3 Things to Consider If You’re Worried About “Giving Away Too Much”

If you've ever sat down and recorded a podcast and then reflected on that podcast or listened back to it and you’re like, “Oh, my gosh, I gave away so much information. Did I give away too much information?” or maybe you've got an objection on a sales call that was, “Hey, I'm going to implement what I learned on your podcast first. Then I'll come to join this program or book that coaching call,” and thought, “My podcast is not getting me sales, it's distracting because people think they can just do what they learn on the podcast. I'm giving away too much,” I know the feeling. I hear this a lot.

I want to give you three things to consider if you're worried that you're going to be giving away or that you have been giving away too much free content and it's preventing you from getting sales. Let's dig into it.

Welcome to The More Profitable Podcast with Stacey Harris. I'm Stacey. 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.

This may be one of the most common concerns when it comes to content of all kinds, honestly. I have felt this in blogging. I have felt this in doing videos. I have felt this in social media content.

I mean, I think sometimes we feel this even in delivery. Like somebody joins maybe a low-level or entry-level load ticket offer and you're like, “Did I put too much content in there? Did I give away too much for that price point so they won't evolve into my higher tier offers where I'm offering more hands-on support, where I can be more in partnership with them,” or whatever that feeling is.

I think this is just the nature of being in an expert space. Sort of the nature of being somebody who is building a business based on your expertise. If we're going to sort of, “Here's the deal of this,” if we're going to get down to like just the frank and honest version of this conversation, which obviously we are, it's kind of BS.

If we're giving away so much that somebody feels that they can action just what they're learning on the podcast and will never need to work with us, if I was into one of two categories, they were somebody who was never going to need to work with us because there's somebody who can action off of what they learn online. If they weren't learning it from us, they'd be learning it from someone else and maybe learning it incorrectly elsewhere.

Or two, we're doing a really good job of establishing our expertise. We are not doing a very good job of educating into the sale. We're not doing a very good job of educating them on how we support them. We're just trying to convince the listener that we're smart. We're just trying to get whoever's consuming it on board with the fact that we are an expert.

When we sit in that proving, this is where we get here. This is where we get to this place where you feel like you're giving away too much and they feel like they can do whatever they need to do just listening to the podcast.

Here's the realness of this. Both of you are wrong. You're not giving away too much. You're giving away the wrong stuff. They're never going to see the results they could see working with you, DIYing based on what they're learning on the podcast.

I don't care how much you give away on the podcast because you're not giving them the years of expertise that you have, the years of experience, the years of perspective, the ability to shift.

Even if they eventually get there on that content, it will become because they became an expert. It will be because they learned so much in doing it themselves that they built themselves that expertise.

You may have helped that along, but the bulk of what they're going to be learning is actually in the doing of it. You just got the ball rolling. Again, in some cases, that's all somebody needs.

If there's somebody who listens to the show, and I know for a fact there are, and maybe you're somebody in this position who's been listening to the show and you're like, “I can action that.” Then action it. I want you to go and do with it.

But for the large majority of people who listen to the show, they're not in that spot. Maybe that's where you are, where you're looking to get a feel for what the perspective of my expertise is, the how we do this, so that you know what you're stepping into.

That's true for your clients too. They want to know what your approach is. They want to know what your perspective is. They want to know why you're the one that they want to work with because much like me, love, you're in a position where there's lots of other people who do what you do. There are lots of podcast producers in the world. There are lots of coaches. There are lots of consultants. They're looking for the expert they connect with who thinks about this in a way that resonates with them.

That's why we talk so much about educating into a decision because that's the difference here. As we dig into this episode, I want us to work through three things to consider, three pieces.

Some of them are going to be angles you could take on your content to be sharing your expertise and highlighting how you do things in a way that is not just telling them how to do it.

Some of it it's going to be being really clear on our own motivation, why we're sharing what we've been sharing at the level we've been sharing. Again, talking to that prover energy, which is that educator energy. We're going to talk about both of those things.

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All right, let's get into this. Let's first talk about a content theme that we can be using, a content type that we can be using that allows us to highlight what we do, how we do it, while providing social proof so that we stay educating them about the experience and out of educating them on the how-to.

So, first and foremost, a case study. Using case studies as a trust builder can help us get out of some of that feeling of, “I've got to prove how smart I am.” Because now we're still proving because it's literally called social proof, to a certain extent, we are proving here.

But instead of just saying, “I know so much, see, I'll list it out for you,” you're walking the listener through an experience. I think a great example of this, we've done several case studies on the show but I think a really great example of it that we've done recently, and I'll include a link in the show notes, is a case study we did with a client Nicole Otchy. Nicole is such a great example because Nicole is somebody who's worked with me in a lot of ways.

Nicole started in our Profitable Podcaster Mastermind. She's done intensives with me. Now she's a full-on production client with our team at Uncommonly More. We were able to talk a lot about why she worked with me in those different ways. We really educate the listener of those episodes on choosing their entry ramp and highlighting how starting one place might have you end up another.

It's a really solid conversation and it's a really good trust builder. I can tell you that because I've had, since it came out a few months ago, people reference it on sales calls. We've had production clients who are like, “I want this because I heard the conversation you had with Nicole.”

It gave them an idea of what their list would be. It gave them an idea of what their expectations could be for not just me and our team, but for themselves. How are they going to need to show up? That helped them identify which container was going to be best for them.

When you use these case studies to shift out of proving how smart you are and instead into educating the listener on what working with you looks like, what working with you is, what's required of them, that's super powerful.

This, in my perspective, should be at the backbone of any launch content you have, especially if you are somebody who has a group program. We work with a lot of

coaches, and maybe you've got an instance like this, too, where they're enrolling people into a program once or twice a year. They've got a mastermind or a membership or a consulting package where people are signing up for six or 12 months.

We know we've got a pretty solid calendar of where we need to be pulling the lever of XYZK study because they've got that sales cycle coming up. We know there are certain times of year where we're absolutely running case studies, almost primarily, because it is such a powerful sales asset.

I would argue that if you could run one solid case study, you replace four episodes of you saying, “Here's what you need to know about XYZ. Here's how we make this decision. Here's what building this looks like. Here's how to create your,” all of those how-to episodes become wildly less effective or less important, maybe is a better word when you can say, "Here's what we did with this person. Here's what they felt like in the process. Here's where they were before. Here's where they were after,” and really highlight what happened in the container.

There's real powerful motivation there for that listener to take the next step. In that same vein, I want to shift into a mindset check-in that I want you to do, which is are you educating to prove how smart you are? Or are you educating to empower the listener?

When I record these episodes for you, I'm not looking for you to walk away saying, “Man, that Stacey really knows her stuff.” That's not the goal here, is for you to realize I'm a genius. I am a genius, and we both know that. But that's not the purpose of the show. That's not the point.

If it is at any point feeling like the point for you is for them to know how smart you are, it’s time for us to re-address your relationship with your podcast because that's not going to serve anybody.

Instead, I want to be building a show where I'm educating you into making a decision for yourself. I'm empowering you to take another step in your podcast. Again, I said this as we were leading into this episode, but sometimes that's going to mean I'm empowering you to do the thing, to go and take the step, to build the audio sales page, to invite those case study clients on, to do something, to plan the next four or eight or 12 weeks of your show before you sit down to record everything.

Sometimes it absolutely is me empowering you to do some of those things. For some people, that may be enough, that may be all they need, that may be the linchpin or the flip of the switch that gets them moving forward, that gets them where they want to go.

But for most people, it's not going to be that way. It's going to be about empowering them to make the decision, to invest in themselves, to invest in their show, to invest in building this member of their sales team, and working with us.

I do that by making sure that I am educating into a decision. I'm educating the listener. I'm educating you into, “Is this the right fit? Is this what I want? Is now the right time to pull that lever?” But I'm also educating you into being the kind of client that I know is going to get results.

One of the things I talk a lot about with our clients who are coaches, and this might resonate for you too, is if there's something that is frequently a concern of your leads, maybe it's something like not having enough time to get the work, this is one we hear a lot, “How much time do I need to commit to this program,” I think every coach in the world who has sold a program, whether it's one-on-one, a small group program, a membership, or a course, there's been that question. It's “How much of me is going to be needed? How much am I going to need to show up?”

Unfortunately, we also have people who have been in these programs who have not asked that question and who have come into a program where they don't have the capacity to show up in the way they need to. They don't have the capacity to action the things we're learning.

I think about this a lot inside of our Profitable Podcaster Mastermind. That container is built to do work in. I don't know how much capacity the people in that program have outside of our working hours so I make sure that we've got three hours a month, split over two 90-minute calls, to do the work, to get into the doing and not just sit in the, I mean, frankly, idea of it all. Like the mental hula hoops of fake work that are like, “Oh, I'm planning so I'm working,” no, we're doing stuff.

We're outlining content so that when we get off this call, you can sit down and record. We are building out your content plan. Your next step is to record content, not go build your own strategy. We're building that in this container.

Even in our quarterly production calls with clients, we're working on those now, and it's so funny because they become work sessions. It's, “I need to do this thing for the podcast. I know you've been waiting for me. Let me do it right now.”

It's so frequently, “Oh, that's a great idea. Here are the other pieces that we could do around it. Here's what I would want to include in there.” It's us building out, again, a working title and a couple of bullet points so that they're ready to roll. They're ready to create.

I want to make sure that I'm educating my leads, that that's the kind of container we have, that when we come together, we're going to be doing the work. I'm building that messaging into my content. I just did it. This episode, this section of this episode is an example of that. I just outlined what would be needed of somebody in two of my containers.

This is what I mean by educating to empower. I'm empowering you to have all the information you need so that you can confidently make a decision and step into a container ready to go, knowing what's up, what's down, and where you're going to move forward.

Educating your listeners is not about teaching them to do your job. It is about teaching them how to take advantage of you doing your job, how to leverage their investment with you.

That really leads us to our third piece, this third thing that I want you to consider, and that's the power of transparency. That's the shift that happens when you're uber transparent about your process, when you make what is needed from them obvious, you make your program, you make your services more accessible, not less valuable because now they're making this investment fully educated.

And how many of us, by the way, have gone through a decision-making process, made an investment, gotten inside the program, the course, or into the services being delivered time and gone, “Oh, this isn't what I thought it was going to be at all.” It's not because you were misled. It's because you were under-informed.

It's because you didn't actually know what was going to be required of you, what was going to be happening on the other side of that investment. I'm guessing you knew some basics. You had some information. But we fill in the gaps when we're making a decision so that we can make ourselves comfortable in that commitment.

We will fill in the gaps. One of the things is I record all of my sales calls, and I always say this, and I verify this, I went into my Fathom, which is the tool I use, it's an AI note taker I use, and I searched, and I say this in every sales call, “I'm going to send this all over to you completely documented via a proposal or an email or whatever, sort of depending on what the container is. I'm going to send this to you because I know if you're anything like me, you're going to get off this call and you're going to have to decipher between the things I said and the things you hoped I said were included.”

Because I'm absolutely somebody who will fill in the gaps with what I hope they said. That's how we get into these investments and we're like, “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. This isn't what I thought it was going to be,” and it's because we have been under-informed, and we closed those gaps ourselves.

I don't ever want you to be in a position where that's happening with your clients. I want them to know exactly what they're getting, mostly because I'm willing to bet what you're offering them is better and more impactful than what they're imagining is on the other side.

A, because as a people, I think universally, we decide things are going to be harder than they are. But also because that's how they're going to be able to best get a return on their investment with you.

That's how they're best going to leverage your expertise in their business is when they know exactly how they can be doing it. How many times have you gotten into a coaching arrangement and you've got like Voxer access or Slack access or Marco Polo or whatever that touchstone is, and you're like, “Is this even something I could ask them in that?”

If you're somebody who's offering that kind of support, I want you to be talking regularly, planting seeds regularly with examples of how clients are using it, answering questions, saying, “Man, we have been getting Voxers left and right from our VIP clients in XYZ container,” man, that was a lot of acronyms, “XYZ container saying whatever the question is, or asking about sales strategies as we shift into Q4.”

Again, utterly making this up. You don't have to be specific. You don't have to name names. You're not calling anybody out. You're absolutely keeping the privacy of your clients. But I've just highlighted a way our clients use that access point to me.

Inside of Uncommonly More, that looks like leaving us questions in our podcast dashboard. Our production clients leave their stuff in our dashboards, which are all built in Monday.com, and they have the ability to see exactly where anything is and ask questions there.

So I can say, “These are the questions that have been coming up from our clients.” The biggest way I use this is when we do quarterly calls, I'll say, “These are the questions that came up in every call. We had this quarter or this month with our production clients. Here's the recurring theme that happened.”

It allows you to hear an example of how people are using that part of the container, that part of our offer. It's not just, “Oh, you have the ability to do this.” It's, “Ooh, and that's how I use it.”

That's what I'm talking about when I'm talking about educating clients into a decision, educating to empower them. It comes from this transparency. It comes from being really clear on what's going to happen. Not sort of mysterious and elusive and sexy. No, I want to be plain and clear.

A great example of this has happened in this episode. When we were talking about the second consideration, when I was talking about educating into empowerment, when I went through the whole thing, I said to you, “This is what I'm doing right now.” You're hearing it.

I do this frequently in episodes. If you're somebody who has listened to a lot of these episodes, you know this. You know that frequently I'll say, “And that's what we did today.”

Now, did you hear it happening? Did you notice when we were doing whatever it was we were doing? I'm highlighting that stuff for you because that transparency is what empowers you.

That transparency is what educates you. That transparency is what proves to you that I know what I'm doing and that this stuff works. I had a sales call recently with someone and they were talking about having listened to the show and gone through things, and they're like, “Wow, this really works.” I was like, “Yeah, it really does.”

There's no better proof of concept here than the fact that you work through this and become a client. No better case study than you having been through it with me. That comes from being really transparent and highlighting when I'm using the strategies I teach and I employ with our clients. That's the power of that transparency.

That's what I want to encourage you to be looking at when you are educating into decision, when you are educating them on how to be good clients, when you are empowering them to step into what's next for them in their work with you.

As we wrap this up, I want to encourage you to spend some time going through the content you have planned for Q4 and looking at where you can shift out of proving how smart you are, shift away from the how-to, even if it's labeled as how-to—we can talk about that on a future episode, maybe leave a question for me for the private podcast on that one—and into this educating to empower them.

Where can we add a case study to your Q4 content calendar? Where can we add some transparency to your episodes where you're really highlighting for them, “Here's what happens behind the scenes. Here's what this actually looks like. Here's what this actually manifests as.”

Where can you be doing that? Because if you can find that spot, you will shift your content. You will shift your show this quarter. It will take time. You're building a muscle. It will get easier, but you've got to take the first step. So I want to encourage you to look at that.

This is the kind of stuff that shifts your show into a sales asset. This is the kind of stuff that makes your show a member of your sales team. If you are building a show that is going to be productive in that role, if you're building a podcast that is going to be a sales asset and not just a content machine, I want to encourage you to spend some time looking at our Podcast Strategy Intensive because that's where I'll be sitting down with clients for the rest of this year.

That's going to be the best way to get this strategy stuff figured out for the end of this year and moving into next year. Spots are filling up because our Q4 calendar gets a lot more crowded as we prep for the end of the year, as we shift into our own time off at the end of December, as we get ahead on our own content moving into next year, we get all of our clients' shows ready to go by the time we're done through the end of January. There's a lot of production work happening.

I've got some limited spots, but I do have some spots in Q4 for these Podcast Strategy Intensives. I really encourage you to take some time today and look at if that's a fit for your calendar as we move through the rest of the year.

The cool thing is you don't have to decide on your own. Head on over to uncommonlymore.com/intensive, book a 30-minute call with me, and we can discuss it together. We can figure out what the next best step for you is.

If it's the intensive, I will let you know. If it's something else, I'll let you know that. If it's working with someone else, I will let you know that too. All right, head on over to uncommonlymore.com/intensive and book a time to chat with me today. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.

Thanks so much for listening to this 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.

If you haven't yet signed up for The Podcast Newsroom, I want to 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. The last favor I will ask, because social proof is endlessly important for sure, is to leave a rating and review for the show. If you go to ratethispodcast.com/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. This is just the start of the conversation. Reach out so we can keep it going. Talk soon.