MBA1680 Q&A Wednesday: I’m starting a new podcast. Any advice?

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Hey O welcome to the $100 RMBA show Daily Business Fitness every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the $100 MBA, a complete business training and community online over at100mba.net and today's episode is a Q and A Wednesday episode. On our Q and A Wednesday episodes we answer a question from one of you one of our listeners. If you have a question you want to ask just email me over@omar mba.net and I'll make sure to answer it right here on Q. Today's question is from Sharon and Sharon asks hey Omar, I am starting a brand new podcast about interior design with my blog. I help other people decorate their small apartment and my podcast is all about how to make your apartment look great without over cluttering it and leaving room to breathe. I'll be bringing on lighting experts, furniture experts, interior designers and decorators and it will be a weekly podcast. I would love any advice that you can give as a successful podcast host. I've been listening to your show for years and aspire to be a great podcast like the $100 MBA show. Any help you can offer would be appreciated. Thanks Sharon. Great question Sharon and congratulations for launching your brand new podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in and listening to our podcast. In today's episode, I'm going to be sharing my top five tips. When it comes to starting any new podcast, what are the things you really need to focus on to maximize your success? Podcasting is a great way to grow an audience and to reach them, but let's make sure we're doing it right. We're putting our best foot forward. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. One of the best things I did for my business and my personal brand was start this podcast, the $100 MBA Show. I am so grateful that I made that decision six ago. It's allowed me to understand my audience better, get in touch with them, talk to them, help them out, add value to their lives and their business. And it's opened so many doors for me and my business. It's introduced me to great experts. It's allowed me to be invited onto big stages at conferences around the world. It also allowed me to find my personal voice and feel comfortable with my own brand. But I've seen so many podcasts fail and not succeed since I launched mine six years ago. There are so many podcasts that actually launched with me the same time and I don't see them anymore, they don't publish anymore, they're not a success story or they don't serve their audience anymore. And it's because they don't do or haven't done. These five things I want to share with you to help you have a successful podcast. Tip number one is to focus on your audience. This means nothing matters unless you're delivering great value to your audience. Really, all you need to worry about in the beginning and every day you step up to the mic is delivering a great show, creating an episode that really adds value to the lives of your listeners. You really have to challenge yourself and ask yourself, is your podcast better than the competition? Is your podcast better than the other ones in your niche in your category? And why? Why is it better? What are you doing every time to differentiate, to add more value, to just be a better use of their time? People are choosing how they're going to spend their time, how they're going to listen to podcasts, or which podcasts they're going to listen to. So make sure you give them a reason why they should choose you. This was my sole focus in the first six months of the one NBA show, is really trying to fine tune the podcast and make sure that I Deliver a fantastic show. Every single episode has to be wow. It has to be share worthy. It has to be something that is worth telling other people about. Like, hey, I just listened to this podcast episode. Let me give you the link that creates what's called viral marketing. It makes people pass on the information to the next person. It only happens if you focus on providing incredible value, incredible content for your audience that that is better than what's out there. You have to raise the bar. It's a good exercise in the beginning to actually listen to your competitions, podcast, take notes. What's good about it, what's not so good about it, what can they improve and make sure that you do it better. At the end of the day, all the marketing in the world will not help you if your actual podcast is not good. It has to be great. It has to be. When people find it, they're so glad they did. All right, tip number two, and this one is probably the one that people neglect the most and is the number one reason why people fail. They don't do this one. And that is being consistent. Consistency is super important with podcasts. Podcast listeners are creatures of habit. They love listening to the podcast regularly. So if you're going to publish weekly, make sure you are always publishing at the same time, the same day, and it's consistent. You should be way ahead in schedule so that you never miss a beat, so you never miss a scheduled episode, so you never disappoint your audience. Consistency is super, super key. It's like being on TV or doing the news or something like that. People are expecting you to be on the air. Yes, it's not live, but people are expecting an episode on a certain day at a certain time and they want it. They're looking forward to it. That's a good thing to have. That's a good requirement or something that you're to achieve every single week, because that means people are hungry for what you have. Make sure you deliver consistently. There are so many podcasts out there that are consistent maybe for the first five, six, seven weeks, and then they get lazy, they get tired, they get disorganized, they skip a week, maybe skip a couple of weeks, or they're late a day or two. This really disrespects your audience and really doesn't make your podcast look professional. And it's going to weaken your ability to show up on the charts on Apple itunes as well as Apple podcasts. I should say they changed to Apple podcasts recently or Spotify or Stitcher or Himalaya. Your consistency matters because you're actually helping the actual platform with great, consistent content. So they're going to promote you if you are consistent. Take it from me, I run a daily podcast for the last six years and consistency has really helped us. Okay. We haven't missed a beat. We're so happy that we haven't. We work really hard on it. We record in advance and we batch and we make sure that we deliver consistently. Tip number three, you have to market your podcast. A lot of us, we think we just publish the podcast, put it on the platform, and Apple Podcast or Spotify, they're going to market for me, right? They're going to distribute it for me. No, that's just a place where people can find you. You got to point them to it. It's just like a website. You have to get people to your website. You have to get people to your podcast. You have to have some marketing strategy, even if it's free marketing, like you're running a campaign or you're doing some sort of social media marketing on your social platforms. Run a live webinar and encourage people to subscribe and give you ratings and reviews. Run an automated webinar, teaching a lesson or doing an episode live or a recorded one, and then showing them how to subscribe and listen to more episodes on your podcast. Promoting to your email newsletter. You have to market your podcast and it's not a once and done. It's a consistent thing. It should be something that is a part of your regular marketing campaigns. You got to get your show out there. Number four, increase your standards. Constantly. Try to raise the game on your podcast. Try to raise the bar. A lot of people, they do the opposite. They have a very high bar of the quality, the sound, the guests. And then as they move on, one month, two months, three months, as the show kind of gets older, the bar gets lower and lower. The quality gets worse and worse. No, you should be doing the opposite. The episode you just published should be better than the last episode. Every single time. You should be really trying to raise the bar. Every single time. You need to be really, really picky about who gets on your show. Not anybody who can talk about interior design, like a friend or somebody who doesn't know what they're talking about. You want to get the best of the best. And maybe if you're just getting started, you're going to reach out to your contacts, but then get those contacts to introduce you to other people and constantly try to raise the bar. Shows that do this are always growing so if you look at any interview show, big time interview show, Marc Maron, wtf, the Joe Rogan Show, Tim Ferriss, if you look at the caliber of the guests they've had on the show, if you look at the quality of their audio, if you look at just the quality of the production, it's gotten better and better over the years and you should demand the same from yourself. Tip number five, this is kind of like marketing, but it's called in platform marketing. And this means that what you want to do is get on other podcasts as much as possible. I try to be a guest on other podcasts at least once a week. At the end of the year, I have 52 appearances. Why do I do this? Because people that listen to podcasts are already sold on the platform. They're already on a podcast app. If I tell them about my podcast, it's easy to convert that person to a listener of my podcast because they know what podcasts are, they're familiar with podcast apps, and they can easily right there when they're listening. Subscribe to your podcast. It's a great way to grow your show. Obviously, in the beginning, it's not going to be easy to get on a show every single week. You might go on a show every month or maybe once every two months, but that's okay. Work up to it. I've been doing this for six years, so when I first got started, it was a struggle for me to get on some shows. But I kept on trying. And then when I got the opportunity to be on a show, I made sure I delivered. I studied that podcast. I looked at all their past interviews. I tried to add a unique value. I wanted to make sure my episode was the most successful, most downloaded episode they've ever had so that I can leverage that great episode and turn those listeners into my listeners of my podcast.

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To wrap up today's question from Sharon, she's starting a new podcast. She was looking for advice. Stick to these five tips and you can't go wrong. It's really what's helped me really focus on creating a great podcast and be able to produce it for six years and running. But lastly, you have to enjoy it. It's going to be really hard for you to be consistent and to continue to do this podcast whether it's daily or weekly. If you don't like it, if you don't like to get in front of the mic and speak to people or produce a podc. So really start to grow a love for it. All right? I have found that trying to focus on getting better and better, mastering this craft has helped me really fall in love with podcasting. It's a great medium. It's a great way to grow an audience. I absolutely love it. So congratulations Sharon. And for everybody who's listening that's thinking about starting a podcast or has started a podcast, well done. Keep on going. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 NBA show. If you have a question you want to ask on Q and A Wednesday, just go ahead and email me@omar00mba.net I'll make sure that I answer right here on Q and A Wednesday. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Podcasting is a long term game, right? It's something that you're going to invest in. It's going to take some time to build your credibility, build your brand, build your show, and you're not going to get immediate results. But the results are long lasting. Podcasts are evergreen. People can refer to them for years to come. It's your legacy really. So see this as an investment. Even if you don't see so much traction in the first month or two. You'll start to see some as you get better, as you market more, as you grow the audience. Thanks so much for listening. Make sure you share this podcast to your friends and family. If you love today's episode. Thank you in advance for doing that. I'll see you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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