Show Notes
This episode is about realigning your podcasting expectations. Why you need to serve your listeners, no matter how many there are, and get clarity on what you want to achieve.
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Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Hmm,
Speaker 1 00:00:05 Welcome back to the audience podcast. It's Matt today talking about success of a podcast, and this should be a short one today. Uh, the last few episodes, I've talked about pockets of opportunity in the podcasting space, for those of you that want to monetize it, right? You want to make a little bit of money, uh, with your podcast or a lot of money, uh, monetization sponsorship, direct ad sales, that kind of thing. Uh, affiliate links, great ways to make money. Make sure you go back and listen to that episode. Here's the thing though. I still get a lot of people who reach out to me and say, I want to make my podcast better. I say, how do you want to make your podcast better? They say, I want more downloads. Well, that doesn't necessarily mean your podcast is getting better. You're just getting more downloads.
Speaker 1 00:00:45 They don't necessarily know why they want more downloads. There's no real goal in sight, right? Once you have all these downloads, then what? Like if you had 10,000 people listening to every episode, what are you doing? Are you selling them something? Are you directing them some you'd raising money and awareness for your brand or cause whatever. Do you just want to try to sell ads in this clip that I'm about to play for you today from Tim Ferriss show with Seth Godin is probably one of the best clips of Seth Godin that I've heard in quite some time. It followed him for a while. Uh, he's a prolific marketer, thinker content person, and this clip really hit home for me. I wanted to share with you today. Remember this is on Tim Ferriss podcast with Seth Godin. I'm gonna play that for you right now.
Speaker 0 00:01:32 One of the things I've been arguing is that the smallest viable audience is more attainable than ever before. It didn't use to be possible as Kevin Kelly, we're talking about a thousand true fans, impossible, but you know, if you run an HVAC, small business, 200 customers is plenty. And you know, I am super pleased with how my books have done, but 99% of the people in America have never read a book. I wrote 99%. Plenty fine. The smallest viable audience means you're on the hook because if you are specific about who it's for, then that group gets to say, you made me a promise. You didn't keep it. Whereas if you say I have this big shiny idea, but this VC wouldn't fund me or this media company would write about me or Oprah would call now you have a great excuse.
Speaker 1 00:02:24 I mean, it hits home on so many levels, especially for the person who's like, I just want more downloads. I just want more people listening to my podcast. Where's the why in that? Why do you want these people to listen? Do you need more, uh, are the 200 downloads, like Seth said for this HVAC company enough to move the needle for your brand, you really have to think about getting more downloads or do we need to rethink the purpose of you doing the show? Uh, do we need to realign with the why of this entire podcast? And I also like how he sort of says that, you know, these re real large aspirations, like you mentioned, so Oprah, you know, that's a way for you to hide behind that as an excuse. Well, you know, I, I didn't get a hundred thousand downloads, so I guess this isn't working or, you know, I didn't get Oprah or whomever on my podcast.
Speaker 1 00:03:14 I guess this isn't working. It gives you an out, it gives you an excuse, whereas you work for the people, right? If you work for your audience that are there for you and to listen and to learn and to laugh and to be educated from there's no excuse like you're showing up for them, that's it. You can't hide from it. You shouldn't hide from it. And if you're not happy with it, well, maybe you're not happy with being a podcaster and it's just no longer satisfying for you, but you might want to realign your expectations with the purpose. I've got these 200 listeners, I'm thankful for these 200 listeners. Let me see what I can do with this. Maybe I'm trying to sell ads, but maybe I should be telling them that I'm a great web designer or I'm a great photographer, you know, and that's what I should be leading with.
Speaker 1 00:04:04 Get them to hire me, get them, to refer me other than trying to build this, you know, pop culture, a hundred thousand downloads episode per, per podcast. So I wanted to leave you with that thought from Seth today. Again, the Tim Ferriss show, you can go to tim.blog and look for the Seth Godin episode. That's just one minute out of a hour long plus conversation that Tim and Seth had. If you want to get better at podcasting, go to podcast, hackers.com. It's the new Facebook group that we're putting together. It's an old Facebook group. I'm calling it new because we've got a website for it. Now we're going to have more direction on it. Uh, and there's gonna be a lot more resources, uh, wrapped around the podcast. Hackers movement, 2000 podcasters from around the world are there. This is also the first episode where I've, um, recorded to YouTube. So if you're not a YouTuber, if you're not a cast, those YouTuber yet go to youtube.com/ Castillo's hit subscribe on the YouTube channel. You'll see me in both places. You'll hear me in your podcast player. You'll see me on YouTube. I've got a great face for podcasting. All right, everybody.
Speaker 2 00:05:08 Yeah, we'll see you in the next episode.
