All right, 525 is today. I want to talk about changes because I’ve been talking to a lot of podcasters who are in one of two camps. Either they are just starting their show and they’re making some decisions around cover art and music and format and name description, and they’re giving this the weight of eternity.
They’re giving it the weight of, “But what if I make the wrong choice? What if I decide the wrong thing?” They’re trying to make this decision with information they don’t have yet. They’re trying to make this decision from a place of, “What will I be selling five years from now?” And first of all, you may not have a show five years from now if you give every decision you make this way, because you’re never going to make any decisions. Or they fall into a second camp and they’re somebody who’s been a year to two years with their show. They’ve done somewhere between 50 and a hundred episodes. And they’re trying to decide what’s next. They’re trying to shift their show from good to great. So what is the thing they change? What is the decision they make? What if they do this instead of that? Will then the show become easier, become more effective, become more manageable, become more or less whatever?
So I thought let’s talk changes.
First of all, so the first group there will be changes, so stop giving this the weight of the world. And to the second group, I don’t know, just change something and see what’s next. One of the cool things about podcasting in my opinion is that it’s a living, breathing entity. It’s an evolving piece just as you as a podcaster are. And so I want you to stop giving every decision you make the weight to the world, because it’s just the next decision. It’s not the last decision. It’s just the next decision.
And in the spirit of that, I thought I would talk about five of the changes that I’ve made over the last seven and a half, eight years that made the biggest impact for me. Mostly because I want you to see that none of these changes happened all at once, and that they’re changes that I keep making. In fact, I’ve made these same five changes probably multiple times, well, most of them, one of them I only made once. So let’s jump into it, what do you say?
First, I started answering client questions instead of listener questions.
This is absolutely one I have made, I don’t know, maybe semi-annually for the last seven or eight years. I think it’s really easy to get stuck talking to your listeners and not your clients in your podcast because we have more listeners than we have clients in most cases. I don’t know of any cases where we have more clients than listeners.
And so you want to appease the masses because that’s how we’re going to get them to be clients, right? Wrong. When I shifted and started answering the questions that were coming up in my client calls, the conversations that were getting emailed to me from clients, the conversations that were coming up and strategy sessions or sales calls. Those were my favorite questions to answer on the podcast. When I started answering those questions on the podcast, I started getting more clients from the podcast because now I was speaking to people when they’re in that buying frame of mind, right? I’m speaking to people who 100% have the same problem as the people currently paying me. So the answer is ding, ding, ding, ding, pay me, right? That was so helpful.
And this is something I’ve shifted even this year, I redirected this. I got really stuck in 2020 of answering client questions because I want it to be helpful because I wanted to serve you and I wanted to help you do X, Y, and Z. And so a lot of our content last year actually ended up being around launches, which is funny because we cap the amount of launches we take at any one time very, very low, because they take a ton more work than production does because you’re making decisions and you’re creating something, right? But the bulk of the clients we work with and the bulk of the clients we welcome in, aren’t actually new podcasters. They aren’t actually people just launching the show. In fact, the bulk of our business and the bulk of the new clients we welcome, have been in their show one to two years and have done 50 to a hundred episodes.
They know this thing works. They want it to work better. And so when I started talking more about podcasting here on the show, I went right to launch, and I went right to meeting people, and I went right to training because that’s what I done for so long with Backstage and with The Stacey Harris. And that’s the space I had been in for so long. So in late Q4, early Q1, I had some heart to heart conversations with some people I respect very much, some prompted by me, some not. And went Oh wait, I’m not talking to the people we work with at a really high rate. And so we shifted and I started building our content calendar again around questions that came up with our client calls. So our production clients get a quarterly call with us, plan out their 90 day content plans, audit the podcast do we need any changes? Are there things happening? Whatever. We have that call.
Those calls are where I get my content inspiration from. I’m in sales calls regularly with new production clients, potential clients. That’s where I’m getting my questions now, that’s the stuff we’re talking about. And guess what? We’re welcoming more production clients per month than we ever have before up until this point. And that will continue to grow. Six months from now I will say now is the most ever, because I’ve really shifted this conversation to client questions and not listener questions. I’m talking to people who are currently in or going into the time where they’re going to actually make a purchase. The point where they’re actually going to invest, not just financially, but emotionally and energetically and get the thing done. All right. Let’s move to number two.
I stopped focusing on my guests.
When this show started, I did two episodes a week. We had one guest episode and one solo episode. Guest episodes went out on Tuesday and then solo episodes went out Thursday or Friday I can’t remember which. And I on those guest episodes really let the guest drive the conversation. And I mean, in prep, I was speaking and researching their expertise, their audience, their topic, their conversation, like what points did they want to make? What goal did they have for the show? That’s where I was focusing my energy, instead of focusing on my listeners, my audience, my clients, my business, my marketing, which mostly meant I was spending a lot of time and money marketing other people’s business, but not in an affiliate way where I got money off the back end, but just in a creating work for myself way, which as I’m sure you know, we don’t need any extra we’re solid as it is.
And so when I shifted away from focusing on guests and what they wanted to talk about, I was able to do what I needed to do with my show to build my thought leadership, to build my audience, to build my expertise, to build my reputation, to build my business, to build my client list and email list. And that was probably one of the earliest game-changers. And this is honestly a decision I had to make twice because I do still have guests occasionally. So why did this change again? And I’m highlighting this because again, I want you to realize how temporary your decisions are. Now we have case study episodes and we have client interviews. And our policy is now, sometimes for guests, when we have a conversation we want to share that’s important, I share it. When I have a perspective from someone I want to share with you that’s important, I’m going to share it.
But the bulk of the conversations you’re going to hear when it’s not just me, are going to be people who work with us, are going to be me showing you what’s possible when you work with Uncommonly More. And yes that’s going to be highlighting their expertise. And yes, we’re going to be talking about who they are and the impact they have because we’re talking about their show, but it still lines up with our goals for the show and that’s critical and so important. You’ve got to be doing that, all right? So moving to number three,
I want to talk about ABR.
ABR is a funny thing that up until maybe right now, I’ve never actually said outside of my own head and that’s always be repeating. Now I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but we’re friends. We’re all about transparency here. I mostly say the same six things over and over again. Really, like if you objectively look at the show, I basically say the same six things over and over again. And guess what that’s called branding. That’s called building reputation because there’s somebody finding the show all the time. There’s also more than a little anecdotal evidence that proves we need to hear the same thing over and over again before it makes an impact in our brain, before we do anything with it. And so I ABR, always be repeating. Now the sidestep to this is repeating does not always just mean verbatim repeating myself on the show. Although I do a lot of that too. It also means re-purposing, it also means taking something I’ve already created and doing more with it repeatedly using a piece of content.
And so you’ll see podcasts and our email sequences turned into posts for other people, turned it into… A conversation I had here may turn into something I talk about on somebody else’s podcast. A conversation I have on somebody else’s podcast may turn into a podcast episode here. Whatever the case is, ABR, always be repeating, always be repurposing. If you’re not absolutely driving yourself crazy, repeating yourself, you’re not there yet. You’re just not. It’s imperative that we keep sharing what our community and clients need. And frequently that comes from just sheer repetition.
It really does. It just comes from saying the same, same thing in new and fun and creative ways. And so early in my show, when I was so afraid that someone will get bored if I just said the same thing so I would space topics and episodes so far out, whereas now I guarantee there are lines in this show that you’ve heard in the last four shows. There are going to be points in today’s episode that are points in previous episodes. And some you’ll notice, and some you won’t. But if I only say something one time, I’m limiting my impact. And worse than that, I’m limiting your results. I’m limiting the potential of my listenership taking action and seeing the results of doing the thing I’ve told them about. I don’t want to do that. Do you want to do that? I don’t want to do that. ABR, always be repeating. Four. This is definitely a decision I make three to five times a year.
I started selling.
You may say, “Well Stace, there is a promotion in every episode, there is an outro that says, Hey, come work with us.” But if you objectively, without your deep and intense love for me listen to some of these episodes, you’ll realize that the selling is very passive. It’s like, “Oh and if you’re ready, you’re like, come work with us, that’s cool too.” That’s not helpful. It’s not helpful for you, its not helpful for me, it’s not often my team because working with us is a decision and decisions are not passive. And so my invitation for you to make that decision cannot be passive. It doesn’t mean I’m bullying you. It doesn’t mean I’m being pushy. It doesn’t mean I’m not giving value.
I think we can both agree that the 15-ish minutes this show has been, it’s been valuable, but now we’re going to switch gears and I’m going to make my last point. And you will see that my last point is a direct result of this decision, so let’s make it. Here’s our fifth point.
I handed off production.
This is probably the most impactful decision and absolutely of these five, the one I’ve only made one time. I should find out for sure what number it is. But 450-ish episodes, I did the show by myself even when we were handling production for our clients. And I had a team handling production of those episodes with me, I did the show alone. I want that to really sink in. It’s easier for me to think I should do it alone because I have a degree in audio engineering and I could edit this podcast in my sleep.
Also, it’s really easy to edit something I just said. So I would record, edit, I do the whole thing in one, two passes. My show quality improved, my ability to market and promote the show improved, my ability to get creative about what I wanted to talk to you about improved, my capacity to do anything else improved when I took production of this show off my list. With the show, I now behave as the same way as any one of our clients would. I record, I do this part and then I’m done. When it comes out, I’ll hop on and talk about it on stories maybe, but my team handles the social promotion. We have somebody on my team that writes the social. Now that’s a little different because we don’t do that for our clients, but we get them the marketing materials, the audiograms, the graphics that you guys see for this show, same thing we give our clients.
I have somebody on my team that actually writes the social post and writes the email. I look over all of that. I edit it, that’s it. And I don’t always look at it, I’ll be honest. Sometimes I just go… Cali’s going to hear this and yell at me. But sometimes I don’t even look at it, I just go, “Cool, sounds great.” Because she’s nailing it. It’s not an issue. And so I want you to think about what’s possible when you make that decision. When you go from what you’re doing now to having space to think about your show strategically, to care about your show again, really, to simply care about your show again, what happens? We welcomed several new clients in Q1 and it’s always really fun when we start releasing their first couple of episodes, because there is this like, “Is there anything else I need to do? Okay. So I got that to you. I got that to you. I got that to you. Do you need anything else from me?”
And it’s like, “No, you’re good. You’re good. The episode’s going to release.” And I get these messages like, “Oh, I got my own episode just now, it sounds great.” They’ll forget like, “Oh, it’s Tuesday episodes are up. Oh yeah. It’s Thursday. I have a new episode released today.” Because they know what’s happening. It’s incredibly cool to have space to care about your show again. A lot is possible when you have space to care about your show again. And when someone besides you cares about your show, and I don’t mean listeners, your audience obviously cares about your show too, but not the way you do, but your team, at least our team, we care about our clients shows. My team cares about my show. And that’s a really cool thing to be able to say.
And so I will say that this change is probably one of the most long-term impactful, some of that is what made the other things possible. So I had the time, I had the capacity to care about anything else except what was next on the to-do list. So that was a big one. If you’re ready to do the same thing, let’s talk, let’s sit down, let’s have a conversation about what us handling production looks like for you, so that you can have the capacity to care about the other things. All right, with that, I’m going to wrap up the show. I will talk to you again next week. Maybe before then, head over to Uncommonlymore.com/podcastproduction to learn more about what it looks like for Uncommonly More to give you some space to care about your show again, all right? I’ll see you again next week, we’re going to talk about audio. I’ll see you next week.