Welcome to episode 515. I want to talk about purpose. It sounds very grandiose and maybe a little silly, but I think when you know your purpose, it’s so much easier to take the boring, uncomfortable actions to get there. And that’s kind of what podcasting is, especially with any kind of consistency. Spoiler alert, you’re going to feel ways that you feel like you shouldn’t feel like bored, repetitive, uninterested. It’s just going to be that way. There’s also times where you will feel fired up and excited and passionate and loud and occasionally interesting, even less so though, funny. Those parts could just be me. But it ultimately comes down to giving it the same attention and priority, no matter where on that spectrum you’re falling. Between dear heavens I cannot say the same damn thing again, and I’m so smart and witty and everyone will love this one, right?
Like anywhere in there, we’re all going to swing there from time to time. And it really all comes back to your purpose. We all know Simon Sinek and Start with Why. And this is similar, although in my opinion, a little less big, for lack of a better word. I mean it a little more literally, what is the actual purpose of your show? Not “I want to connect with blah blah blah… No. I mean like, I need to be generating leads for our mastermind that we open twice a year. I needed to be filling our entry-level program with X amount of students per month. I need to be… What is the purpose of your show? I need to book a number of single sessions per month. I need to grow my email list ahead of this course I’m going to be selling and then sell that course.
There is a purpose in your business for your show.
What is it? Now, what’s the other purpose of your show? And this is the purpose for the listener. So for you right now, what is the purpose of listening to this show? Where does it fit into your life, your business? How is it valuable? I would answer… And please nod along and say for sure, that’s what I meant, what I said Tuesdays. I would say the purpose of the show is to get a better feel for the things you need to do, the ideas and possibilities of using podcasting as part of your brand. It keeps you accountable to making sure you’re staying in the room with the pitch and the call to action. And you’re using your podcast in a way that serves the growth of your client list and your email list and your social media following.
That’s what I would say. So you should definitely say that, but it helps when I know what the purpose of your time here is too. Because that’s how we set up the win-win. And that win-win is why this episode is titled as grandiose as it is. The most important thing standing between you and podcast success. It’s your purpose. It’s the purpose. It’s their purpose. It’s purpose. Because when you know why the show exists, what the show is supposed to be doing, the end result of the people listening… Because here’s the deal, a big part of the purpose of listening to this show is to figure out whether you trust me enough to produce your show. If you trust me enough to learn from me, to work with me, to ask me for a referral, to refer me to someone else, whatever the thing is, right? Now, we dress up in, “I want to know more about podcasting and I… I enjoy your expert opinion.”
And I’m putting some words that may not be true in your mouth, but I’m hoping they are. But ultimately it’s a vetting process, hopefully an entertaining vetting process, but that’s what it is. It’s why when I look at joining a program or hiring somebody to work on a project with, or when I’m looking at supporting a client in a hiring decision for somebody on their team, well, I’m going and listening to their podcasts interviews. I’m going to read their content. I’m going to build trust so that I can trust them when I go into conversation with them, about working together. That’s the purpose. It has to be the purpose. And so when I know that purpose and I know that the purpose for me as a host is in moving you from here to a conversation. Again, moving to trust, my purpose too.
We can have a really clear conversation. I can do episodes like we did last week about how to work with us. I can do episodes like a couple of weeks ago when I sounded really terrible for large parts of that episode, because I was showing you ways to make your podcast sound better, right? I can do things like that because I can trust that you know, that I’m not insane. But also I can trust that you trust that I know what I’m doing. And so I can hope I make sense because I can trust our relationship.
And so, when you look at your show’s purpose and I know what you need, and I know what I need, then it’s very clear. Well, what kind of content do I create? What are the questions they have? What do I need to tell them so that they can make the decision that’s best for them? And then you just roll that through. And that’s why this purpose piece is so key. Because I want you to step out of creating because you have to. I want you to step out of, “Well, I have a podcast coming out next week and the only way it’s going to come out is if I record it. So I better record it today.”
Or Later this week, or this afternoon… I’ve done all those too. But when push comes to shove, if you are in that moment and you don’t know why you’re going to record that show, you don’t know why someone would listen to that show, you’re never going to get it done. And yes again, that purpose is often going to come back to building trust. Because the kind of shows we run are all about that. It’s scaling trust, right? I want you to pay attention to the words and the things that you dress that in. Because that’s a lot of your answers, to a lot of your questions. When you start talking about your why being about connecting with these kinds of clients, to help them with these kinds of things. There’s your ideal listener profile starting. And your first few content ideas, even if it’s just themes, right?
Look at that stuff. Because again, that is what takes you out of, creating for the sake of a due date, creating for sake of commitment, creating for the sake of creating, because somebody on the internet told you you should be creating a thousand pieces of content a day. Whatever it is, I want you to shift out of that and into building assets. So sure, create a thousand pieces of content a day, but what if you were building a thousand pieces of content a day that really worked? That really spoke to who they needed to speak to and really gave them the answer they needed so that they could book the call with you, so they could join the program, so that they could attend the event when events are a thing again, right? Whatever it may be. I really encourage you to spend some time with this and revisit this regularly, come back again and again to what is your purpose?
I even do this on an episode basis. When I have an episode that’s hard to get out, when I have an episode that I’m not really sure how I’m going to get to where I want to go with it. I go, “What is the purpose of this episode?” And in that instance, when we get that granular, there’s often more than just trust. For example, with the episode when we did the sound, ways to tweak your sound without upgrading your microphone, I think it was called, we’ll link to it in the show notes. It was really important to me. My purpose was that, podcasters in general, you and anyone else I could get to listen to me for eight minutes, understand that spending more money is not the solution to your audio problem. There’s lots of things between there and your final product that can be awry.
I mean, your physicality is huge. And we did a lot of that on the show. So when I looked at the purpose of that episode, it wasn’t building trust. It was, I want to be really clear that this is not the solution. Cool. What did they need? Well, they need ways that make sense and that are easy to implement and that are going to give them the most bang for their lack of buck, is actually in this right? Cool. Then I need to give them examples. I need to speak about this really clearly. I need to work in this rhythm, as I talk about it. I need to not get too in the weeds of how microphones work. Which if I didn’t think about your purpose, I would have done.
That’s right, that episode could have been nerdier, you’re welcome.
That’s how important purpose is. It saved you from some real nerdy mic talk. Thank you purpose. So again, come back to this whenever you’re struggling. This is something I look at as I build my content strategies on a quarterly basis. What is the purpose of these episodes? And sometimes that’s dressed in, what do these episodes need to sell? And what do these episodes need to do for my relationship with the listener? It can vary, maybe I’m in prelaunch for something. Maybe I’m launching something. Maybe we’re focusing on building the email list. Because we’re not taking clients at the moment or whatever the case may be, then I reconnect that purpose and I want you to as well, all right?
All right. We’re going to wrap this one up. I hope you head over to the show notes for this episode and listen to the audio episode about improving your audio without upgrading your microphone, if you haven’t listened to that one yet. Not just because I clearly made it sound incredibly entertaining, which it is, but it’s a really important episode because there’s some really basic things you can do.
So head over to the show notes and click over to that, if you haven’t yet. And of course, without a doubt without fail, I’m going to need you to reach out so that we can start producing your podcast for you. All right, head over to uncommonlymore.com website and you can learn about all the ways to work with us and find the rest of this fantastic programming.
I’m in a weird mood today guys, it’s going to be a weird series of episodes. By the way, this episode, the day it came out, February 9th, 2021 is like four days before my birthday. So as a way of saying happy birthday, you should head over to ratethispodcast.com/more and leave me a podcast review. All right?
All right, I will see you next week for another fantastic, wildly entertaining birthday month episode about… Well, quite honestly, I don’t know yet, because I haven’t outlined that episode yet. So we’ll find out together next week. See ya.