Embark on a journey through the nuanced terrain of podcasting, especially tailored for the discerning product-based entrepreneur. We're tearing down the one-size-fits-all facade and laying out the essential strategies you need to stand out in the saturated market of audio storytelling. From understanding when a podcast might actually detract from your business to embracing the DANCE methodology for content perfection, we're here to guide you through the importance of a well-crafted podcasting approach. You'll uncover the power of episodic content and learn how to repurpose with finesse, ensuring your marketing efforts are as sustainable as they are impactful.
Transitioning to the interplay between branding and business models, we're shaking up the status quo by sharing a narrative on the rise of TikTok and its influence on your social media playbook. Discover why product-based businesses must thread carefully with podcasts and why personal brands or mission-driven companies, like 'Who Gives A Crap', have a unique edge in this auditory domain. With keen insight and expert advice, we ready you for the podcasting arena—only once your sales and specialization ducks are in a row.
And for the soul-searchers and meaning-makers, this episode is a heartfelt exploration of using podcasts and books as tools to combat societal loneliness and forge authentic connections. I'll share my personal crusade against the quick-fix culture of bestseller lists, advocating for content that endures through true merit and shared values. This isn't just about creating a podcast—it's about creating a legacy. So, whether you're seeking to make waves or carve out a niche of impact, our free starter checklist awaits to launch your journey with purpose and passion.
Embark on a journey through the nuanced terrain of podcasting, especially tailored for the discerning product-based entrepreneur. We're tearing down the one-size-fits-all facade and laying out the essential strategies you need to stand out in the saturated market of audio storytelling. From understanding when a podcast might actually detract from your business to embracing the DANCE methodology for content perfection, we're here to guide you through the importance of a well-crafted podcasting approach. You'll uncover the power of episodic content and learn how to repurpose with finesse, ensuring your marketing efforts are as sustainable as they are impactful.
Transitioning to the interplay between branding and business models, we're shaking up the status quo by sharing a narrative on the rise of TikTok and its influence on your social media playbook. Discover why product-based businesses must thread carefully with podcasts and why personal brands or mission-driven companies, like 'Who Gives A Crap', have a unique edge in this auditory domain. With keen insight and expert advice, we ready you for the podcasting arena—only once your sales and specialization ducks are in a row.
And for the soul-searchers and meaning-makers, this episode is a heartfelt exploration of using podcasts and books as tools to combat societal loneliness and forge authentic connections. I'll share my personal crusade against the quick-fix culture of bestseller lists, advocating for content that endures through true merit and shared values. This isn't just about creating a podcast—it's about creating a legacy. So, whether you're seeking to make waves or carve out a niche of impact, our free starter checklist awaits to launch your journey with purpose and passion.
Podcasting's a hard game. Podcasting is hard, consistent work. If you're a product-based business, a podcast isn't really the right thing for you. Until you've felt comfortable in niching to a point that you are specialist and you're generating sales as a basis of that, then you need to park the idea of a podcast because it's not the right time. I want a podcast because everybody else in my industry or my competitors, have a podcast. No, I want you. I want a podcast because everybody else in my industry, all my competitors, have a podcast. No, I want you to have a podcast that you are proud of, that people will share with other people because they think it's good, not just to get you some position in a chart to give you some street cred. Welcome back to another episode of Big Vision Business Owners, and this episode it's going to be a juicy one. I'm very passionate about this one. It could go off on a tangent if I get carried away with what I'm saying because, as I've said in previous episodes, you always need a plan. I have a few bullet points and I kind of talk out loud to myself some of the things that I'm going to put in a podcast, and I could already feel a strong, passionate. I'm gonna get on my high horse on this one and and go into it, because there is a strong set of reasons why you should not have a podcast, and we're gonna really go into them today, because the reasons that some people come to me for podcasting just bewilder me, and it gets to a point where I can't imagine what working on them, on a podcast, would be like, because there's not a point to having the podcast. We're going to go into this, we're going to go into this in detail. We'll go from the sensible, we'll go from the sensible approach to the ones that are just more frustrating, because podcasting is a hard game. Podcasting is hard, consistent work and if you're doing a podcast, not a series, like I don't love doing series, podcasts because it's almost a very tactical move, it's very planned and then you release them, whereas I'm very much for the you keep going route, just like you with any content marketing, and you're constantly in an iteration. I talk about my dance acronym for this, which is look at the data. The audience is a niche. Then you focus on the content and then you experiment and go around to look at the data, refine the audience, the niche, create the content experiment and therefore you have to be creating a podcast all the time to know if that's working. And that goes for any content that's you. You know most marketers process. So the great thing about a podcast when you do it like this, which is episodic and not a serial podcast, is that you get to do this process and keep refining it all the time.
Speaker 1:
However, there are some people that jump to podcasting for a bunch of reasons and some of them are the wrong reasons and there's some situations where podcasting doesn't suit and it's not right, and it is not my job to convince you of podcasting. I can explain why I do it and I always come back to when I was in the middle of trying to build my life coaching business. I was getting overwhelmed, tired with content and I was going I can't keep on doing this like I love making these videos, not gonna lie, especially when you're a maths teacher by day, this is fun stuff. I'm a bit done with that now, like I'm good at it, but it's not like fulfilling me. Making all this content, trying to see what works online, making fun with the trends how creative was that? It was fun, but I was like this is not sustainable. Five videos a day, like from the minute I get in at four. I posted one. Then on nearly every hour around dinner I would post another, and that meant like batch recording at the weekends. I couldn't keep that up and it made total sense to me that a podcast sits at the top and you repurpose the hell out of that thing, which is what I constantly do now or create for other people. And Shanta the coach for me was a real refined machine. You have to build up to that machine. You can't do it straight away and you need to come up with ways you're going to do it effectively. So this is why we're still on that.
Speaker 1:
With Big Vision Business and I mean lots of experimentations it's more important for me to experiment on your behalf or whoever I work with to give you the insight. So, fyi, did you know that TikTok carousels are popping off? That's an experiment and it's vital for me to do those things. So, no, I haven't been focusing on TikTok, but in a whole thing where I'm reviving Chantal the Coach a little, the carousels I've repurposed from Instagram are going wild compared to the videos, which videos were getting like 300 to 500 views, the carousels are getting 1,000 and getting quite a lot of likes and favourites, which is so interesting because we always had TikTok down as really competing. Initially it was competing with Instagram, and then the SEO shift was suggesting that it was competing with YouTube. Now I'm like, okay, hang on. Maybe they're still playing this game because they're competing with Instagram with photos still, maybe they were just great carousels, who knows exactly. But it's just interesting that that's popping off and that's why I sit in the experimentation situation, as opposed to getting this well-oiled machine sorted for me when actually I have to keep looking at different things and how it works.
Speaker 1:
So let's go to the really obvious one of when a podcast isn't for you, and some people would argue with me on this one, but I would say, if you're a product-based business, a podcast isn't really the right thing for you, and the reason for that is that when you think of advertisements for products, they kind of sit better by associating themselves with a podcast that already exists. That is a good brand match. So chantelle the coach always used to get a lot of attention from the dating apps and the adult uh, what would we call it like adult devices sort of area, because of course I was targeting and did very well in targeting a very niche single millennial woman audience and that worked very well for, obviously, dating apps and for adult devices. So I never had sponsorship, but it made sense for all those products to just leverage the audience that was out there.
Speaker 1:
When it comes to product-based businesses, I don't see as much of this kind of personal branding going on and so maybe it's not that it's product-based, but it's the idea that does having a personal brand help the brand. So podcasts are run by people. They are the bit that people love. They hear from those people, they get to like the hosts and therefore, you know, in a service-based business, when you get to work with the host or the host team, you feel like you're getting closer to that person. With a product, I mean it totally works because the with works in terms of association. But even just having that same host who has their own service and business, if they say, oh, I really like this, drink this, watch this food, you didn't need to create a podcast of your own to do that. Now, if I think of some brands that actually like a podcast could work for, so it doesn't say, you know, product-based brands couldn't do this.
Speaker 1:
But if I took, say, for example, who gives a crap? The toilet roll. I believe they're australian, off the top of my head, I think. Um, I've worked with them a few times which has been fun, but actually they have a real mission for sustainability, for green. If they made a podcast about that, brought in guests and also because of their kind of cheeky branding obviously, who gives a crap? As a name is on the line. They then have had there's a code you can scan or like a website you can go to on their toilet rolls which takes you to a game to play whilst you're on the toilet. It's very tongue-in-cheek. It reminds me of Innocent. It's very cheeky as a brand brand. If they could bring that to life in a podcast and then position the toilet paper and their other products now, which is like kitchen roll and stuff, like actually that probably could work.
Speaker 1:
But it's the personification of the brand that would really matter and quite a lot of people don't have enough of that personal. But they are a personal brand. Like it feels like there's a person behind it. One of the the boxes said something about looking cheeky, or your bum looks good in this, or something like this. Um, so it has a playfulness, it has a persona. So that's where I think maybe a product based business could get through.
Speaker 1:
But it's to do with the personal branding and some service-based businesses aren't going to do well for podcasting because they don't have that so much. They don't have that personal branding to go with it. And it doesn't mean that you have to be this flamboyant character or a cheeky character, because there's plenty of different people in the world that are different people. But the minute that you can put somebody or a team of people at the forefront to present a company, that's when you can then start to look at a podcast. But without that, most product-based businesses aren't going to do it. Now, even if you are one of these businesses, sometimes it is too early to really look at a podcast.
Speaker 1:
My mentor I mean technically he's going to be a mentor, as at this point, but I mean he's a mentor to many people done lots of presentations Nick James of Expert Empires I've heard his speech a number of times and his main thing is like at the first stage in your business it should be sales and specialism alone. Forget marketing to a degree, but like, really forget it. You have got to work out how you're getting money in your business and how you have specialized what you're doing within the market to stand out online, totally. Get that from a branding perspective, and sales is vital. You need the money to trickle in. There's no point doing all of this work if you can't get money generated in your business in some way and therefore, if you're at that stage, don't worry about podcast two, because you haven't even worked out your kind of specialism yet and therefore your podcast could be on something totally not what you're in in three months time. It's such a fast-pasting point in the very early stages to not.
Speaker 1:
So when I first started this, I didn't do the podcast for a little while. I started the social media stuff back in May 2023. I actually started the podcast stuff in September 2023. So May to June, july, august, september four months of sort of refining that down into podcasting, and then it was very, very end of November, start of December. So I'd given myself three months there to think about a podcast. And even now I sort of do it as an experiment and I don't think it's in its best, best final format ever. But I'm a done not perfect kind of person and will iterate and keep going.
Speaker 1:
So sometimes people get caught up in this idea of marketing. I'm going to have a podcast and it's like but what are you going to have a podcast on? What is it going to be if you don't yet know what your niche is, who your audience is, who you're targeting? Because then you can't speak to those people specifically enough and you know people that are struggling with niching down shouldn't think about the podcast, because they're going to just make the podcast about the wrong thing. So until you've felt comfortable in niching to a point that you are specialist and you're generating sales as a basis of that, then you need to park the idea of a podcast Because it's not the right time and I'm not going to. I'm not here to present to anyone to convince them that podcasting is the right thing for them, and I'm not here just to get people through the door for the sake of it.
Speaker 1:
If a podcast is what you want to do, fine, make sure you've got the time for it, because it don't half take some time. It is effort every single week and don't record every week. But there's editing to do, there is uploading, there's titles, there's descriptions and, yes, there's AI that can help with some of that. But I tell you what an AI description, although one of them did really well the other day with the title and I'm hoping it wasn't the description that did it, but I'm almost tempted to take the experiment. Ai automatically is created on my episode, so even if I forget to edit it, it will go out with something, and sometimes they are horrendous and they're very contrived, but it's fine.
Speaker 1:
Anyway, this one went out and, compared to the other episodes, there's got like double the amount of downloads in a very short period of time and I was like that's so interesting. Please tell me that's not because the AI has done such a good word of the keywords. So I'm going to leave it again at another point, just to see if it was the title, because actually I think the title is really strong. I think that's really what the reason is. Or was it because the AI made it really good for keywords and did help with SEO? You'll never quite know. You can only theorize. But either way, there's a lot to podcasting and whilst there are tools that can help, you've got to be in a position where you can dedicate essentially one day a week to it, and in the early days that's a lot of time in your business, unless you've got somewhere, without sourcing it, of course and then it becomes kind of one day a month for you to record, but otherwise it's um, it's time heavy and in the early stages you've got other priorities to focus on before you delve into this now.
Speaker 1:
Third reason that you shouldn't have a podcast and this is my, this is the worst one for me. This is the worst one for me as somebody that helps people with podcasts is when someone says to me I want a podcast because everybody else in my industry, all my competitors, have a podcast. No, oh my god. No, please don't have a podcast. I can't think of why this is such that this is the worst idea on it, because, because a podcast takes so much work, I need you to have more of a reason to show up than it's because my competitor has one. No, oh God, it's going to make life so much harder because you don't have a cause behind what you were doing. It wasn't the driving reason that you started a podcast, which means that then coming up with titles is going to be more difficult, because you're looking at this from a comparison perspective as opposed to.
Speaker 1:
I want to change the world perspective, and that's who I'm really looking to work with people that want to change the world, not people that just want to beat their competitor. It feels like everyone around me's got a podcast. I feel like I should have a podcast. No, no, no, no, no. We need to find a way for you to stand out online, not to blend in with that lot. I'm not going to sit there and compare you to them for the entire time. It's useful for us from a market research perspective, but if that's what's driving you, no, that's going to be the worst, because people will hear if you're trying to show up just to have a podcast for the sake of having a podcast.
Speaker 1:
The beautiful thing is is that a podcast is whether it's youtube channel version or it's just audio only, or you do a bit. Both be focused on audio. It's you having your on audio? It's you having your own YouTube channel? It's you having your own TV channel that people tune into and decide what they think of you. If you're doing what Archipets is doing it, we need to do it too. Chances are you're going to go down the very mundane route of doing loads of how-to content, going through all the basics of what therapy is or what marketing is is whatever your specialism happens to be, and then no one listens anyway, because it was just the same as what they could get on another podcast and unless they just happen to like you and they're your friend or they're your ex-colleague or something like that, they're not going to listen and there's nothing that differentiates you. The single girls guide to life was so important in the world and it remains to me that I will pay $5 every month until the day I die and as long as podcasts are around, to keep those episodes there, because to me they are vital for changing the world and it's why there's still a passion inside of me that needs to get that business back up and running.
Speaker 1:
I hate that it's on pause. Hate, but I also had to follow this intuition. I desperately want to get back to it, because there's still so much cause behind what I do. I really, really, really really want to and I need to get back to it. I want to help single women to feel okay being on their own, or and or help them find some people today that are actually right for them. That's it. Just want to make their lives easier, because loneliness is a proper pandemic, endemic of its own and I can't stand for it to still be there and look, I want to get back to doing a podcast. I hate being away from it and I was there to champion that idea and people were going to come up against me and they were going to say things that I didn't agree with and they didn't agree with in mine. It's a debate and it's a fight for a cause. A big problem in the Western world loneliness.
Speaker 1:
It had a reason. There was a passion and so you don't even have to think about what to post. I mean, you do from a business perspective, but you don't even have to think about what to post too much because there's so much going on in society around it and because there's so much passion behind what I do. I'm interested in reading articles on it and and listening and going through books and seeing what the research says, so it wasn't a chore. Whereas if you're focused on well, the competitors are there and we need to be doing something as good as them, you're gonna just not have that differentiating factor and that passion. You've got to have a reason behind your podcast. It does not need to be as change the world-y as my one was, but you do need to have a reason. So if you were trying to change the way that something is done, then that's a strong point to have. The same way that I talk about this, actually, because I will put my opinion out there on podcasting oh don't, I'm getting to the point where I'm going to bring it up. Here we go. I've not spoken about this publicly online, but I'm here to do it today.
Speaker 1:
The Amazon bestseller book situation winds me up to the high heavens, and you could say this about any marketing. Totally get that, because they're all strategies for growth. I hate the Amazon bestselling book list. Why do I hate it? Because it's really contrived in the way that you can get to the top. The way that I view and understand it is that you can get your book to the top of an app of an Apple, the top of an app of an apple, the top of an amazon category by making sure that a lot of people buy your book. In a short space of time rockets to the top, and if you're also super clever, you'll put your book in a very obscure category, one that kind of makes sense but doesn't really make sense. To make it get to the top there and suddenly, just by having like, say, 50 downloads or 50 purchases the book, it will be at the top because it's such an obscure category and you've managed to get a small number of people sometimes buying multiple of the book, which winds up even more. And suddenly that gives you an Amazon bestselling book. It's been number one in the charts or it's in the top 10 of the charts etc. And that, to me, breaks my heart because it's just a gimmick. It's just a gimmick and I know that in my heart of hearts.
Speaker 1:
If I had a book, fine, it got to number one for a day, two days, but it didn't stand the test of time in being in like the top 100 for a long time being in the top 10, it didn't even need to get to number one position. It's quite fun to get number one. I'm sure it's a bit like singles. When you're a music artist, like you do want that number one in the end and make you try even harder. But it's kind of like. But the music isn't good enough if you don't do that and the book wasn't really good enough if it didn't stand the test of time of regularly being up there and that's why something like you know j James Clear's book Atomic Habits to me is a great book. I don't know where it sits in the charts right now, but you know it's up there.
Speaker 1:
The guy took years to write it. He had so much blog experience yet he was so worried. I think he's expressed the concern of trying to make this great book. They took the time out, put the time into it and made a great book that wasn't just number one for a bit, it was a number one for ages or in the top 10. And it took time and it took practice. And it really frustrates me over the Amazon book situation, because a really really good book takes time to write and a really really good book that has impact stands the test of time.
Speaker 1:
That doesn't just become a number one Amazon bestseller because you were the most popular person for an hour or two in a day or 24 hour period, but it's because it was a book that people wanted to share and felt that had good messages or had some good learnings and it sold through its own successes, through its own strengths, not because it was a complete marketing ploy. And I totally get that marketing. This is marketing. I totally get that marketing has strategies behind it to increase the likelihood of being seen, etc.
Speaker 1:
But what I like to stand for in this podcast is that we're not gimmicky. I don't sit there and say I'm trying to get you to the number one spot in Apple. I'm really not. If it happens, so be it. That's that is wonderful, and if we can get that to happen all the time, also very wonderful, because it means more people watching. It means it's got more exposure. You're more likely to be brought up in lists. You could get more coverage, of course, but I'm not going to do it in a contrived way for you. I'm not going to go and say, listen to your own episodes three times on different devices with different accounts, because I mean that's one way they've got farms, haven't they now for um streaming farms, where these mobile phones are just set up to listen to the same songs over and over again to get the Spotify streams up. No, like. It just feels like cheating and I'm never gonna encourage anyone to like set up a podcast like. I mean, there are packages we have that can do it quickly, but not for the sake of getting to the top, not for the sake of beating your competitors.
Speaker 1:
Whatever I produce and put my name to or to help setting up. I want it to be brilliant, and I want it to be brilliant through iteration of getting better and better and better, because we constantly do that and we're just never finished. We don't accept that we're finished, because there's always something to be making better. And so, yeah, okay, of course, use hype and use your community, but don't just go chasing the number one podcast spot because you think it's going to do the best thing for you in the world. Actually care about what you're going to put out there, and that's the thing.
Speaker 1:
When it comes to the amazon book situation, I'm not going to buy that book based on the fact that you want it to go to number one. I want to buy that book because I think it's going to help me and I hope that the content in it does help me. I want you to have made that book because you deeply cared about what's in it, not rushed it because you wanted a number one Amazon book spot that looks good on your cred. And I would say the same for the podcasting. I want you to have a podcast that you are proud of, that people will share with other people because they think it's good, not just to get you some position in a chart, to give you some street cred. We've got bigger reasons, better reasons to have a podcast and if you don't have that, then don't have a podcast. So I realise this has been a bit of a flipped episode and I told you this would get juicy and I would be passionate about what I said because I knew this was a topic that ruffles my feathers.
Speaker 1:
You only need to make a podcast if you have the right kind of business for it and you're at the right stage to start looking at a podcast and you have a good reason behind that podcast, and it doesn't have to be changing the world, please note. I think that a lot of podcasts have the power to do that. And old Stephen Bartlett's whole flight story thing, something about being wholehearted or like more human. I can't even think what their tagline is yet, but it's something to do with more human and I think, I think, I think we strangely might be coming from the same place, I just say it a different way. I don't know exactly yet their kind of tagline and branding, but you, you do need to think about what it gives back to the world. There are so many great entertainment podcasts out there. They have nothing to do with changing the world predominantly, but some of them do a fantastic job of making light of certain situations of. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1:
If there's a podcast I need to mention and you might have already listened to it I've not actually listened to it in full it's always the clips richard osmond and a co-host I don't know the name of, but it's like the behind the scenes of the TV industry. Oh, I wish I had the name of it to hand right now, because I listen to every clip all the time and I'll listen and listen to the same clips. I'm a bit like that with clips, so take a listen to that one, I mean, and that's not changing the world, it's just very insightful. There's another one with George Osborne and Ed Balls. Is that who it is? It is politics. That one started to come up on my radar again. That's interesting. It's not changing the world, but it I mean that one could be because it's politics a bit more there.
Speaker 1:
So make sure you've got a reason, make sure it's the right time and make sure you're not just doing it because a competitor's got it, because you're trying to get that street carried. Choose a podcast because it's the right thing for you choose. Choose a podcast, my opinion is because it changes the world. It lets you connect to the audience in a very deep way and it answers all your problems for content creation, because take one nice piece and turn it into 15 other pieces of content in your world. That is what I love to do with my podcast, whilst changing the way the world thinks, which is what I implore that you go away and do. If you do decide that a podcast is for you and I can help you do that head to the link to be able to download the free starter checklist to get your podcast started. If you realize that actually, this is the right thing for you to be doing today, I'll see you next time.
