89: Why Your Mindset Might Be Hurting Your Podcast Growth

What I teach about podcast growth might not work for you if this one thing is true. This is Grow the Show. My name is Kevin Schmidland and I am your podcast growth coach. And today I want to share the one thing that makes everything that I teach about podcast growth and monetization not work for certain podcasters. And that one thing is this. My podcast growth and monetization advice will not work for you if you are searching for reasons why it won't work for you. That was a bit of a mind pretzel. Let me explain. This episode of Grow the Show is sponsored by Riverside.fm, the leading platform to record studio quality podcasts. More than 70,000 other podcasters use Riverside, including myself, GuyRaz, GaryVee, Spotify, and even the New York Times. Riverside is not only great because it has unbelievably high recording quality regardless of your or your guest's internet quality, but it also gives you separate audio and video tracks for each person speaking. It's high tech but easy to use. Unlike Zoom, you don't have to have anything installed on your computer and your guests don't either. And did I mention that the audio quality is way better? If you're recording your interviews remotely, get off of Zoom now and hop into Riverside for your next interview. Your listeners will thank you. Head over to Riverside.fm and use code Grow that's GROW to get 60 free minutes of recording and 15% off a membership plan. The link is in the show notes. I'm now well into my third year of serving independent podcasters completely full time. All I have done since June of 2020 is work on Grow the Show, is to build this company that is here to make it easy for independent podcasters to grow and monetize. And the one thing that I have seen hold the people that I serve back from successfully implementing the things that I share is this. That's when they're searching for reasons why what I am sharing might not work for them. And so what do I mean by that? Well the best example that I can share is shows that are for entertainment purposes and shows that are not based around some sort of business or online business. And so I hear from clients and audience members alike many times, I don't think this is going to work for me because I don't have something to sell. I don't have a product or service. Now first of all, if you're somebody who thinks that or says that you're not crazy, it's a totally totally valid thing to wonder. But I'm here to tell you that number one that's not true and that that thought process is what's going to prevent these things from working for you. So a lot of the people who say that will say something like I don't think that TPP targeted podcast pitching is going to work for my show because I'm not selling a course. And if you think about that logically, targeted podcast pitching, which is our framework here at Grow the Show for getting you and your podcast featured on other podcast feeds has nothing to do with how your show is monetized at all. And it is literally how virtually every single podcast today in the 2020s, regardless of whether or not it's there to support a business or it's just there for entertainment purposes, grows. You grow a podcast by getting people who are listening to other podcasts to find out that yours exists. That's it. And the best way to do that is to reach them while they're listening to other podcasts. It's that simple. That is absolutely true. Whether or not your show is for entertainment only like a sports show or a talk show or a show about Hollywood or whatever it might be or your show is based around a business like a course or a program or an agency or some sort of expert business, regardless of those two things, TPP will absolutely work to grow your show. But what I will grant to you if you are an entertainment podcaster who's listening right now is that I talk a lot about how to grow and monetize shows that are based around online businesses or coaching programs or something like that. And so you can be forgiven for thinking, oh, this advice might not work for me because I don't have a course to sell. It's totally reasonable. But my message to you is that it does work absolutely and entertainment shows eventually the ones that are monetized and that do it full time create products to sell. Merch is a product to sell a Patreon is a product that you sell. And so you're going to get there, but without digressing too much specifically about entertainment versus outcome oriented podcasters, the fact that your brain is looking for reasons for why this might not work for you. If that's what your brain is doing, it's going to find them. So if you're somebody who's like, hmm, I don't think this is going to work for me because XYZ your brain is going to make that a self-fulfilling prophecy because you don't have full conviction in the actions that you're taking, meaning because your brain's like, hmm, I don't really think this is going to work for me. Then you're not going to actually do the things that we're sharing here, right? And you're not going to do them well and you're not going to give them your all 110% because your brain's kind of hanging back like, hmm, I don't really know if I want to go all in on this because I'm not sure if it's going to work. Now, it's not your fault if I haven't sufficiently convinced you that it's going to work for you. I don't blame you, but it's hard to do that. And so I'm going to do my very best, but my ask and the reason why I make this episode is to bring this fact to your attention because while it is true that at Grow the Show, we do talk specifically to online course creators and online expert businesses and online agencies a lot and people who have podcasts that are impact oriented rather than entertainment focused. My first show that I ever created was an entertainment only show. It was called Philly Who. It was about my home city of Philadelphia and it's literally how I cut my teeth on all this stuff. It's how I learned these things to the point where I can share what worked for me and where I could then create a course and create a product and a program around it. It all was born in the entertainment podcast space literally virtually everything that I share. And furthermore, what I have seen both in the pool of Grow the Show accelerator clients and the Grow the Show podcast listeners who aren't clients, which love you just as much, what I've seen to be true is that there's little correlation behind entertainment shows and outcome business oriented shows that are successful based on what I share versus podcasters who are looking for reasons why it won't work versus podcasters who are looking for reasons why it will work. And that's where I'm looking to go with all this is that if you are somebody who finds information that could possibly work for you, if you allow your brain to look for reasons why it won't work for you, your brain will find those reasons and will make those reasons true. If instead you change the way that you think about it and you assign your brain to look for reasons why what you're learning will work for you, then that also will be self-fulfilling because you'll get creative and you'll find a way to learn the tactics, take the strategies, apply them to your specific show and it will work for you. So like I said, the entertainment outcome example is the most obvious one for me, but it could be anything. It could be, oh, my show's local or oh, you know, my show is weekly or daily, whatever it might be, if you are saying, hmm, I don't think this is going to work for me because I'm different, you will be correct. If you instead think, hmm, this is a little bit different, but I think I can make this work for me, you will also be correct. That is the big correlation. So that is my message to you today is if you catch yourself hearing things that I'm sharing or anybody learning anything that you could possibly learn in the world. And if your brain is going, hmm, I don't think she's going to work for me, I encourage you to try to make it go the opposite and say, hmm, how can I make this work for me? And you will find success. So that is the one thing, the only thing about you and your show that will make it so that everything that I teach and that I share doesn't work is if you are somebody who looks for reasons why it won't work. It will be true. It will be a self-fulfilling prophecy and I won't be able to help you. Now I'll wrap this by saying I am not holier than thou. This is a very, very common and natural brain response to look for what's wrong as humans. We are hardwired. Our brains are hardwired to find what is wrong with our environment. To be successful, you have to fight the wiring of your brain. I fall into the same freaking trap as I'm learning and I'm growing my business. I'm like, hmm, I don't think that'll work for me because I serve podcasters. Then I think, oh my gosh, I'm doing the same thing that I see holding back people that I help. So I got to try to stop doing that. It's a constant game. I invite you to join me in the fight and start thinking instead. How can I make this work for me? So that is my challenge for you today. I hope it's helpful and I'd love to hear from you on whether or not you do think it's helpful or whether you think I should f off and stop telling you what to think and what to do. Either way, I'd love to hear from you. I'm grateful for your response and I hope to hear from you in the Grow the Show Facebook group. So that's going to do it for this episode of Grow the Show. I'll see you in the next one.