Strategy du jour: Podcasting for business

This transcript has been automatically created and minimally edited/formatted. As such, there may be some errors in the text.
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[Episode preview]

When you have the foundations that are at the core of all sustainably successful businesses, you can use pretty much any strategy you genuinely desire to use to create real lasting sustainable success in your business. Podcasting for business is no different podcasts. For business is inherently a marketing strategy, which means we need to know what are those foundations underneath it? What is the context that we are building and using this strategy within in order for podcasting to be effective as part of your business ecosystem?

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[Podcast Intro]
Hey, welcome to the Sustainable Success podcast. This is your home for honest conversations about building and running an online business that brings you as much joy as it does revenue. I’m Carly Jo Bell, the Sustainable Success mentor and your guide on this journey with self trust as your North Star and foundations under your feet, you’ll be able to look external for ideas, internal, for answers and build your business your way. Let’s dive in.
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[Episode begins]

We released our very first episode of our podcast here at HCO on February 1420 22. A lot has changed since then. One of the most obvious ones being that this podcast was called Selling Chocolate back then while it is now called the Sustainable Success Podcast. But still, regardless this week, we are celebrating this podcast’s second birthday and I am so proud, I am so proud of myself in honor of this two year anniversary. I wanna do another of our strategy Du Jour series episodes this time, talking about podcasting and the foundations you need first. Having been in business for over five years. At this point, I’ve begun to see how things really do come in and go out regularly. I can only imagine what it’ll be like when I’ve been in business for 10 years or 20 years, just how much I will have seen come in and go out during that time period. But podcasting and long form content in general is really one of those things that seemed to be having its moment a few years ago. And then people were like, everyone has a podcast, people only like short form content anyway. And so then it went out and already, I feel like I’m seeing a resurgence of appreciation for long form content once again. Although truth be told, I have always loved long form content and I’ve always created long form content. So I am over here kind of just staying outside of those trends anyway. But anyway, this is why we call this series strategy Du Jour because frankly, once you’ve been in business for a few years, you see that certain strategies keep coming and going and coming and going and coming and going and instead of it being like, you see this thing come in and everyone’s talking about it and you start thinking, oh my gosh, II, I have to do that or that’s what so and so says that I have to do if I want XYZ result, you really just start seeing these strategies come in once again and you’re like, all right, I’m just gonna keep doing my thing. If my thing happens to align with the trends, awesome, if it doesn’t also, OK, podcasting as a business strategy is a strategy. And if you’ve listened to our very first episode in this strategy dujour series where we talked about launching, you know, that there is a difference between strategies and foundations and that really when you have the foundations that are at the core of all sustainably successful businesses, you can use pretty much any strategy you genuinely desire to use to create real lasting sustainable success in your business. Podcasting for business is no different. It is a strategy which really means that if you see someone saying you have to have a podcast in order to whatever the thing is, you know, you can kind of just write that statement off because you know that there is no one right strategy, there is only the right for you strategy or strategies. Of course, I hope you know that if you have not heard me say that before. Welcome to the Sustainable Success podcast. There is no one right way to do anything in business. There is only your way. Now, if podcasting is a right for you strategy and it really does make sense within the context of your business, your audience, your priorities, your dreams. Awesome. If it isn’t a right for you strategy also. Awesome. And if it is a strategy that you desire to use, then you do need to have certain foundations in place in order for it to be a successful strategy. We’re here today to talk through what those foundations might be and how they influence your strategy on the Expand Saless page, which you can find at hco media.com/expand, you’ll see a video where I actually walk you through what we call the HCO hierarchy of steps. If you’re a visual person, I recommend that you go and take a look at that. But I will do a quick digest here. I want to invite you to picture a triangle that is split horizontally into four sections. If you’re familiar with the idea of a food pyramid, you can picture that. So at the bottom tier of our little triangle or pyramid here you have the context. Next up, the next tier above context is the foundations. Our third tier is the strategies and our fourth and final top tier is tactics in order to build a sustainably successful business that brings you as much joy as it does revenue. You want to start at the bottom of the triangle with the context and then work your way up through the foundations. Then the strategies then the tactics unfortunately, for everyone, most business owners skip over these bottom two tiers, the context and the foundations. And instead they start at that third level, the strategy level, they think things like I need to figure out how to get clients from my marketing. And then they go by a course on how to get clients through reels or in the case of our conversation here today, how to get clients through podcasting. Now they go take this course, right? And it’s like, well, here’s how to find your podcast topics and here’s how to, you know, how long your videos should be or you should do a video podcast or an audio only podcast. And here’s how to repurpose your content from your podcast onto other platforms. And here’s how to name your podcast episode titles. I don’t know, I’ve never actually taken a course on podcasting. I’m just imagining some things that could be there. And all of these things that are in these courses are strategies, some of them are even tactics and these things are now part of those top two tiers of the HCO hierarchy of steps, strategies and tactics. This isn’t a problem, right? Like courses that teach these elements of podcasting actually are great and they only are great when you already have the context and the foundations in place these strategies, these tactics that are taught in courses or by search writers or whatever it is only work when you already have the context and the foundations. What happens when you skip over the context and the foundations and go straight to the strategies and tactics? Well, you often will end up implementing that strategy to A T you’ll implement it perfectly exactly how they say you should and still not get the results that you desire or that even were promised as part of this whatever course or whatever it is. And when you’re talking about something that takes as much time, energy and money that podcasting takes, you do not want to implement someone else’s strategy and get little to know or at least inconsistent results from it. Podcasting for business is inherently a marketing strategy which means we need to know what are those foundations underneath it. What is the context that we are building and using this strategy within in order for podcasting to be effective as part of your business ecosystem. So we have to start by, of course, talking about that first tier of the HCO hierarchy of steps. The context, the context in question is your sustainable success system, a system which ties together every single element of your audience offers messaging marketing, lead generation and sales. Building out each of these contextual elements of your sustainable success system is exactly what we do inside of our comprehensive business training program. Expand. We start with building out your audience, then your offers, then your messaging, then your marketing, then your lead generation and then your sales. We work through these elements in this specific order because every single one of them builds on top of one another. Every single one of them provides necessary context that allows each of the next elements to be successful. We started audience because your audience informs your offers, we build offers because your offers inform your messaging. We design your messaging because your messaging informs your marketing. We hone your marketing because your marketing informs your lead generation, we develop your lead generation because your lead generation informs your sales and it’s only by going through each of these contextual elements of your sustainable success system. In this order that you are able to fully to its fullest capacity, build out the next element and see your intended results from it, which brings us back to marketing notice where it is in your sustainable success system. Out of six contextual elements, it’s number four with only lead generation and sales following it. Which means that in order for any marketing strategy to be effective, including podcasting for business, you have to have the foundations and the strategies already in place already 70 to 80% solid of the three elements. Before it, you need the foundations and strategies of your audience. You need the foundations and strategies of your offers. You need the foundations and strategies of your messaging. One of my clients, when she first started working with me, had a podcast. She was very consistent, very reliable in putting episodes out, but she actually didn’t, although I know who her right, the audience was nor how to tie her podcast episodes to her offers through transparent and magnetic messaging. And so she was creating so much content, so so many podcast episodes, she was interviewing so many guests, she was putting so much effort into marketing her podcast episodes. And despite all of this effort, all of the time, energy and money going into this, it wasn’t paying off. It really wasn’t bringing her much of any results except for some cool connections, obviously through the people that she was interviewing, she likes those people, you know, but in terms of actual results that she was looking for in terms of this being a valuable thing for her and her business to be putting so much time and energy and money into, it wasn’t pulling its weight, it wasn’t paying off. Now. I know a lot of times I hear from business owners that they just want to add a value. So it’s like, well, I’m doing the podcast because it adds value. But in order for our business to be sustainable, things need to be mutually valuable. Doesn’t have to always be a 5050 right? Like you’re gonna do some things that are maybe more valuable to your audience than they are to your business or things that are more valuable to your business, even that are more valuable to your audience. But things need to be a win, win if we want to stay in business. So pouring so many of your resources into something that isn’t actually bringing you much of anything. And in fact, is actually draining your resources is not actually a valuable use of our time. And it’s not really something that makes a lot of sense when you’re thinking about how do I build a sustainably successful business. When I first started this podcast. Two years ago, I already knew my audience. My core offer suite was already pretty solid. It was definitely at the 70 to 80% solid range. I still had some refinements and changes to make particularly to expand and my private coach consulting. But my messaging really needed to shift in order to truly be aligned with my teachings and with who I want to be in this online business world and really in my life in general as well because my messaging foundations as a whole were off. So too was the messaging for my podcast, hence the rebrand. And then that meant that not only was I confined to speaking about a very specific subset of topics that fit within that messaging, which was beyond frustrating, to feel so limited, my podcast also wasn’t connecting the dots between my desired audience and offers and bringing near exclusively right fit leads into my right for them work. Yeah, it did work to an extent. I did get some leads from my podcast, but it wasn’t working at the level that I wanted it to. Nor was it even in the right role of my business. In fact, I shouldn’t have even been relying on my podcast to bring me leads in the first place. We’re gonna get into that more in a little bit. It’s so common to want to start a podcast and add that to your marketing strategy. But again, I didn’t have all of the contextual elements in place first, which meant that we had to do a lot of reworking of the podcast part way through to get it to where I truly want it to be. In fact, I don’t know how long the break was that we took from the podcast. I think it was maybe March April May, June, July, August, September and October 8 months. I think it was about an eight month break that we took in between when we stopped releasing episodes under selling chocolate branding and then started releasing episodes under the sustainable success podcast branding. And of course, the branding is just the external manifestation of changes. It is not actually like the only thing that we changed now. Is it a problem? Right? Like is it a big deal that I had to do a bunch of stuff to rework things with the podcast in particular. Not really. Right. Like, it’s actually not a huge problem and truthfully I am the kind of person that I kind of had to live and learn in this particular topic anyway. So it’s not something to be ashamed of. When you realize that you’ve done something in your business. It ended up then highlighting other elements of your business that aren’t actually where you want them to be that experience of trying something and then having other things maybe now be uncovered or unearthed as, oh, I need to make some changes. There is a very natural part of the journey of experimentation and expansion in our businesses and of course, we can always see things more clearly when we’re looking back rather than we, we are looking forward. I guess my piece of advice here though is that before you start a podcast and pour so much of your time, energy and money into it, make sure that you already feel 70 to 80% solid on your audience offers and messaging and 70 to 80% solid on each of those individual things. Not like, oh yeah, in general, I’m 70 to 80% solid, but actually your messaging is like 0% solid. I was in that 70 to 80% solid place and I still had to go back change a few things about my podcast in order for it to become what I actually wanted it to be and become something that actually met and fed my business goals. In addition to being something that I can truly enjoy without that 70 to 80% solidness of those three previous elements of your sustainable success system. The context, it’s very likely that your podcast will end up being a huge and hugely unproductive drain on your time, energy and money. Once we have those foundations of your audience offers and messaging the three prior contextual elements of your sustainable success system. Now we can get to building the foundations of marketing. Most of the time when you hear me talking about the foundations of marketing, I’m actually talking more specifically about the foundations of content marketing, which is a subset of the actual full cohesive foundations of marketing. The foundations of content marketing are what I teach inside of programs like expand and marketing magnifying and those will get you quite far in business. Those can get you to six figures beyond six figures, multi six figures like those foundations of content marketing can get you very far in business and that’s just in terms of revenue. But there comes a point in business when you want to think beyond the foundations of content marketing and now begin building the foundations of marketing across your entire business. I’ll occasionally do this work with private coach, consulting clients. I don’t tend to do it outside of that really at this point. Anyway, this is a much more complex conversation of course. But essentially, I like to think about marketing as a whole through the context of demand generation, a concept which actually ends up connecting your final three elements of your sustainable success system, marketing lead generation and sales. And in connecting those three things together, it makes them even more cohesive and sets them up to work toward and contribute even more effectively and efficiently to your sustainable success in demand generation. There are four parts generate nurture, identify and invite. And by the way, I originally was introduced to the concept of demand generation by the amazing team at visionary Ceo Academy. In simple terms, let’s talk about what each of these four parts are generate is about growing your audience nurture is what most content marketing truly is. Identify is aligned with what we often think about as lead generation and invite is aligned with sales. Now, if you’re someone who is working to still get your audience offer and messaging foundations to that 70 to 80% solid place and or if you are still working to reliably bring right fit leads into your work through your content, then you are almost certainly not yet in a place where it’s going to be worth it for you to implement a demand generation system in business. So please do not let this turn into a shiny object. There is no need for Google rabbit holes here and you can actually entirely tune out while I talk about demand generation, it’ll be short, but I will give you a little thing at the end that says, hey, here’s kind of what we talked about. Again. If your sustainable success system is not already working quite solidly, generally backed up by multi six figure ish revenue markers, then demand generation will waste your time, energy and maybe even money. When I first started this podcast, I tried to make the podcast operate as both generate nurture and identify so three out of the four elements of a demand generation system. Not only that, but I was kind of relying on my podcast as the primary generate the primary nurture strategy and the primary identify strategy. This does not work and you’ll see why as I get into talking a little bit more in depth about what each of those mean and how it wasn’t working for me in my business as I rebranded though and began really solidifying my own foundations of each element of my sustainable success system. And I also took a break from the podcast to be able to figure out what role I really wanted it to play. I decided to let my podcast really be my nurture strategy instead of trying to be both generate nurture and identify it was now getting to live solidly in one spot. And then now because I’m allowing this to so fully occupy the nurture part of my demand generation system, I’m able to utilize other elements of my demand generation system to then occupy those other three spots of generate, identify and invite, which then allows me to stay focused while in creating content. Which then means that I actually know what my primary goal is for my podcast, which equips me or empowers me to stay focused as I create content and then create therefore with even more intention and clarity. And the result of that is that I like podcasting better. I actually enjoy creating podcast content because I know what I’m trying to do and why I’m doing it and how I’m doing it as well. I don’t know about you. But when I kind of am trying to make something do too many things, then it gets really jumbled, it gets really confusing, it gets really complex and then I never feel like I’m able to get it to do exactly what I want it to do to the degree I want it to happen. And then therefore I get frustrated and end up not liking the thing. And so now again, because I’ve allowed my podcast to occupy one space, one job in my demand generation system. And even then it’s not doing that job fully on its own. I enjoy podcasting and it actually gets to now work for me within the full ecosystem of my business as well. OK? If you are someone who’s zoned out as we talked about demand generation, then the short of it is I was trying to make my podcast grow my audience nurture my audience and serve as a lead generation to then move people into my offers and trying to make it do. All three did not work. You have to know your foundations of marketing before stepping into podcasting. Because if you like me are trying to make your podcast grow your audience nurture your audience and generate leads, then it’s very likely that it will do none of those things very effectively or reliably in order for my podcast to grow my audience, right? That’s that kind of first part of demand generation, generate. The only way to really do so exclusively through your podcast is Seo, right? And I’m all for Seo, I love search engine optimization. I love that. Like people can Google things and then find you. I think it’s amazing and it can become a little bit of an issue in terms of building sustainable success when you allow Seo to drive your creation rather than allowing yourself to drive creation and then to seo I creation. What I mean by that is if you are saying, hey, I want my podcast to grow my audience and you are trying to create content that is going to grow your audience. And you follow kind of a lot of very typical S CEO advice, then you’re gonna find keywords and now you’re gonna create all this content on these keywords that might actually be successful at growing your audience? But are they growing your audience with the right person? Probably not. Unfortunately, this is what I’ve seen and if you have some magical seo thing that is growing your audience with the right people. And you know that when I say right people that I mean, more than just an ideal client, but actually someone who is purchased ready, someone who is best positioned to succeed and someone who is physiologically ready to transform that amazing, please reach out. I would love to talk to you. But for the most part, the kind of like entry level conversations around seo end up driving you to create content that are actually driving traffic. That is your true right? Fit client. And not only that, but when you’re trying to create to seo qual applications, right? When you’re trying to create something that is going to be beautifully searchable, you end up actually limiting how much of you you can bring in to your content because you’re trying to answer some specific question or some specific topic, whatever it is that someone is searching rather than speaking to the real things that ultimately would become your more like thought leadership content and become the things that you actually really truly enjoy talking about. OK? Of course, there’s other ways though, right? There’s other ways to use your podcast to grow your audience that don’t rely specifically on the podcast itself. You could do things like repurposing your podcast into other content for other platforms. This is a super common strategy, but even that has to be done so well to ensure that it actually grows your audience and again grows your audience with the right people. Because think about it, what type of content tends to grow your audience? Well, these days, it’s very much content that has a clear hook, a clear kind of perspective that it is otherwise set up for visibility and therefore get seen by lots of the right people in a long form content like podcast episodes, you have to be really skillful to be able to find those organic kind of like hook moments that sometimes happen but not always in these long form pieces of content. And then if you’re going to take that out, take that kind of hooky part out and repurpose it, you then have to also be very skillful at repurposing it in a way it ensures you’re setting up that piece of repurposed content for visibility. Again, if the goal is to create growth through the podcast, and of course, there are so many different strategies or content that gets visible. But like sco if you build content around a strategy for massive visibility without foundations underneath, you might get visibility. But then that visibility can’t translate into much of anything productive. We’re going to talk about that actually in a future episode, a future strategy Du Jour episode or I want to talk about tiktok reels and short form video. Anyway, another way of course to grow, using your podcasts would be running ads to a podcast, which is another strategy. But now we’ve gone beyond your podcast, being used to grow your audience in and of itself without bringing in kind of an external strategy. So in addition to me trying to use my podcast as my primary growth strategy in and of itself, I wasn’t doing a bunch of repurposing. I wasn’t doing ads, I wasn’t doing other things. I was trying to make the podcast be the thing that grew my audience. I was also trying to use my podcast as my primary nurture strategy and my primary lead generation strategy. But content that is built for nurturing is very different from content built for growth and it can also be somewhat different to content built for lean generation. So you see how trying to make this one thing, my podcast do all three on its own without much support of other kind of complementary strategies around. It wasn’t working because I’ve gone through and now strengthened my audience offer and messaging foundations myself. I’ve then been able to go through and rework my demand generation foundations which we’re gonna loosely define here as my marketing lead generation and sales foundations. And because of that, I have now been able to choose podcasting as my primary nurture strategy. And I’ve let other strategies be responsible for my audience growth for my lead generation. And of course, also for my sales as a nurture strategy with podcasting being my primary nurture strategy. I no longer have to create these episodes through the lens of, well, what is going to attract a new audience? I don’t have to worry about that because I don’t actually care if my podcast grows my audience directly. Now, I am gonna play with things like ads to my podcast and that kind of thing. Of course, and I don’t have to have my podcast be the thing that grows my audience. I can let ads to a podcast grow my audience. I can let other entirely unrelated strategies be the thing that grows my audience. And I don’t have to worry about making sure that my podcast is perfectly seo ified. And it’s gonna be the thing that brings me new people. I don’t have to worry about that. I also don’t have to worry about my podcast being the thing that sells people on my work. Now, of course, I do believe that through consistent nurturing alongside intentional invitations, both within the nurturing and outside of the nurturing. Again, we’re relying on totally other strategies for a lead generation here, but I do believe that you will eventually start to see that nurturing turn into conversions. And I don’t care if my podcast turns into immediate conversions because I’m using other strategies, relying on other strategies to create that lead generation and those sales and my podcast no longer has to fill that role. The only role that this podcast has to fill is nurturing, which means I get to come and talk about the things that I think that actually people care to listen to 30 to 60 minute episodes about. I get to talk about the things that people actually care about that people are curious about that people are interested in. I don’t have to make my podcast do things that I don’t believe fully it’s meant to do. Now, are there ways to podcast explicitly for growing your audience? Sure. Are there ways to podcast explicitly for lead generation? Absolutely. Have you heard of private podcast launches or challenges or, you know, funnels, that kind of thing? Yes, that is an amazing way to use podcasting for lead generation and this public podcast. I get to just come in here, talk about things that matter, have conversations that I really believe in have these conversations that I don’t think a lot of people are having in this online business world and that I think actually make a difference in how much we are able to enjoy our lives as business owners. At the same time, I am building something called thought leadership. Now, thought leadership is a whole thing and of its own. It’s kind of a strategy DU J itself. At this point, there’s so many people now selling this idea of become a thought leader and some of them are doing it. Well, others maybe not so much that’s OK. And by coming in and having these real conversations without needing these conversations to turn into something else, I am able to have conversations that now are building my thought leadership are building my unique perspective, are becoming my body of work embodied in episodes in these conversations for this podcast. So allowing the podcast to purely be a nurture strategy for me, helps me to enjoy it. It fulfills business goals, like building my thought leadership, like nurturing my audience keeping connected, you know, continually having these conversations once a week. That’s no small thing if you listen to these episodes consistently, like I love you. Thank you. I’m so honored because I pour so much of myself into this. But also with that said, allowing my podcast to purely just be nurturing means that people actually want to listen consistently. Would people want to listen consistently? If this was purely about audience growth? Truthfully, probably not. Would people want to listen consistently if this is purely lead generation also truthfully, probably not. That’s why things like limited series when you do these lead generation funnels of private podcast feeds make a lot of sense. So as a nurturer, though, as my nurture strategy, there is reason to continue coming back in week after week after week, listening to these episodes, I often tell my clients to wait to begin creating more evergreen style content like blogging, podcasting youtube until they already have their foundations of their entire sustainable success system in place. Their audience offers messaging marketing, lead generation and sales and they have them all at a 70 to 80% solid or complete level. And there’s so many reasons for that, but a big one is that without all of the other foundations in place, without every single one of these elements of your sustainable success system in place, the time, energy and money that it takes to put this type of evergreen content out into the world is often not going to be worth it for the return that it can bring. Remember, we want things to be win, win. We want them to be both valuable to the business and valuable to the audience. And the reason this return doesn’t happen is because without those foundations, you’ll very likely end up not being clear on what the real role is of your evergreen content within the whole ecosystem of your business. And you’ll end up like I did trying to ask it to do too many things at once. Of course, look external for ideas and internal for answers here, right? Hoo motto. If podcasting brings you joy and it feels really great within the day to day of running your business, then do it. If it doesn’t bring you joy and it’s constantly draining your time energy and or money and you’re not seeing much if any real return, it’s very likely that right now is not the right moment. Maybe you do like podcasting, but you’re feeling drained because it does feel like an unequal give. That’s OK. Allow yourself to maybe pause your podcast for some indefinite amount of time and then you can return to podcasting in the future when you are truly ready, not just like from an energetic standpoint, but from a business foundation standpoint, when you are truly ready to use your podcast strategically and effectively and Enjoyably in your business. All right, I know we’ve just had quite an in depth conversation. Does it feel in depth to you? It feels in depth to me. So what questions do you have about this strategy, Du Jour of podcasting for business? Come over to the big hearted entrepreneurs, Facebook group, ask good questions. Let’s have a conversation. I really, really, really love seeing the light bulbs that go off when people realize the difference between something that’s a strategy, something that’s a foundation and recognize that they do not have to use every single strategy that someone somewhere said you should have in order to be successful in business. And of course, by the way, if you want to build your foundations of each of the elements of your sustainable success system so that you can get paid really freaking well to do the work you most love doing in the way you most love doing it with the people you most love working with. Come join us inside of our comprehensive Business training program. Expand, you can learn everything about expand, sign up at hco media.com/expand. That link is in the show notes. And then if you were nodding along during our conversation on demand generation or your mind was blown. And you’re like, oh my gosh, this is what I have been needing. And if you’re already at that multi six figure or above mark, I invite you to check out what options I have for me to support you at a higher level to expand beyond your next revenue goal. While ushering in and expertly navigating each new era of your success. You can see what we currently have available. Maybe some private coach consulting, maybe am mastermind. I don’t know, we’ll see you head over to our everything page and check it out at hco media.com/everything. All right. Talk to you soon.

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[Podcast Outro]
Thanks for listening to the Sustainable Success podcast. You’re home for honest conversations about building and running an online business that brings you as much joy as it does revenue. I truly believe that these are the conversations we need to be having more of in our online business community. If you know too, would you leave me a review and/or share this episode with the friends?
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