If you’re talking to no one, why are you talking?

Something happened to me this morning, that derailed what I was actually going to talk about in this week's episode. And it's that my daughter posed a very interesting question to me. See, I was driving her to school this morning and somebody cut me off. So I did what any responsible adult with children in the car would do. And I just muttered to myself instead of doing some grand road ragey And And in muttering to myself, my daughter heard that I, I. I was saying something. And she asked me what I was saying. I said. Oh, don't worry about it. I was just muttering to myself. And then she asked me what the word muttering means. Uh, again, she's five years old, very inquisitive about words, which is great. And my, I love that. And I said, oh, it basically just means I was talking, but I wasn't talking to anybody. And she said this. If you are talking to nobody. Then why are you talking at all? And that my friends is the subject for today's episode. Because your show is never going to grow. It's never going to be monetized. If you don't know who you're talking to you, or as my daughter put it. If you're talking to nobody. Here on make money podcasting. Okay. So that question once I was, if you're talking to nobody. Why even talk at all? Or then why are you talking? At all. And I think that this is, this is a topic I want to cover because I think it's something. That a lot of podcasters suffer from. They know they want to start a podcast. They vaguely know the topic. Maybe if you've been listening to this show for a long time. A long time as relative. Uh, if you've listened, if you've been listening to the show, Then, you know, that it's really important to me that you figure out why you're podcasting. And who you're talking to. Right. I did an entire episode on a mission statement. So. A lot of people, I believe start a podcast. They don't really think much about it. They'll just think I'm I'll interview people who are interesting to me. And then they'll go on, but. Uh, to, to put my daughter's question. Into a different kind of phrase, right? Um, Podcasters, try to talk to everybody. And if you're talking to everybody, you're talking to nobody. And this is true, right? If, if your main goal is just to get like, Thousands or millions of downloads. Then, yeah, you're trying to talk to, and please a lot of people. But unless you are a giant network or you're doing like true crime. Uh, or some other kind of fiction podcast that has mass appeal. You know, if you're like Joe Rogan. Um, or a political podcast or. Then. Then maybe you can get millions of downloads. But it's going to take a long time. If you're trying to make money podcasting. And if you're trying to, to make podcasting a part of your business, You likely have a limited addressable audience? Uh, and if you're not talking directly to that addressable audience, Then you're not talking to anybody. And if you're talking to nobody, then what, why are you even talking? Right. So. Your goal. Whether you've already started the podcast or whether you're getting ready to start a podcast. Because. You can change things Uh, what you decide to do on episode one is not set And I think podcasting is a lot. Of, uh, experimentation. Um, so. If, if you're not experimenting, I think you should. And if you're worried that what you've decided to do. Is. Uh, the thing that you have to keep doing. Don't worry about that, right? This show. It started in January as something kind of different. And then I pivoted in, in June and as a result, I've been seeing a lot more downloads because of it. So. Experiment, especially in the beginning, do what works, but. Either way, figure out who you're talking to. The way you do that. Is to. Have a mission statement. Again, I did a whole episode on this. I'll link it in the show notes. But your mission statement is basically. Who are you talking to? What problem do you solve for them? And how do you solve that So my audience for this show. R. Podcasters. Who. Want to turn their podcast into an integral part of their business. Their problem is they don't know how to make money. With their podcast. I solved that problem. By giving listeners actionable advice every week for how to focus, grow, and monetize their podcast. That's how I do it. Right. My other show, how I built it. The audience is. Creators and small business owners. Their problem is how can they create content in such a way that grows their business? And I solved that problem by interviewing successful creators in what amounts to be a free coaching call. So that's the, that's the mission of both of my shows. My third show is a little bit lost at this It had one mission. It wasn't working And so now I'm trying to rework that mission. And I'm confident that once I figure out exactly who I'm talking to. Uh, I'll be able to create really good content without sweating it too much without trying to think too much Uh, figuring out, oh, what am I going to talk about this week? Right? Cause that's, that's the other problem that you fall into when you're trying to talk to everybody, when you don't have a clear mission for your show. Is you get to wondering. Well, what am I going to talk about this week? I have a lot of ideas. Which 1:00 AM I going to pick? Or I don't have any ideas now. I got to come up with something. But I have a whole list of ideas for this show. And I try to batch a couple of these episodes in a row. I happened to run out and it was just kind of serendipitous that my daughter asked me this Um, And I'll maybe if you're interested, I'll do an episode on inspiration, like finding inspiration. Uh, if you are interested in that, Email me. Uh, joe@podcastliftoff.com. And let me know if you want to hear that. But. Having your mission statement is, is your guiding light. Once you have your mission statement. Right now you need to figure out. Uh, Who you're or you know who you're talking to now. Right. So now you want to figure out. How to, I guess, talk to them effectively, right? 'cause the other thing is that if you're not. If you say you talk to, if I say I talked to podcasters and then I just talk about how to get sponsorships on Tik TOK, like yeah. Podcasts just can take that advice, I guess. But I'm not talking to podcasters. I'm just talking generally about how to get sponsors. And that's a bad idea because I don't know how to get sponsors on Tik TOK. Um, so. You want to define your mission statement? So you know who exactly you're talking to, what problem you're solving for them. And then you want to do that effectively because then. Your target audience, the person that you're talking to knows that you're talking to them. So I think there are two ways, kind of two types of shows that you can have. That. Really do this effectively. The first is to start a mini podcast. This is going to be a drum I'm beating I beat for a while because I, again, I did an episode on that. I'll be sure to link that in the show notes as well. You can get all of the back catalog over at make money. pod.com. But a mini podcast is. Uh, show with a hyper-focused message. This is a mini podcast. It's just me talking to you for 20 minutes or less. About a specific topic. So. Again, I help podcasters make money. What are all the ways I can help podcasters make money? Okay. I can tell them about my smash framework. I can tell them how to get sponsors. I can tell them how to calculate CPM or overall reach, to figure out how much to charge for those sponsors. I can tell them about memberships. I can tell them how to effectively create affiliate links. I have a bunch of ideas because now I'm talking specifically to a person about how to solve a specific problem. So, if you are thinking about this, start a mini podcasts, listen to the mini podcast episode. I kind of give you all of the reasons why, but. Again, you have your mission come up Let's say 10 or 20 topics. Look for inspiration everywhere. Right? This inspiration came to me from my daughter asking me a After somebody cut me off and I was annoyed And then she asked me this question. I was like, this is a great question. So. You can turn those ideas into episodes pretty quickly. And you are talking to someone specific. Now if you have an interview show. I have an interview If you're just starting, I really recommend not doing an interview Or at least not starting off that way. Right. You're. And your format can change. Like I've talked about. Earlier in this episode, I talked about how you can experiment. And you can experiment with different formats and I've done that on how I built it on how I built it. I have. Uh, like a bunch of interviews and I thought maybe I should do a solo episode. Maybe I should do a gift guide episode, those gifts guide episodes. So the people love being told what to buy, I guess. So. You can experiment, but I think if you're starting And you want to decrease that barrier of entry. Doing a mini podcast means you don't have to come up with an hour's worth of content. You don't have to coordinate schedules with anybody. You can kind of get your sea legs for this, and then you can start interviewing people. So. If you interview people. Find people who solve the problem from your mission This is really important. My weakest I've been, I've been doing how I built it now for. Almost seven years. Geez. That is a long time. Uh, it's it's just over six years, actually. We are in the seventh And my best episodes. Our real focused on the mission. And the mission of that show changed to, I wanted to tell stories about how WordPress developers started their businesses. And so I got successful WordPress business owners, and I got them to tell their stories. About how they came up with the idea. Failures that led to their eventual success. And then this is where the name comes in, how they built their product. And we talk about tech stack and things like that. And I had a very specific audience for that show. And the really popular. This is why I think it got popular in the beginning. Because the mission and the guests were so aligned. And there was a very specific audience I was talking WordPress developers. So. This is something that I think you need to do to, oh, my, my ultimate point there was that the weakest episodes were the ones that had nothing to do with the mission. I interviewed Peter Hollins, one of the most popular YouTubers. Uh, in, I mean, His YouTube channel is huge and he's an acapella singer, right? Anybody does it really well. And I was really interested in his process and I'm a big fan of his, and I got him to come on the show. And. It was a week episode. I thought it was going to crush the download records that I had, but it didn't. Because he's, he has nothing to do with WordPress. He's not a developer. And his main, his main area is YouTube. I'm very visual, medium. So even if he like tweeted at which he did, he tweeted out the episode. His audience, probably wasn't listening to podcasts. His audience wanted to see it on YouTube. And I being the knucklehead that I was didn't put it on YouTube as So. That episode really? Was eyeopening to me. And it, it made me realize I shouldn't stray from the mission. If I had him on the show today, I think it would do a lot better because now the mission is to help creators. And small business owners create content to grow their business, which is exactly what Peter Holmes does. And I'm putting the episodes. On YouTube now. And so I think it will do a lot better today, but. That's because. Today, he's more aligned with my show's mission. So. All of that to Interview people who solve the problem from your mission statement, don't just have your friends on, or your colleagues on, or your people who you're a really big fan of. Find the right people. How do you find the right Follow helpful people on YouTube who are tweeting. About the problem you're trying to solve. Look for people with similar podcasts. Right? So if you're looking for podcasters, I'm a good person to have on your show, or if you're looking for online educators. My friend, Chris Badgett has a podcast. He's a great person to have on your show. So find. People with similar podcasts in your similar alert Or niche. Look for the one thing. That these people are talking about. Okay. So whether it's like Twitter or Instagram or Tik TOK or whatever, Look for the one thing, my friend, Justin Moore, the one thing he talks about is brand sponsorships. All he talks about his brand sponsorships. He's going to be on my main podcast soon. And we're going to talk about how, as a content creator, you can get brand sponsorships that it falls in line with the mission. He's a literal brand sponsor coach. There is a little sponsorship coach. So my audience is going to get a free coaching call from Justin. For how they can monetize their content. Sponsorship. And then the last thing you can do is ask your audience, your listeners, or if you don't have a lot of listeners yet, maybe your prelaunch, maybe you're just launching. Ask your social media followers or your email list. Or the people you're most engaged with ask them for recommendations for who they want to hear from, because they're following you. Because you're good at what you do, right? You talk about whatever you solve, the problems you're trying to solve. And people are following you because you're doing a good job of helping them do that. Ask your audience for recommendations. Hey, what other people are also solving this that you want to hear from what questions do you want to ask them? And now you're getting people that your audience knows are your audience already thinks are helpful. So getting those people on the show. Aligns well with your mission. So. If you're talking to no one. Then why are you talking at all? A great question that my daughter asked me. I didn't have a good answer for it. Besides, well, some people just like to talk. And if you like to talk, that's fine. I love to talk. I talked maybe too much. But. The time and effort and money it takes. To create a podcast. Is. Not worth. Just liking to tell you could just talk, you could talk for free. I'm talking to a microphone. You could do that for free. But if you have a podcast, You need to know who you're talking to. And it can't be everybody. Because if you're talking to everybody, when you're talking to nobody. And that's it for this episode of make money podcasting. I hope you enjoyed it. If you have. Any questions. Let me know, send me an email, Joe at podcast, liftoff.com. If you like this episode, give it a rating and review on apple podcasts. And. If you want to get all of the episodes I talked about. As well as the link to apple podcast to do that reading interview. You can head over to make money. pod.com. Thanks so much for listening until next time. I'm joe casabona and i can't wait to see what you make