93: Why Your Podcasting Goals Are Holding You Back

This is Grow the Show, the podcast to help you grow your podcast. My name is Kevin Schmidland. I am your podcast growth coach. I have taken two shows past 100,000 downloads and 100,000 dollars monetized. And I've helped more than 350 other podcasters grow and monetize their shows as well. And today what I want to talk about as we head into the new year is goal settings, specifically podcast goals. And what I'm about to try to convince you is that the goals that you have for your podcast growth and monetization are actually preventing those very same goals from coming true. Let me explain. After serving more than 350 podcasts over the past four years as a podcaster, podcast producer, podcast growth consultant, and now podcast coach. What I've seen is that most podcasts have the same goals. Everybody wants to reach at least 10,000 downloads per episode, 25,000, 100,000 listeners. And everybody also wants to make six figures or seven figures in revenue from their podcast. So everyone has the same exact goals. Now if you spent any time in the personal development world, there's a good chance you have heard one of the personal development gurus out there talk about how having goals doesn't actually differentiate anybody. They often point out that every single athlete that goes to the Olympics has the goal to win a gold medal, but only the very, very best actually win the gold medal. Right. So if everybody has the same goal and only a certain amount of people actually achieved that goal, then clearly the goal itself is not the thing that allowed those selects people to achieve the goal. So then what was the difference? Well, again, you may or may not have heard this analogy before, but the difference is the action that the people who actually did win a gold medal took. Everybody had the same goals, but the gold medalists are the only one that took enough action to actually win the gold. Now again, I didn't come up with this analogy and forgive me. I can't remember which book I read it in recently, but it is true. Win goals doesn't really make any difference in actually achieving those goals. And my point here is not that you should not have goals. It's not that you shouldn't set your sights high, but the point that I want to make is that the goals that you have for your podcast, the audience size goals that you have, number of downloads per episode, amount of sponsors, revenue that you take in, those goals are preventing you from achieving those goals because they make you sad. What do I mean by that? To demonstrate, I want to actually tell you a very personal story from my own childhood. So not a lot of people know this now, which I am thrilled about. But back when I was 15 years old in high school, I was extremely overweight. I weighed more than 300 pounds. And there actually aren't too too many photos to prove this because I, number one, we didn't really have ubiquitous camera phones back then, but also I really didn't like having my picture taken then because I didn't like, you know, what I looked like. So there's like two or three photos that have survived of me at that weight, you know, I've posted them on Instagram before if you want to see them. But like I said, back when I was 15 years old, I used to weigh more than 300 pounds. And so for years, I had a goal of losing that weight. I didn't want to be overweight. I, it really does happen where you wake up one day and you're more than 300 pounds, not here to get into that. But for many years, 12 into 13, 13 into 14, 14 into 15, 15 into 16, I had the same goal. I wanted to lose 50 pounds, right? I was, I was just like, man, I'm over 300. This is terrible. If I can just lose 50 pounds, I'll be 250 and then maybe, you know, I'll be on my way to looking better and more importantly, feeling better because it's not fun to be more than 300 pounds. I'll tell you that you don't feel good. But what happened to me in that time period is that for several years in my adolescence, I would gain and lose the same 20 pounds over and over again. And I think I'm probably not the only person who has experienced this, right? Because it's, I mean, heck, I experienced it today where I'm like, I want to lose a bunch of weight. And then I lose 20 pounds and then I kind of relax and then I gain 20 pounds back and it's the same cycle and there's a very good chance that you have experienced this before. So months and years went by, I was trapped in this same cycle of gaining and losing the same 20 pounds and basically oscillating between just over and just under 300 pounds. Now I am no psychologist, but there was a change in my mindset that I didn't know that I made, but I made and it allowed me to lose weight and no longer be 300 pounds anymore. And that change was this instead of having a goal to lose 50 pounds, I changed my goal of the result of losing 50 pounds and I made my goal the actions that I wanted to take, which was basically to, at that point in time, it was to run a mile three times a week, which when you're 300 pounds is a big frickin' deal and also to just eat less every single day to have smaller portions at meals and to eat fewer snacks. And so that was my goal. I got so fed up with never reaching my goal of losing 50 pounds that I just gave up on the goal and I said, you know what? I don't really care how much weight I lose. I just really want to keep doing the things that work because that was the thing about I would lose 20 pounds and then I would stop doing the things that made me lose 20 pounds and then I'd gain it right back and I was on that sea soft forever and I got so fed up I was like, all right, I don't care anymore. I'm just going to keep doing this and my goal is to just eat less and exercise more. My goal is not to lose weight and then guess what happened? I lost 120 pounds, which might be for some listeners more than you weigh. So what was the difference? I can only speak for my own experience. Like I said, I'm no psychologist, but here's the difference for me. For years, my goal was to lose 50 pounds. And every single time I stepped on the scale and I hadn't lost 50 pounds, I was sad. So even when I had already lost 20 of the 50 pounds, I wasn't at my goal yet. And so I was upset. I was sad. I was a failure. And that's the thing about setting lofty goals. It's good to have goals. It's good to dream big. But if all you think about is your goal, then until the day that you reach that goal, you're sad that you have not reached that goal. And the thing about that is that if you're sad the whole time on your journey to losing a bunch of weight, there's a really good chance that you're going to stop doing the things that made you lose the weight because you're still sad. And that's exactly what I experienced for years. I would lose 20 pounds, which was good, but it wasn't 50 pounds. So I was sad and I gave up and then gained all the weight right back. And then eventually, when I changed my goal from losing 50 pounds to just doing the things that makes you lose weight, I lost 120 pounds, which sounds ridiculous. The same thing applies to your audience growth goals and your revenue goals. So let's say that your goal is to reach 10,000 downloads per episode. If that is all you think about, and that's your goal, I want to reach 10,000 downloads per episode. When you focus on the result goal over the action goal, which is taking the actions that grows your audience, then every single time you pull up your downloads dashboard, you're going to be sad to see that you have not reached 10,000 downloads per episode yet. And so a lot of people will give up. And I can't tell you how many times I've experienced this talking with other podcasters, particularly grow the show accelerator clients. I love you guys, but a lot of you are very, very driven, very entrepreneurial. And I can't tell you how many times I hold a group coaching session and a grow the show accelerator client calls in and it's their turn. And they say, Hey, Kevin, you know, I'm like, Hey, what's going on? How are you? What's the update? And they'll say things aren't going so good. I really can't figure out, and then they'll name something like I can't figure out why my LinkedIn won't grow. I'm like, all right, well, what's gone on the past week or so? And they're like, well, my downloads last month doubled, but I've been posting the LinkedIn and my followership hasn't grown at all. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold your horses. Did you just say that your downloads from last month doubled over the previous month? And they'll be like, yeah, and I'm like, well, what the heck, what did you take a moment to celebrate that? And they're like, no, not really. I'll stop the coaching session. I'll be like, can we stop for a moment and appreciate that you just doubled your show. Do you understand how big your audience is going to be? If it continues doubling every month, you'll have a million followers in a year. Now, obviously, it's not going to keep doubling every single month, but you get the point. And listen, accelerator clients and anybody else, I do the same thing, right? I do the same thing with my business. I'll hit a new revenue goal, but I'm sad because I haven't made $100 million yet, right? Because that's my goal or whatever it is. And so I'm not blaming you. I'm not saying you're bad or you're wrong for going through this. But what I'm saying is this is a serious, serious thing that's holding a lot of podcasters and entrepreneurs back. Is this incest and focus on the result that you want without focusing on the actions that it takes to get there or at least celebrating the wins along the way? So my goal at this episode is to ask you to consider, yes, having a big, hairy, audacious results goal, dream big, dream of having 10,000, 100,000, a million downloads per episode for sure. But if that's all you do and that's all you think about, be aware that until you get there, you're going to be, feel disappointed. You're going to feel sad. I feel like a failure because that's just kind of how our brains are worked. It's not you. It's us, right? So the goal that I encourage you to set is an action goal and really make that what you pay attention to week over week because there's another class of grow the show accelerator client that has a little bit of different flavor to when they come to coaching calls. And there's a class of podcasters, whether or not you're a grow the show accelerator client, who look at things a little bit differently. And they set their goals not on the results that they get, but the actions that they take. And so their goals will look something like this. I want to get featured on 10 other podcast feeds every single month for 12 months. I don't even care how many downloads I get, but that's the action that I want to take. I want to get featured on 120 podcasts this year. Now when I hear a podcaster come to me with that goal, then I'm like, this is going to be fun to watch because they are going to grow their audience faster than anyone around me. And it's because of the way that they're thinking about their goals. Now keep in mind, I'm not here to temper your expectations. The reason why this is so key and the reason why this works is because you set your goal to be something like getting yourself featured on 10 other podcast feeds every single month. Then what happens every single month that you do that? You're pumped, you've reached your goal, you're excited, you get a hit of dopamine and a hit of motivation, which makes you even more excited to get 10 next month. And guess what? You're more likely to get 12 next month and push the limits. But if instead, after a month of getting featured on other podcasts, you get invited onto 10 of them, you look at your downloads numbers and you're like, crap, I'm not at 10,000 downloads a month yet. Of course, you're not. It takes time to get there, but just that little change in perspective where you look at the number you see, it's less than 10,000 and you have that moment of disappointment. What does that do to your psyche? It actually makes you a little bit less likely to hit 10 guest appearances next month or whatever your action goal might be. So bringing this all home as we head into 2023 and you're setting your goals for your podcast or your business or even your life, I implore you to set results goals, make them big, make them exciting, make them so big that you get excited to do it. But at the same time, set the goals that you think about every single day to be action goals, the actions that you can take that will inevitably make it so that you reach your results goals. If you set your goals that way and you truly believe that those actions are inevitably going to get you to your goal, then not only you're going to get there way faster, but you're going to have a lot more fun, you're going to be happier doing it because you're going to hit these checkpoints and it's going to be, you're going to be like, I'm awesome, I'm doing thing and that will be true. The caveat to all of that is that you must believe that the action goals that you set will actually get you to your results goals. That's probably the biggest pitfall that folks will experience here is that they'll set a goal that says, you might take the one that I just used, for example, which is, I'm going to get myself featured on 10 podcast feeds every single month for 2023. If you're not 100% certain that those actions will inevitably get you to your result goal of getting 10,000 downloads per episode, then you'll do it for three months. You won't get the 10,000 downloads per episode and then you'll give up and try something else, but it's not because the thing didn't work. It's because you didn't do it enough that it didn't work. So hopefully you trust me when I say, if you get yourself featured on 10 podcast feeds every single month, you are going to grow. Your show is going to grow. You may not get to 10,000 in three months, but I'm telling you right now, your audience and your show will grow and it will compound with time. Either way, you can set other goals as well. It might be to post on TikTok every single day. It might be to publish an episode every single day and promote it on your email list or whatever it might be, but to bring this all home, if you set your action goals, if you set your goals for 2023 or if you're listening to this later, any time period, to be the actions that you must take to achieve your results goal rather than the end result goal. Number one, you're going to have a way better time getting to the results. You're going to enjoy the journey and enjoy the process way more because it'll be a bunch of little sporadic wins rather than waiting for that one big payoff win and it's way more likely that you're actually going to get there because if you don't have any wins along the way and the only thing you care about is reaching that goal in the end, it's unlikely you're ever going to get there and I'll leave you with this, which is even if you do get there, which I've experienced before, it means nothing to you. So if you're just like $10,000 an episode and you're just miserable until you get to that point, then guess what's going to happen? The second that you get to $10,000 for episode, it's going to mean nothing. You're going to feel nothing and actually you just feel empty and sad because your goal is gone. So nothing but results goals equal sadness, setting action goals, happiness, you pick which one you want to do in 2023. I'm telling you right now, if you set your action goals to be to get your podcast featured on other podcast feeds periodically every single month, then your show will grow. I would bet my career on it. So that's going to do it for today. Please, if you remember, take one thing away from this episode. It is set action goals in addition to results goals and look at your action goals every day and every week rather than looking at the fact that you haven't reached your results goals. Because if you don't do that, you'll be like me. You'll spend five years gaining and losing the same 20 pounds over and over again, always sad that you didn't lose 50 pounds. Or you can make your goals to be just take the actions every week that makes you lose weight and you'll wake up one day and you'll be in high school and you'll weigh 190 pounds instead of 300 and everybody will ask you how you did it. And you'll be like, it's not a secret. It's just continue doing the things that everyone knows how to do. And the same thing is true for podcasts. Keep making episodes. Keep getting the word out. It will grow. It will be monetized as long as you don't stop and make yourself sad that you're not further. So that's it for today. This has been Grow the Show. My name is Kevin Schmidland. I am your podcast growth coach and I'll see you in the next episode of Grow the Show.