186 | The Podcasting Strategy to Overcome Imposter Syndrome

if you publish a podcast or a YouTube channel with the goal of growing your personal brand and growing your business, listen up. Today I'm going to share with you two different ways that you can show up as the host of your show and how by picking the right way, you're going to make it easier to grow your audience. You're going to have a bigger and more beloved personal brand and it's going to be way easier for you to make more sales and revenue directly from your show because you've gotten more attention and more affinity based on how you show up. Stick with me, trust me, and also if you're somebody who struggles with imposter syndrome and that's affected how much you show up in your content or how much you grow your personal brand or even how hard you're willing to sell your products and services, the stuff I'm about to share with you will also help solve that. This is Grow the Show where I help business owners grow their personal brands and make more money by publishing podcasts and YouTube videos that are designed to convert. My name is Kevin, I have driven more than $3 million in revenue for my own business via long form content in the past three years and I've helped more than 400 entrepreneurs and business owners do the same thing as well. And through helping those 400 entrepreneurs, I've seen a few different dynamics in how those entrepreneurs show up in their content. And I've seen a couple issues. Some of them are insanely qualified experts with tons of experience, tons of credentials, but also tons of imposter syndrome. They just can't seem to get themselves to step fully into their personal brand and lead their audience and their customers. Other people on the other hand have no problem with imposter syndrome and what they don't realize is that they're a little too forward with banging their chest and showing off their credentials and saying, here's why you should listen to me if they even have real credentials. And so whether you're on one side or the other or you fall somewhere in between, listen up because what I'm about to share might make content creation way easier for you. And this all came up because the other day I was chatting with a podcaster who has done really well with his show. His show gets about 40,000 to 50,000 downloads a month, which is a decent amount. And it's about an outdoor adventure hobby. But essentially this guy has created a podcast, it has tons of audience, but it's not making enough money for him to leave his day job. Now normally I speak and work with CEOs who already have a business and they're looking to grow their audience to feed the business. But in this case, this person is going in the opposite direction. He's got a full-time job. He's got a great audience, but he's not making enough money from his audience in order to leave his full-time job. Now like I said, this guy has done a great job. His show is monetized via ads and a little bit of a Patreon that gives bonus content, but he doesn't have a business. He doesn't have anything that he sells to his listener base. And so he came to me asking how he could double his revenue so he could leave his day job. And he thought the answer was going to be doubling his audience, right? Double the audience, get twice the ad revenue, leave his day job. I said, you couldn't do it that way, but I'm telling you right now it's going to be way harder to double this audience than it will be to do something else that'll make more money, which is sell something directly to your audience. Whether it's a membership that has more than just bonus content, it might have events, it might have trips. It could be a course, it could be consulting, it could be physical products that you might label, whatever it is. This guy's in a niche where people who do this hobby spend a lot of money on this hobby. And if he were to just offer something to them, I think he would make more money than his sponsorship revenue based on his audience size. And as soon as I started saying that, I sensed some resistance. He tensed up a little bit. As I was saying, you could launch a membership, you can get access to you, you could do a course, something like that. I saw him tensed up and I was like, all right, what's going on right now? Well, what comes up for you? And he says, well, I'm not really an expert. I just interview other people who are really, really good at this thing. They have bigger audiences. They've achieved more than I have. I don't think anybody's going to buy anything for me because I'm not an expert. And I said, okay, let's talk about this. Because in order to sell stuff, in order to have a personal brand driven business, yes, people do need to think about you as an expert. But that does not mean that you have to shove down their throat that you are an expert. Let me explain. Through helping more than 400 entrepreneurs, blah, blah, blah, blah over the past couple of years, I've done this a lot. I've seen a lot of iterations. And what I found is that there's really two frames that you can take when you show up in your content. There's two frames, two ways that you can show up in and position yourself. The first one is the expert frame. And that's what most people think you have to do. That's where you say, hey, everybody, I'm an expert. Here's my credentials. You should listen to me. You should buy for me, right? I take the expert frame. Hopefully, I'm not annoying with it. Maybe I am. Feel free to let me know. But I say, look, this is what I've done with my own podcast. This is what I've done with my own businesses. I've held 400 other people do the same. I have advice that you could use. I am the expert. This is why you should listen to my show. This is why you should buy for me, right? So I take the expert frame. And if you're confident in that frame and you have substantiation, you have proof, the expert frame can do really, really well. But there's a lot of people that struggle with the expert frame, even when they have credentials. And what I've found is that it seems that the more credentials people have, the more they struggle calling themselves an expert, which there's some sort of scientific thing that explains that. But here's the good news. You don't have to scream from the rooftops how smart you are and how amazing you are for people to truthfully look to you as an expert. And that's by taking the other frame, the explorer frame. The explorer frame is where you say, look, I am on a mission to do this thing. I am going to be sharing everything that I learn as I do this thing. And I invite you, my audience, to follow along with me. I want to share what I'm learning with you in real time. I'm going to interview the most successful people, and I'm going to share with you the lessons I learned. And my hope is that it helps you get to outcome as quickly or quicker than I do. Now, doesn't that feel different? It feels different for you because you're not claiming anything that you're not unsure of. It is 100% truth that you are on a mission for X and that you're willing to share what you learn along the way, right? Doesn't matter what your credentials are. Whereas if you're like, hey, everybody, you should listen to me. I'm going to teach you what I know. You have to back that up with credentials. And whether or not you have them, that can sometimes get uncomfortable. But here's the big secret about the explorer frame. And if you're somebody who is unapologetically in the expert frame, you had no unspossed syndrome, and you have no problem showing up as an expert. Listen to why you might consider switching to the explorer frame. I accidentally discovered in my first podcast, which I had in 2018, 2019, about my hometown of Philadelphia. I launched that show when I was a full-time software developer at a huge Fortune 500 company. I didn't know anything about podcasting, and I also didn't have any expertise to talk about. I launched a show that interviews successful Philadelphia. To my surprise, within six months of launching that show, people were treating me like I was an expert in success and Philadelphia. I was being invited to be interviewed for the newspaper. I was invited to speak at conferences about Philly or even about success. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, I haven't done anything here. I don't have a business. I haven't achieved anything. You got the wrong guy, right? But to my surprise, people would fight me on this and they'd be like, no, you're an expert in Philadelphia. And I was just like, okay, what I later understood was that these people were just as interested as I was in exploring success, exploring how to be successful in Philadelphia. And so since I was the one that was leading the charge and gathering all the sources and sharing it with them, they saw me as the expert. And they're kind of right. So what's funny about that is no matter what frame you take, people are going to fight you. The expert frame says, I'm an expert. And they're going to be like, no, you're not. And then the explorer frame, you're going to say, I'm not an expert. And they're going to say, yes, you are. Which one do you think will better grow your personal brand? It's the explorer frame. And if you want to see this in action, just listen to the intro of Alex Harmosey's podcast. Regardless of what you feel about Alex Harmosey, whether or not you love him or hate him, just put that to the side for a moment. This is a guy who has achieved a lot. He's made a lot of money. He's had a lot of successful businesses. And if you listen to the intro of his podcast, he says, welcome to the game, where it's all about getting more customers, keeping them longer and sharing the many lessons we've learned along the way. I hope you enjoy and subscribe. He doesn't say, I'm business owner who has blah, blah, blah, you should listen to me. He takes the explorer frame. He says, hey, I'm building businesses. I'm here to share what I'm learning as I'm building it. I hope you enjoy. Now this guy elsewhere in his content does take the expert frame and people fight him on it. But you really can't argue with him when he says, I'm just here to share what I'm learning. And so if you're somebody who is taking the expert frame and you're uncomfortable with it, or you are comfortable with it, either way, consider the explorer frame where you say, hey, I'm just here to compile all that we need to know in order to achieve X. I'm going to share it with you. I hope you enjoy it. Now we will see what the outcome will be of that podcast that I was talking about earlier. He's taking what I said, taking it back. If that's you listening, you know who you are. Keep me posted on how things are going. But I can tell you that I have seen many, many times people that I work with get unstuck, get out of their impostor syndrome by just taking the explorer frame. And I've also seen CEOs of multi-million dollar companies get more from their content by taking the explorer frame because it just gets more affinity from your audience where you're like, hey, I'm just here to share what I'm learning. And I hope you enjoyed as well. And they're like, no, you're an expert. Let me buy from you. Right. And before I go, I'll say the expert frame is not a bad thing. If you want to take the expert frame, that's fine. You don't have to do it. The expert frame works. I'm still in the expert frame. Who knows? Maybe I'll adjust with time. But consider the explorer frame. And my hope for you is that just by seeing the distinction and the two ways that you can show up, you'll be able to decide which one is right for you so that you can get more growth and more sales from your content. That is going to do it for this episode of Grow the Show. Now I have a quick favorite ask you. If you've ever gotten any value from this podcast and you haven't already, please leave us a five star rating. And if you're feeling generous, a review in the app that you're using to hear my voice right now, it just takes a couple seconds. But it really goes a long way in helping us to share even more valuable growth and monetization tactics here on the show because it helps us land bigger guests. And it helps show the world that what we're doing here is actually valuable. So once again, if you've ever gotten any value from the show and you haven't already, please just take a moment. Leave us a five star rating. Maybe a brief review on what type of value you've gotten and I will be eternally grateful. This episode was produced by me with post-production by podcast boutique. And if you want your show to be post-produced with quality really freaking fast. And if you want to save yourself and your team tons of time working on your podcast, you should chat with podcast boutique. Just head to podcast boutique.com or click the link in the show notes and set up time with them because I spent no time editing this episode and neither should you. All right, that's going to do it. For a girl to show, my name is Kevin Schmittlin. I'll see you next time.