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Resilience Is The Real Podcast Metric · Your Mic

• 0:00
  You might think this is wrong, but I don't care.
• 0:03
  It is okay for you to suffer during your podcast journey.
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  In fact, I want your podcast journey to hurt.
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  To hurt so bad, you suffer.
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  To hurt so bad, your words actually bleed through your microphone.
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  Condor this quote from the world's first high-performance psychologist, Friedrich Nietzsche.
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  With those human beings who are of any concern to me, I wish suffering, desolation, sickness,
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  ill treatment, and indignities.
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  Now most people hear that and think, what an asshole.
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  But if you're staring at tiny podcast numbers and questioning your sanity, this is exactly
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  the blessing you need.
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  That's because Nietzsche isn't saying, I hope bad things happen because I'm cruel.
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  He's saying, if I actually care about you.
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  I don't wish you a frictionless, padded life.
• 1:01
  I want you to get punched in the face by reality often enough that you become dangerous
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  to your limits, to your excuses, to your own laziness.
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  Now, zoom that into your podcast.
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  Crack open your analytics and see 17 downloads here, 14 there, oh 42 actual downloads,
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  a YouTube episode where everybody bails in under a minute, feels like a personal insult,
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  feels like I'm talking to myself, it feels like the universe is whispering, no one cares.
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  That sting, Nietzsche would call that necessary, the lie about supportive numbers, the modern
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  creator fantasy is, launch show, friends listen, stranger show up, the graph politely climbs.
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  If that happened, you would never build resilience, you'd never get sharp on your topic, you'd
• 1:59
  never learn how to write a hook that punches someone in the throat in five seconds or less,
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  you'd be soft, grateful maybe, but soft.
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  Your low download numbers are not evidence that the show shouldn't exist, they are evidence
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  that you're still in the part of the story where the hero has not yet been trained.
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  Daniel Laruso from Karate Kid.
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  Now there are three ways to use pain instead of marinating in it, one, treat your metrics
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  like weights, not grades, if you walk into a gym load of our bill and it feels heavy you
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  don't say, I'm a failure, the gym hates me, I'm never going to be muscular, I'm never
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  going to burn this fat and then go home forever, no, you say cool, here's some weight that
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  I can actually lift with and then you push downloads retention or if you're on Apple,
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  your average consumption rate, it's all the same.
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  The number is not a letter grade on your worth, it's the weight you're lifting this season,
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  the next quarter, the plates change if you keep training and before you realize it, maybe,
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  just maybe you are lifting with three 45 pound plates on each side, two, turn discouragement
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  into content, not self-pity.
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  Next time you open your dashboard and feel that gut drop, don't just scroll away, name
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  the thought out loud, why am I even doing this and not in a rhetorical way.
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  If you're asking yourself why you're even doing this, here's how to answer it.
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  Let's talk about what a too small niche actually is.
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  Here's how you're going to be getting better on the mic even if there's nobody listening.
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  Use the pain as your editorial calendar.
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  You go to my YouTube channel, I'll say it again, there are episodes where I've got just
• 3:58
  a handful of views and that's okay.
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  Use the pain as your editorial calendar, turn your pain into content, three, obsess over
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  people, not pixels.
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  Imagine 30 people in a room, you'd show up on time, wouldn't you?
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  You'd prepare at least a couple of weeks in advance, you'd give a damn.
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  But on screen, 30 downloads seems like a failure.
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  Write down the names of real humans who have told you they listened to your podcast.
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  This could be clients, LinkedIn connections, people who tagged you on Facebook, friends
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  who didn't have to say anything but did.
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  That's your real audience.
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  When you record, picture all those people in a room watching you speak.
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  You're not performing for the chart.
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  You were talking to very specific people who voluntarily put your voice in their head
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  while they're driving, lifting, folding laundry while they are taking care of household chores,
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  maybe washing dishes.
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  That is intimate as hell and you've got to tree it that way.
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  Now when Friedrich Nietzsche said he wishes suffering desolation, sickness, ill treatment
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  and indignities on people he cares about, he follows it with the why because that's how
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  you learn to overcome yourself.
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  Your little dashboard heart breaks are the ill treatment.
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  The algorithm ghosting you is the indignity.
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  The question is, do you use that to overcome your flinch reflex or do you use it as evidence
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  that you were never meant to do this?
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  So here's the blessing.
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  May your next episode underperform.
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  May the graph look ugly.
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  May the silence piss you off just enough that you sharpen your hook, tighten your story
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  and finally build a system instead of a hobby.
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  And if you're done treating pain like random punishment and you're ready to turn it into
• 6:04
  an actual show that gets more than just a handful of people showing up for you, grab the
• 6:10
  speak podcasting roadmap.
• 6:12
  It's the step by step you can use to aim all this chaos.
• 6:16
  Do the show us for what it sells, how it grows, hit speakpodcasting.com slash free resources,
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  grab it and let the pain do its job.
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  Thank you so much for listening.