Welcome to 505. I’m not going to tease you with this one. The title of this episode is why I treat this podcast like my most premium offer. Here’s why, because I sell my premium offer to people who listen to this podcast. I am a really big believer in how you do one thing is how you do everything, how you treat something is how it will treat you, and so if I treated this offer like it was just a free thing and I could just do it whenever and it wasn’t a priority, I would be inconsistent, I would be unplanned, I would be of no value to the consumer, and so it wouldn’t reap me any benefits.
Now, I would get the exercise of getting to sit here and talking to myself, which I mean, let’s be honest, I do without the microphone. I don’t actually need the microphone to talk to myself. It’s a lonely office. But instead, I approach this the same way I would if you booked a VIP day with me and we sat down in my office together and answered whatever question you had. I approach this opportunity with that same respect because I want you to treat it with that same respect. I want you to go out and do the things we talk about on this show.
Here’s the deal: This is one of those things where we’re talking about it from podcasting, but it applies to everything.
This is how I treat my social media. This is how I treat my guest appearances on other people’s podcasts. This is how I treat articles or blog posts I write, meaning the transcript is pulled from here and it gets edited, but whatever. It’s how I treat my email list, it’s how I treat anything that you’re not actually paying money for, because I do all of those things so that people like you know when the time is there for them to invest that this is the quality they’re going to get when they invest.
I think so, so often, we get caught up in this cycle of, and let me just say this, I’m as guilty of this as anybody on the planet, but so often we get caught up in this cycle of prioritization that has us prioritizing things where we’re getting paid or have gotten paid over how we’re going to get paid next. This cycle is how we end up in feast and famine. I’ll be completely honest. 2020 was a return to that for me. 2020 was a return to me shifting back to that mindset of I have to prioritize client work and I have to prioritize the people who are already giving our team cash and everything else will get figured out later, and so that’s been a return to a lot of stress and really breaking the systems I’ve built over the last few years so that I didn’t end up in this stress, so that I didn’t behave that way.
A lot of that, I think, is fairly universal and that’s one of the reasons I wanted to talk about it is I think this year we’ve had so much life stuff to do. I think those of us who have kids are doing the mom thing on another level right now, those of us who are in partnerships are doing the partner thing on another level right now, and even those of us who are single and without kids, you’re doing the life thing and the taking care yourself thing on a whole other level right now, and here’s the deal: Prolonged stress is trauma in the brain, right? I’m by no means a trauma expert by any stretch of the imagination. I mean, to the extent that we all are and that I have trauma just like you, but it is, it puts your body in stress, and so you’re probably, if you’re anything like me, leaning on those stress responses a little harder, and so for me, I absolutely have been leaning on my stress responses, which are really very scarcity-based and very whatever I need to do to keep generating revenue.
What I found myself in the last few months was the cycle of “I’ll do it when I need to do it, I’ll do it when I need to do it,” and I’m sharing this today because I think it’s so, so important for us to A, normalize this, and B, I’m starting to come out the other side of that. I’m shifting back into possibility, excitement, hope, and some of that is external. We’re through the election, kind of, we have found a new rhythm with the socially-distanced…
Honestly, my family is still fairly shelter-in-place. We do very, very little outside of our house. The grocery shopping, walking, exercising. We’re not going to restaurants. We’re not going to stores that we don’t need to go to, and so we have found sort of our new normal rhythm. We’ve found our new normal rhythm with online school and our schedule and me working from home again, because in the course of all of this, I let go of my office away from the house, and in finding that new rhythm, granted, full disclosure, it is not a new normal I want to keep forever, I don’t love it, but I am finding my way with it.
That brought me back to this idea of I have always believed you should treat your free content the same way you do your $10,000 content, your $50,000 content, and that could be a VIP day with you, that could be a group program or a mastermind or a private retreat experience. I don’t know. Whatever the thing is, right? It could be done-for-you services, a 12-month-contract with us, depending on the level of service is about 15,000 a year. That’s an investment. That is a big investment. Granted, it’s paid monthly, but it’s an investment, and so if I’m going to get somebody to invest with me in that way, I’ve got to be showing them from the very beginning that our team is a worthwhile investment, and so that means giving the same attention to this content that I do to that content.
That means making space on our calendars to do our best work for our listeners, our readers, our viewers, whatever that is your front-facing, public-facing content.
That’s why I try and I’m returning to treating this podcast like my most premium offer. I would never wait till the last minute to plan a VIP day, which is when clients come in and they spend the day with me. I’ve not done one of these since January, but that’s what COVID does. We did do a couple of virtual ones in the spring, but I would not come to any of those calls or those meetings unprepared. I would not show up not having looked at the client’s data and sent them some pre-work stuff and outlining some ideas and deep-diving into what they’ve got out there now, so why would I put off to the last minute recording this podcast and getting it done? Which, and again, this is not me coming from a place of, “Oh, I’m superior to this,” literally, I did this month.
This show is generally four weeks ahead. When I get into a rough spot, like two weeks ahead. As I record this episode on Wednesday, November 11th, it will be released next Tuesday. The episode that went out yesterday, November 10th, was recorded last Friday and edited it Monday before it went out, because I have really been stuck in this place of bad prioritization. I have been stuck in this sludge and I can feel myself coming out of it and I can feel this reminder that this space is as important as any five-figure or six-figure client is because this stuff is also a client.
I think that mindset shift is so, so valuable, and so as I’ve returned to that so much in these last few weeks, I wanted to share it with you because I think as we go through and we barrel through the end of 2020, we can get so stuck in just getting through 2020 that we can forget that 2021 is not going to flip a switch and be different. This weird, heavy energy may last into and will very likely last into at least parts of 2021, and so I’m choosing to course-correct, to shift, to step into how I want to be feeling now, and that starts not with doing something for me that is traditional self-care but stepping into how do I want to move through my day: What are the projects that support the growth of my business, of my team, of my expertise? What are the things that fill me up so that we can actually serve our clients at a really high level?
For me, that’s having the time and space to do this show the way I want to do it. It’s having the time and space to research and prep and outline and do all of those things. It’s also having the time to learn and be in consumer mode. I am regularly stepping into, “Hey, this will be fun to know more about,” even when I think I know it pretty well. Right now, my obsession is email marketing because 2021 for me is going to be a lot about changing up our email marketing and we have some high-level marketing clients who are also looking to up their marketing email game, and so I want to help them. Well, that means I got to fill my cup up. I got to sharpen my skills. I got to see what’s going on out there.
Bonus tip: If you’re ever working with somebody who’s not doing continuing education in their expertise, in their field, run, especially in the digital marketing space.
I think about this a lot with coaches. If you’re working with a coach who doesn’t have a coach, get a different coach. The best coaches I know are working with coaches. Frequently, more than one. If you’re working with somebody who’s an expert in email marketing, ask them what resources they’re loving right now for email marketing. If you are looking to get some podcast support, ask them when the last time they took a podcast program was or where they get advanced podcasts knowledge or where they’re spending time.
I attend podcasts conferences. I actually just attended a virtual one a couple of weeks ago and I’m still rewatching sessions. I am in podcasting groups. I read podcasting articles. I’m on newsletters that go right to my inbox. I listen to podcasts about podcasting because I’m always looking to be better. That is also how I get better for this space. It’s how I make the choices on what I want to share with you and how we can get better results. This comes from treating this space, treating my free content as a whole email, social, podcasting with the same respect I would my premium offers.
We’re going to talk more about this as we move through the end of this year and all through 2021 because I think this perspective of how we look at our free content and the attention and time that we give our free content is so critical. I just don’t think we give it the respect. We need to give it because we think, “Oh, it’s free. Just get something out, minimum viable product,” and yes, sometimes, there is a need for that. It can’t be your 100% full-time approach to every bit of free content. When you approach your free content, your podcast, your email, opt-in, whatever, with that respect that you would have premium offer, your minimum viable product is going to end up being pretty good, all right?
This was a weird episode. This was a strange episode. This was an episode where, honestly, I just kind of talked as much as I spent time talking about the research and time that goes in pre-episodes. This was one that I just wanted to let you know the space I was in, see if maybe you’re there, too, and talk about what I’m doing to get to the other side. I can do that because, honestly, I have really amazing support.
I mean, a lot of this conversation came from me showing up in my mastermind and taking advantage of my hot seat time and talking about this exact feeling of deprioritizing these kinds of things, and so I highly recommend if you do not currently have support, whether that’s biz besties or a coach or a mastermind or whatever, get them. I’m a huge fan of Tara Newman and The BRAVE Society and the Bold Leadership Revolution and her Bold Money Revolution Mastermind, which I was in last year and I’m in this year and I will be in again next year, so if you need support, look at those spaces.
If you are ready to give your podcast the attention and respect that you would a premium offer, let’s talk. We do have some spots open before we wrap up the year to support a couple more podcasters if they’re in launching or if they’re ready to hand over production of an existing show, we have some spots and we would love to support you. All right? All right, that’s it for today. We’ll dig in next week to a more regular episode. We’re going to be talking about how to know if you need to start a new show or revive an old show that’s gone dark. It’s going to be a good one. If you enjoyed this episode, I would love to hear from you because these are a very unusual kind of episode for me, and if it’s what you’re into, let me know. All right, I will see you next week.