have never once signed up for my email list, have never once engaged in work with me, then I'm not building my strongest assets because I'm building assets that speak to more people like them. Instead of listening to the conversations I'm having with clients over and over again and going, oh, we should really talk about this on the show. Because those are the questions that someone else who's just like them, who would be a great fit for our work together, is probably also having. We've all been in a classroom, we've all been in a workshop, we've all been in a workshop, we've all been speaking at a conference. And one person raises their hand and they ask a question. And it was a question we didn't even realize we had yet. We've all had that experience. The same is true of your clients. There are questions your paying clients are asking you right now. There's conversations you're having with your clients right now that your next client hasn't even realized they need to ask that question yet. And so, because you're not all in a conference room, you're not all in a classroom, you're not all in a workshop, you're not all in a Zoom call, you have to bring that conversation out of your client call and into a place where those prospective clients can hear that question and go, oh, I have that question too. And that's why we're using that stuff, the client conversations, the questions that come up with our warmest leads and sales calls, that's the information they need to make a decision, to pick a next step. That's the information that's going to help you deliver on your podcast promise and deliver on your show's strategic internal business purpose. And so I need you, I implore you, be focused on the conversations you're having with clients. There is a section, so I take my notes using GoodNotes on my iPad, shout out, not a sponsor. I'm feeling very influencer-y today. I have my page, my notes for my client call split. Two thirds of the page is my client notes and then I sort of make a solid line and the bottom third of that page is always my notes. So a question comes up, a conversation keeps happening. I'm recognizing a pattern across calls. I'm making those notes down there. And so when I get done with a call and I debrief my call, I'm going in and I'm making all the notes that I need to be giving to the team and what's happening, and I'm updating our dashboards on Monday, and I'm doing all of that stuff. But I also, when I get done with my week of calls, I go in and part of what I do when I close up my week is I look at all of that section of my notes from that week. So whether it was a sales call or a client call or even honestly sometimes coffee chats from referral partners, I'll pay attention to those because that's the information people who are going to pay me who make the decision to pay me. And that's the purpose of the show, just like that's the purpose of your show. So watch where you're getting your content ideas, your questions, your topics, your conversations from. Don't just sit around in the, I don't know what to say. I've got to figure out what I'm talking about. Don't sit in that. Go look at your clients and go look at your warmest leads. They will tell you what to say every single time. Where I want to wrap this up with, and I do want to wrap this up, might feel aggressive because I can't think of a better way to put it than this. And so we're going to say it this way. You have to stop half-assing your support. Now, first big caveat, big bit of nuance that's involved here. If you're in the first 20 episodes of your show and you're still figuring out what you're doing and you're still trying to put these pieces together and they're simply not the funds for any kind of support, I'm not talking to you. You're not half-assing your support. You're doing everything you can right now to get where you want to go. That's not half-assing. What I'm talking about is people who know their show works, know they want to stay in their show for a long time and are still sort of limiting their support to maybe a VA on their team who's handling the marketing materials and like an editor they found on Fiverr. They're not getting any high level strategic production support. Your show will continue to be frustrating. Your process will continue to feel like an endless cycle of to-dos until you have a process. And that process is going to need you to not run every part of it. And so when I talk about half-assing your support, that's what I'm talking about. Where you're getting what looks like support but doesn't feel like it. An example of this is we had a production client sign on with us recently who had been working with an editor and one of the things that this client noted when they started working with us was how excited they were that they didn't have to go through and say, I need this edited here and this happened here and this needs to come out. And they didn't have to direct the edit. They gave us a raw audio. We went through, we processed it, we did all the things and we gave them back links, assets to market the show and everything they would need. And that episode was scheduled on their website, went out to their podcast players. All of the things were done. And this client reached out and was like, I had no idea that this could feel like this. That this could be this easy. One of the best comments we get when I get into our first sort of like quarterly production call, so we have our kickoff call right when they start. And that happens regardless of when they sign up, it happens when they sign up to work with us. And then on our normal quarterly schedule, they'll have their first production call. So sometimes it's only a month, sometimes it's three months, but almost always when we get on that first quarterly production call and they've been with us while, we've gotten some episodes out, we've been doing this thing. They say something to the effect and we actually have a clip of a client who said this, we cut that clip out of a quarterly call with us. They were reminded how fun their show could be again. They were having so much fun doing their podcast again. A feeling that up until that point, they had long lost, but they had an editor and they had someone scheduling things. And so that was enough, except it's not enough. You need someone to help carry the show with you, to help with the lift and an editor who you have to direct and a person on your team pressing the buttons to schedule things again at your direction is not support, not long standing, not actually removing things from your list kind of support. And so if you've been in your show, 50 episodes, a hundred episodes, I'm trying to think of some of the, the furthest along a client has been when they started working with us and probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 episodes, it doesn't matter. It's time to get real, meaningful support that takes some of those to do's off your list. A partner to build your planning strategies with. And here's what I wanna say, if you're somebody who right now is DIYing your show and trying to manage it all, I highly recommend you get some support for the strategic direction of your show. This is one of the reasons podcast strategy intensives exist now, is I wanted there to be a way that people who were DIYing their show, who were figuring it out, had a place where they could come get strategic support. High level, meaningful, make the decisions together kind of support. Not in a coachy, I ask you questions and guide you to the answer way. I think there's a time and a place for that, but this isn't what that is. That's not meaningful support in this context. I mean, high level consulting, making decisions together occasionally for you in that call so that you walk away with an action plan, not a list of ideas. I implore you to find that kind of support. Podcast strategy intensives are open now, I'd love to be that kind of support. Maybe that's not possible right now, I get that. Find somebody who you can partner with to do this. Look at your coach, have them ask you some questions and start thinking so that you at least have another perspective. Ask somebody for feedback. Now, I wanna point you to the second thing we talked about about the most important feedback coming from clients and our warmest leads, but at least it'll give you somebody to process with. At least this will give you someone to work through an idea with. That's a good start. And if that's all you can do, if that's all there is in the budget, that makes sense. I get that. But if you're in a place where there is room in your budget, get high level strategic support, book a podcast strategy intensive. Find a way to get somebody to sit down with you and assist you in making some decisions so that you can simplify your day to day tasks because you know what you're doing and you know why you're doing it. And that in and of itself, kind of a game changer. Kind of, all right. With that, all said, I wanna wrap today's episode up. I do wanna remind you, we do have podcast strategy intensives open now. If you're interested in them, I will tell you, based on the time of the year we're in, there are not many left for this year. I will be doing them in September. I will be doing them in October. I will not be doing them in November. I will not be doing them in December. So we will not come back to podcast strategy intensives again, till January. You can book a January one now if you want. But if you wanna get in, I think there's, as of me recording this, six or seven, somewhere in there, spots left. That's as of me recording this. I don't know when you're listening. So reach out if that's on your wish list. If this resonated with you, if you were like, I am gonna need some help. Let's talk about this. I'll also say podcast strategy intensives, great way to build a launch plan for what I call a test season. Let's be real, those first 15, 20 episodes, those are for you, babe. Those are for you to figure out what you're doing. And if you like this, and if you wanna keep doing it. And one of the best ways we have used these podcast strategy intensives with clients is to help them build the plan for that trial season, for that first run. That way, on the other side of it, if they do go, I never wanna do this again, it's terrible. They at least have a solid 12, 15 assets, meaningful audio assets that they can use and they can share and they can get an ROI on, even if they continue not to podcast. So we also talk about launch plans and things like that. If that's on your mind, head over to uncommonlymore.com slash intensive, learn all about it and book yours. Otherwise, I will see you right back here next week.

Thanks so much for listening to the show. Remember that content consumption does not make changes. So commit to doing something from today's episode. Maybe it's taking action on what we talked about. Maybe it's reaching out to me and learning more about podcast strategy intensives or what podcast production looks like with our team. All of that is over at uncommonlymore.com. And if you haven't yet signed up for the podcast newsroom, I wanna remind you that is a great next step. If you're not really sure what comes next, hang out over there, get those exclusive private episodes that's over at podcastnewsroom.com. And the last favor I will ask because social proof is endlessly important for sure, is to leave a rating or review for this show. If you go to ratethispodcast.com slash more, that's the easiest way to do it. But I would love to hear what you thought of the show, what you think of the show, and if the show has been helpful for you. I can't wait to chat with you. So this is just the start of the conversation. Reach out so we can keep you going. Talk soon.