Why starting a PODCAST can TRANSFORM your business: Ask yourself 3 Questions

There has never been a better time to explore one of the fastest-growing avenues for business development.

In times of turmoil, the most exceptional opportunities are not only revealed but created. Over a third of American adults are now regular listeners to podcasts, while top professionals and entrepreneurs leverage their audio files for tens of millions of dollars in annual income.

Even with the disruption caused by COVID-19, this is a great timing opportunity to explore one of the fastest-growing avenues for business development.

Here are three ways a podcast can transform your business.

1. Deliver a win-win

As we all know, there are plenty of scammers happy to tease a customer to make money fast. These quick Skeem offers to focus on a single transactional element, rather than establishing a long-term relationship through a mutual exchange of value, is possibly the worst trait a company can have.

Speech humanizes your brand, so having your own podcast allows you to build trust with both your potential audience and existing customers while ensuring that your staff keep your company’s mission in mind.

With each episode, your content will continuously add value to improve the lives of your listeners, whoever they are, without you needing to leave your home/office.

This value comes in many forms. For example:

• How I built my business. This reveals how the leading companies were established;
• Serial uses investigative journalism to explore criminal cases; and
• The Joe Rogan Experience, which seemingly breaks all the moulds with his long-running uncensored conversations about civil liberties and present events.

In what should be good news for entrepreneurs and professionals around the world, there is no box to fit in. As previous podcasts illustrate, you can even find the best rewards in the most mysterious places.

Your podcast is also the perfect way to educate your audience. Regardless of the industry, strive to provide the best possible service to your customers and focus on establishing long-term relationships: win-win.

2. Align your brand with industry experts

One of the easiest ways to grow your audience is to attract exciting and engaging guests. Not only will it increase your credibility, but it will also allow you to capture even bigger names, and then you will only be limited by your imagination.

Think of it as a way to massively elevate your network while increasing the number of your audience.

Once you have secured your renowned interviews and established your captive listener base, it is essential not to be complacent. It gets confused with a lot of podcasters, but the reality is that your audience won’t stay for loyalty, they will if you continue to deliver valuable content.

Remember, it’s about your audience, so at least you owe them an ROI on your time. Always focus on delivering value, both with your guests and with your listeners.

3. What to do with a successful podcast

If you follow these steps and focus on consistency, you are on your way to having a successful podcast! So what can you do with it? That will come down to how resourceful you are.

The world’s best podcasters leverage their programs for massive business growth in many ways. Eventually, you’ll hit a tipping point where high-profile guests will come up to appear on your show, rather than having to chase after them. But that’s just the beginning.

If you want to make an impact, your main goal should be to learn more about your growing audience and the issues they face. The more you understand what struggles they have, the easier it will be for you to introduce solutions that alleviate those weak points.

There is an infinite number of products and services you can create, as well as virtual events, training programs, and retreats.

A successful podcast will also give you a platform to highlight the causes that are important to you. For example, maybe there is a charity you want to raise funds for or a project to support.

Having a captive audience that believes in your spirit will allow you to light up the world in the way that seems best to you.

Launching a podcast seems straightforward enough until you start doing it.

“An hour of planning can save you 10 hours of work,” – Dale Carnegie

In his quote, Dale Carnegie reminds us how a detailed plan can facilitate any new search. But, when it comes to launching a podcast, how do you start that plan?

First, you should ask yourself some serious questions. With clear answers to these concerns, the planning process, and launching your podcast, becomes much more straightforward. These are the questions:

1. Why do I want to do this podcast?

This question may seem obvious, but seriously, why do you want to do a podcast? If you are not sure of the answer, or just follow the emotions because “everyone is doing it,” you may need to dig a little deeper.

For example, if you are a family lawyer, your motivation for starting a podcast might be that you want other family lawyers to know that they are not alone in their feelings, doubts and anxieties.

This mission would only have become more useful in the COVID-19 pandemic, as people around the world are required to remain quarantined in their homes, more alone than ever.

The family law podcast could be created not only to dispel your feelings of being alone but also to let other attorneys know that they also have an ally in you and your audience.

2. What do I want to achieve with this podcast?

Most of us experience fear of getting on stage before doing anything outside of our comfort zone, especially if we are exposing our emotions to the world.

However, if you begin your podcast for the right reasons, you will provide guidance and support to people who desperately need it.

But, only once your podcast starts, will you experience this validation.

To make sure you resonate with your audience, think about what you want to achieve with the podcast. In our example above, the family lawyer may want to give a voice to lawyers who are experiencing the same feelings of doubt and unhappiness.

The podcast would be a safe way to explore those emotions, while introducing strategies to bring more happiness and satisfaction to your job and, ultimately, to your lives.

What you want to achieve does not need to revolutionize the world. It is that quest for perfection that leads to inaction.

Your goal could be something as simple as meeting a need that doesn’t currently exist in podcast form.

As humans, we all have periods of feeling alone, so if your goal is to connect other people through a shared experience, that might be enough.

3. Who is my ideal listener?

Once you have answered the first two questions, this should be easy. Think about who your ideal listener is: For our family lawyer example, they would be lawyers who feel exhausted in their profession.

“Do not wait; the time will never be ‘just right.’ Start where you stand, and work with whatever tools you may have at your command, and better tools will be found as you go along.” — George Herbert

A great way to find out who your ideal listener would be is to start talking to yourself. Yes, speak to yourself. Start playing around with some topics you’ve wanted to cover in your show and take notes on the key facts.

Once you see your talking points and desired messages on paper, it will be easier to imagine who would benefit most from those words.

The questions are how we navigate the world around us, and it’s no different when starting a new business or developing a podcast concept.

Ask yourself these questions and listen to the answers. The rest will fall into place.