I think that timing is one of those things that we all try really hard to get right and generally speaking, the only way we’re screwing it up is in the fact that we keep waiting for it to be right. I know I’ve been here. I’ll be here right now on something, who knows? Probably. But we’ve all there and we did an episode a while ago, and I’ll make sure it’s linked in the show notes, sort of what you need to have in place to be ready to work with us. We talked about knowing what you’re selling and who you’re talking to when those sort of things. But oftentimes, clients who work with us, those boxes are like, well obviously I’ve known that for a while. So what’s the difference? Because there are a lot of shows. Successfully self-producing or working with their structure and they have all those boxes and so okay, I guess this is as good as it’s going to be. That’s not necessarily the case.
Today, I want to kind of highlight some of the discomforts that shows up with the right time. When your show and the universe are trying to smack you with a shoe and say, “For the love of Pete, go get some help.” And that’s what we’re going to go through today. I want to do this pretty quick and dirty because for me these things are going to be easy. Yep? That’s me. Nope, that’s not me. And if you feel that “Yep, that’s me” on any one of these three things, I want you to get some support. You may have heard, well let’s be honest, you definitely listen to last week’s episode and so you definitely heard this.
Starting in July, July 1st in fact, the price is increasing on our production services. In addition to that, we have precisely four spots open to work with us in June. That means we will only be taking on four more clients before that price increases in July. So if you feel one of these and you go “Oh, yeah” then I want you to head over to uncommonlymore.com/podcastproduction, book a call with me. Let’s have a conversation and see if we’re the right fit to alleviate this discomfort.
Spoiler alert, if we’re not the right fit, I’m happy to point you in the direction of the right fit. So don’t feel like a lack of clarity around what your solution might be. Don’t let that prevent you from us having a conversation. Because oftentimes, we do end up being the right solution and if we’re not, again, I want to point you in the right place. Because I don’t want you, regardless of whether you work with us or not, to ever be sitting in these three feelings for a prolonged amount of time. Looks like no good comes from it. Nothing productive. No results come from creating or distributing a podcast from the energy we’re going to talk about today.
First Sign It’s Time to Hire Support For Your Podcast: You’re Feeling Uninspired
First and foremost, I want to talk about feeling uninspired. I think oftentimes when we get sold on the idea of having a podcast or we start thinking about the idea of having a podcast, or we start even putting together our plans, we don’t account for what will happen. When it’s back against the wall, it’s time to create. We simply don’t think about it. That’s a real disservice because ultimately every single creator of literally anything, like not even just podcasters, anybody writers, artists, painters, sculptors, candlestick makers. All of them at some point are going to feel wildly uninspired. And that is also true for you, love. It’s certainly been true for me. I got to tell you- the last year, year-and-a-half, 2020 was a real, real toll on my creativity. It was really easy. It still remains easier for me to feel uninspired and it does for me to feel inspired. It’s getting better. I’m starting to find my way a little easier now that I’m a bit more around other people. Yay, vaccinations. But, it still creeps up. It still shows up sometimes where I’m just wildly uninspired. There are three things I go to every single time I’m uninspired and that is either client questions, my team, or my coach. And so, when I’m feeling uninspired, I know I need to go shake those trees so that I can get to the other side of it. If you’re sitting in this lack of inspiration, lack of creativity, lack of excitement for your show for a prolonged amount of time, you’re going to quit your show. Even if it happens unofficially and it’s not until six months later you realize you did it.
This is what causes Podfade. We’ve talked about Podfade on past episodes, but this is what happens. This is what causes it, is you get disconnected. This is why we’ve built into our production contracts and agreements with our clients that we meet once a quarter to build some strategy. Not because building the strategy and knowing what we’re going to record for the next 12 weeks suddenly makes it impossible for us to become uninspired, but because when we inevitably become uninspired when we inevitably disconnect from our creativity for a bit. There’s already a solution to that problem because there’s already something there for me to lean on, for me to record, for me to speak to. If you’re sitting in this place feeling uninspired and disconnected from why you want to talk to your audience and what you want to talk to them about, then it’s time to get some support.
The good news is for this one, in particular, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a production team. We offer single-session strategy calls that can be a great way to do this. It’s a one-off session. It doesn’t take any production contract. It’s an hour with me, you can record the call, we’ll take lots of notes together and we’ll build whatever strategy you need for the next, however, long you want to plan it. We’ll go through the questions and we’ll work on it together. We’ll get you out of your head and then build some accountability that actually spends 60 minutes on this. This can also be sitting down their coach. This is frequently what it looks like for me. Sitting down with my coach and saying, “Hey, I need help. I don’t know what to talk about. Nothing sounds interesting.” That could be what happened to me not long ago, but it could also be sitting down with your best bestie. It could be sitting down with your team.
Like I mentioned, we’ve built this into our contract so that as our client’s team, we can support them through this. Many of our clients actually bring other team members to this call. So, generally on this call, it’s Cali and I. Me as a strategist, Cali is your production manager. And more often than not, we have our client and our client’s OBM or marketing manager or VA on the call with us as well because they’re really tied into the customer service questions that are coming in. The comments you’ve got on your latest Instagram post, the questions you get through email, all of those things are really connected to them. And so, again, this could totally mean going to your team and going, “What do they want to know? Could you just loop me in?” Okay?
So first and foremost, if you’re feeling uninspired, it’s a really good sign. It’s time to get some help and again, this doesn’t have to necessarily be production help. It can be but we do have single sessions available as well. There’s lots of places you can go to get the support. Let’s shift gears a little bit.
Second Sign It’s Time to Hire Support For Your Podcast: Everything is Working
Let’s talk about, your show is working like it just, it works. This could seem like it is the exact wrong time to hire support. Like no, my show is killing it. I am in a rhythm. Maybe you’ve got an editor who cleans up your audio. You’re doing your own shownotes. You’re doing your own strategy. You’re doing everything else yourself. This is actually the place a lot of our clients commit at. The show is fine. Everything works really well. That’s how they know it’s time to get support because they have built a thing that works and now they want to test something else. I love this to be a reason that it’s time to get support. Because I think oftentimes we only think about getting help or being supported or taking things off our plate when we’re in pain.
When we are in discomfort, we don’t always think about it from a place of creating space for creating opportunity. And the fact of the matter is that if your show works and you’re killing it with it, it is the perfect time to start getting some help so that you can then market your show more. Try other marketing avenues. Maybe you want to add a video. Maybe you want to add a live component, a live show. Maybe you want to create a new program. Maybe you want to launch a live event. Who knows? Maybe you want to launch a new program. Maybe you just want to take the summer off. That’s cool too but none of that becomes possible unless you sort of buy back the space. And so, if your show is really working, great. Find people to hand it off to. Find people to make it even better, up-level it.
This is something we’re going to talk about. I’ve got some clients coming on to join us in Q3 to talk about working with us and you’re going to notice for a lot of them, the show worked. Their show had been working. This is why the bulk of our clients that come in aren’t launches. The bulk of our clients who come in have been doing their show a year, a year and a half, two years and they have figured out, “Cool. This works. I don’t need to touch this often. I can just record and place it in the hands of experts and be done with it. I don’t have to keep messing with this. I don’t have to keep pushing this rock up a hill.” It was a really, really, really good time to get production help. The thing I want to caution you on here is make sure that you are really, really clear with whoever it is that you sit down with, on what you love most about your show, what works about your show, and whenever possible, why you think it works?
Be really clear about, “Hey, this, this, this, and this are awesome.” I’d actually like to evolve fix update, tweak this, this, and this. For example, we had a client who joined us earlier this quarter actually, the beginning of Q2, and we didn’t change music, we didn’t change cover art. None of that. All of that was great. We had another client who we brought in at the exact same time, who we rolled out new cover art, new music, new social graphics, the whole thing. We had another client who also joined us at the beginning of Q2 who needed social graphics but not cover art and not music. Just be really clear when you go into the conversation, what you want to keep and what you’re open to getting rid of. And then, also remember that you hired experts, and if they make a recommendation, there’s probably a reason for it. But, if they’re unwilling to give you a reason why they suggest a change, they’re just trying to prove value. Just be cautious of that. They’re just trying to do the work that they think it needs to be done, I guess. I don’t know.
I’m a big proponent of not changing things that don’t need to be changed. If something is working and a client is happy. Cool. But that’s also going back to those quarterly calls and this is something I told the two clients that didn’t make a ton of changes, cool, we’ll revisit those in Q3. We’ll see if anything needs to happen then. When you first sign on with a production company, all of the changes that you’re ever going to make, should not need to happen, right then. There may be things that need to be updated. Like I said, we also have clients who came in who had straight-up DIY to everything. Like this was all, “Let’s see if this thing works.” And so, they were really ready for us to come in and say, “Cool. Let’s up-level this, this, and this. Not because it’s bad, but because we have the opportunity to.” They were excited about that. So I just want to caution you on that. So I think it gets split both ways. But when your show feels like it’s working, really good time to hand it off.
Third Sign It’s Time to Hire Support For Your Podcast: Everything is Working and Your Burned Out
On the flip side of that, maybe your show is working in the sense that it’s getting you the marketing results that you want. It’s getting you the sales calls or the buys or the whatever, the list, growth, whatever it is that you the goal is right now. All of that’s happening, but like you are so absolutely caught up in the tasks of producing that show, you have no time to benefit from that show. You can’t take any more sales calls. You can’t welcome on any more clients. You can’t find the time to be on someone else’s podcast and drive traffic to your podcast. You can’t find the time to post an Instagram story to mark your podcast. Because you’re so caught up in getting the show done that you’re not able to really make the show work for you.
This is probably the most commonplace that clients are in when they sign up to work with us. This is probably the most frequent. Again, it’s working. Just like we talked about before, it’s working. But they’re feeling a little more run-ragged by it. I think one of my favorite emails is we got a client just a couple weeks after they started working with us and they were like, “I’m so glad I made this decision. You have no idea how much time I have back.” I was like, “Yes, that’s the win. That’s the win.” Because I really do think about outsourcing stuff like this has buying back time, especially when you already know your shows work. You’re not looking for someone to make this thing you’re creating work. You know that your audience is listening to this podcast. You know how to convert people. You’re nailing that side of it. But you need to be able to get more people listening, which means you need to be able to market your show, and also, you need to be able to see the clients that your podcast just [inaudible] you. I don’t want to be spending so much time creating the content that markets your business that you don’t have time to deliver your business or reap the rewards of that marketing paying off.
And so, if you’re in a spot where yes, it’s working, but you’re out of time then now is the time. All right. Again, pretty quick and dirty this week. I really encourage you. If any of this resonated, if anything I said you were like, “Oh, yeah. I’m so uninspired,” or “Yeah, this thing really works but the idea of buying back some time sounds great,” or “Yeah, this thing really works and I would like to benefit from that. So please, please, please come help.” If any of those resonated uncommonlymore.com/podcastproduction is the only, that’s right, only next up for you. Because you and I are going to have a conversation, we will go over what’s possible. You will undoubtedly leave inspired and we’ll take some stuff off your plate so that you can show up for the things that serve you and your clients and your show in a much bigger way. All right?
Again, uncommonlymore.com/podcastproduction. I will see you soon and you will hear me again here on this very show because that’s what we do next week. Have a good one.
