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Transcript

Stop Pouring Gimmicks Into Your Podcast For Attention · Your Mic

• 0:00
  When 7-Up launched, they launched with lithium citrate in the formula.
• 0:05
  Yes, a real psychiatric
• 0:07
  drug, the kind used today in 2026 to treat bipolar disorder and mania.
• 0:14
  And they never hit it.
• 0:16
  They marketed it.
• 0:18
  Quote, take the ouch out of the grouch.
• 0:22
  Now, to their credit, the FDA banned
• 0:24
  lithium from beverages in 1948.
• 0:28
  But for 19 years, desperation dressed up as a feature.
• 0:37
  I want you to take that energy and apply it to the podcast space because I've seen it.
• 0:42
  You've
• 0:43
  likely seen it too.
• 0:44
  You got the dramatic cold opens, the fake urgency, the bros on LinkedIn
• 0:48
  in talking about the intros, yada, yada, yada, yada.
• 0:52
  You got the gimmicks borrowed from shows
• 0:54
  with 10 times the budget and a fraction of the substance.
• 0:57
  And that my friend is lithium
• 0:59
  in the podcast space.
• 1:02
  You've got a host who's flamboyant for the sake of being flamboyant,
• 1:05
  sending one signal, desperation.
• 1:10
  And if your show is an extension of your brand,
• 1:13
  your business, your name, the reputation you have spent years building,
• 1:19
  you people can sniff it from 10 feet away from across a podcast feed from the first 30 seconds
• 1:28
  before they even get to the skip button there's a cliche desperate times call for desperate
• 1:35
  measures right maybe that applies somewhere in life in podcasting you don't apply it anywhere
• 1:43
  because the fix is never a trick.
• 1:46
  It's not going to be the bells and the whistles
• 1:48
  and it certainly isn't going to be lithium.
• 1:50
  Remember the FDA banned it in 1948?
• 1:52
  The fix is always being useful.
• 1:58
  And right here, halfway through this episode,
• 2:00
  I want to make sure you've actually got a framework
• 2:02
  for what that looks like and not just a hot take.
• 2:05
  I want to give you the how, the what.
• 2:08
  If you want the full picture, every single step,
• 2:10
  every phase from launching your show to keeping it alive, you're going to grab that Speak
• 2:15
  Podcasting roadmap at speakpodcasting.com slash free resources.
• 2:22
  Now let's talk about what useful
• 2:24
  actually means in your podcast.
• 2:27
  You're going to lead with the payoff.
• 2:29
  Your listener made a decision
• 2:31
  the second they press play.
• 2:33
  Reward it immediately.
• 2:35
  In the first 60 seconds of your episode, tell them
• 2:38
  exactly what they're going to walk away with.
• 2:40
  Not your bio, not your intro music loop.
• 2:44
  We're
• 2:44
  talking about the payoff.
• 2:46
  What are they going to know after listening that they didn't know before?
• 2:50
  One of my favorite podcasts is called the Startup Ideas Podcast with Greg Eisenberg.
• 2:56
  He begins every interview with what are people going to learn by the end of this episode?
• 3:02
  I love that.
• 3:03
  In fact, I've stolen it for one of my episodes, and I'm going to probably be stealing that for future episodes.
• 3:12
  Now, before you hit record, you're going to need to ask yourself, what is my listener's real pain point right now?
• 3:19
  What kept them up last night?
• 3:21
  Not sure what you want to talk about, what they need to hear?
• 3:26
  There's a difference.
• 3:28
  The show that serves the listener's question, not the host's ego, is the show that gets the repeat listen.
• 3:35
  Next, you're going to give them one thing they can do.
• 3:38
  Not five, not a list of ten action items that overwhelms them into doing nothing.
• 3:44
  One thing.
• 3:45
  One clear, specific, doable thing they can implement before your next episode drops.
• 3:51
  The host who gives one actionable takeaway every single week becomes indispensable.
• 3:57
  The host who gives 12 becomes noise.
• 4:01
  What you also want to do is earn the next episode.
• 4:05
  Every one is an audition for the next one.
• 4:09
  End the episode by making the listener feel like they just got something real
• 4:13
  and like there's more where that came from.
• 4:17
  You don't need a cliffhanger.
• 4:20
  As for true crime podcasts, you need a reason.
• 4:24
  So plant it.
• 4:25
  every single episode.
• 4:28
  And that's what useful looks like.
• 4:30
  It's not glamorous.
• 4:32
  It doesn't need a gimmick.
• 4:34
  It definitely doesn't need lithium.
• 4:37
  And here's the part that matters most.
• 4:39
  You don't need the masses for this to work.
• 4:42
  Say it with me.
• 4:43
  You do not need the masses.
• 4:49
  The right crowd will find you without ads,
• 4:52
  although those help.
• 4:54
  The right crowd is going to find you without going viral
• 4:57
  For something you'll regret by Thursday
• 5:00
  The right crowd is going to find you without a manufactured personality
• 5:04
  That exhausts you to maintain
• 5:06
  And I'm going to be real with you
• 5:08
  Because sometimes the M in masses is silent
• 5:12
  What you want is a tribe
• 5:15
  Not a crowd
• 5:17
  You want the listeners who stay through the whole episode
• 5:20
  Who share it because it genuinely helped them
• 5:23
  who show up next week because last week was worth it,
• 5:27
  who eventually become clients, referrals,
• 5:29
  or the person who changes the trajectory of your business
• 5:33
  with one conversation.
• 5:34
  That is definitely not a mass audience.
• 5:36
  That is a tribe.
• 5:39
  And tribes are built on trust.
• 5:43
  7-Up put lithium in the bottle
• 5:44
  because it didn't trust its own product to do the work.
• 5:48
  Trust yours.
• 5:50
  Show up.
• 5:52
  be useful be consistent let the right people find you because they will they always will
• 5:59
  that's your mic my name is freddie cruz and if you've been putting lithium in your show's water
• 6:05
  this is your sign to flush it speakpodcasting.com free resources is where you are going to find that
• 6:12
  roadmap so go get it
• 6:15
  Thank you.