Sober Steve, the Podcast Guy, goes over his Podcaster's Circle of Success and the magic behind having a readiness score for podcast growth, monetization, or launching.
The Podcaster's Circle of Success
What is it?
A brief exercise to determine your podcasting confidence level, combining Steve's podcasting know-how with the Life Coaching concept The Wheel of Life.
Why use it?
Whether we enjoy taking tests or quizzes or not, the result of having a score is a fantastic measuring tool to gauge your current state, and going back to the Circle later can be a measure of your growth and success!
How to use it?
While instructions are included, this episode will be a great walkthrough of what some of the terminology may mean for someone newer to the industry.
Where is it?
Check out www.SoberSteve.com to access your Podcasting Circle of Success or sign up for a free Tune-Up or Brainstorm session!
Follow us on Instagram @PodcastingBadass for exclusive bonus content!
Sober Steve, the Podcast Guy, goes over his Podcaster's Circle of Success and the magic behind having a readiness score for podcast growth, monetization, or launching.
The Podcaster's Circle of Success
What is it?
A brief exercise to determine your podcasting confidence level, combining Steve's podcasting know-how with the Life Coaching concept The Wheel of Life.
Why use it?
Whether we enjoy taking tests or quizzes or not, the result of having a score is a fantastic measuring tool to gauge your current state, and going back to the Circle later can be a measure of your growth and success!
How to use it?
While instructions are included, this episode will be a great walkthrough of what some of the terminology may mean for someone newer to the industry.
Where is it?
Check out www.SoberSteve.com to access your Podcasting Circle of Success or sign up for a free Tune-Up or Brainstorm session!
Follow us on Instagram @PodcastingBadass for exclusive bonus content!
Steve:
Hey there podcasting bad asses. It's your host Sober Steve if the podcast guy here today to talk about the podcasting circle of success. And this is very near and dear to me because it was the very first. Client resource that I created when I decided to kind of twist and turn my life coaching experience and. Program that I'm in, into something podcasting specific. And so if you've ever worked with a life coach before our life coach, you are likely, already very familiar with the concept or the idea of the circle of life. And so that is very much this translated into podcasting. But it is an amazing tool that not only lets you visualize in a circle where there's room to go or grow, but it also will give you a score at the end with the way that I did my math to help make it so that you get out of a hundred percent. How ready you are to grow and monetize a successful podcast. By the time you complete this circle exercise. And so being that it's the very first thing that you can get offered when you go to sober steve.com. I wanted to spend a little bit more time talking about what makes it special and why it's been something that my clients have all loved using because we all love getting a chance to measure how we grow over time. And so this breaks it down into eight different categories of podcasting success. And Perry is that you need to focus on in order to be successful when you podcast. The first is the planning and the process because you can't just get behind a microphone, hit, record and hope something good comes out. You need to be prepared. No matter what type of episode you're doing. So that involves things like preparing your episode topics, doing a research, finding guests, creating outlines, scheduling your time to record. If you're able to show up every single week reliably for your podcast and you're ready and you know what the topics are or the episode, or you have your guests lined up. If you have a pipeline, that's a great. Sign that you're going to be doing very well in this category. But on a scale of one. Being that you're not very confident in your planning process at all, that you regularly are dropping the ball or not being ready or missing release states. And 10 being that you have it like a fine system. That will be very hard to make even more better, because you've already. Fine tuned it over the time. And you are so confident that there is no way that you can improve your processes. You always are so researched. You always have the perfect guests or the perfect resources. That your outlines are thorough, that you are always on time and you have weeks ahead of you with your backlog. That would be a great sign that you're going to score very high in this category of planning. So as you go through your rate, your cell phone, one to 10 for that. Before you move on to the recording process, because how ready are you to record your episodes, this and include making sure that you have an optimal recording space for yourself, that you have a nice studio area at home, whether it be a full on a room or even a closet with some extra padding. Whatever it takes to make sure that you have the best acoustics possible as well as having the right headphones and microphone for the job. And any other hardware that you might need. As well as making sure that your guests are equally prepared, which was one of the bigger mistakes that I made when I first was doing my interviewing podcasts. Not preparing my guests. For their technical side of things and advanced and doing a disservice where I would sound. The way that I always sound, which has pretty clear with my audio. And then have guests that had choppy audio that were breaking up that were didn't sound great. That were hard to even listen to at times, and it doesn't help the listeners. It doesn't help the guests. It doesn't help anyone. And so making sure that when you're getting ready to record, not only do you have everything you need mentally and physically to record, but then you're also getting your guests prepared as well. If you do that, that would be a sign that you'll be closer to the 10. Meanwhile, if you regularly. Release episodes where the audio quality, your attitude towards it is ma good enough. You might not be, you might be more middle of the pack. And if you have serious issues with your audio quality or your guests do. Or that you're having trouble with the hardware or software aspects of recording. This might be a sign that union might score a little bit lower. You then get to move on to editing, scoring yourself on a one to 10 of how. Confident you are in your editing process. This could be a very easy 10 for those of you who outsource your editing and just send over your audio file. If you trust your editor and you know that they are doing an amazing job and working their magic, like I do for my clients. My clients generally are able to give themselves. Nine or a 10 going into it because they're very confident that I'll be able to edit their episodes. Quite well, but if you're doing it on your own scoring highly would mean that you really know the program that you're using to edit inside and out. I love to script that you're creating transcriptions. You're removing any recording hiccups. You're clearing up the audio, adding any music or sound effects or other editing magic to help you. Make sure that your podcasts sounds professional. If you can do all of that, like it's no big deal. That would be a very high score for you. You'd be close through a 10. Meanwhile, if you don't know anything about editing and you're just getting started for podcasting and you don't want to pay someone. So, you know, you need to learn all of this. And this whole new art of editing. And basically become an audio engineer. That might be a lower score that you'll know you'll need to work on as you grow your podcast. And you'll also need to grow your editing skills. Similarly, once you. Are done editing the episode. You can't just wave a magic wand and all of a sudden it appears everywhere. You still need to get it uploaded and ready for publishing. So that includes adding the show notes. Custom episode artwork. Chapter mark tags. Scheduling your episodes and your Patrion content for release and getting everything set up on the backend. Again, If you are outsourcing a lot of your backend work, this'll be very easy for you to score a 10 on. However, if you are looking to learn how to do it yourself, there is a certain art to making effective and optimized shownotes and crispy and clear artwork and everything that you need to make sure that your podcast is able to be found by the right people. So. As you're learning that and getting more comfortable with that and seeing great results. That's when you can rate yourself higher on that score. Of one to 10. Then we get to move on to everyone's favorite category and that is social media. No joke. Some of us, it is our favorite category because we started off in social media or have been embracing it for years before it became part of our podcasts and journey. But for other podcasts that I work with. Social media is. Scary and heavy and intimidating, and they don't want to do it, or even if they enjoy it as a casual consumer, the idea of having to post content. Feels heavy. And scary and they don't want to do it. But. If the sound of a comprehensive social media marketing campaign sounds fun. It's probably going to be very easy for you to rate yourself very highly on this, or if you're outsourcing, someone's it create a lot of your essentially. It also would be easy for you to rate yourself high on this, but making sure that you have a strategy for your social media, that when you release new episodes, people know that they exist and that they're out there so that they know to check them out. It is very important because a search engine optimization will get you started, but social media is a part of the game to grow efficiently. And whether that's a small strategy or a big strategy, you can't just be winging your strategy. So this scale of one to 10, isn't just how great you are at getting likes and engagement. But also that you know, that when you release a new episode, that this is the type of post you'll do on the episode release day. And here's the one that you'll do that night. And then here's the one that you'll do the next day and that it follows some sort of formula. And then you're not just. Sitting there every single day, trying to think, what am I going to do now? That I would not be a very high score on the social media strategy compared to if you know exactly what type of content you're going to be creating for your accounts. That would be a very good strong score in that category. So you rate yourself. In that. And before you move on to monetization. Everyone loves to get money for podcasting. Whether it is just enough to make sure that the costs for our subscription services and our software and things like that are covered, or whether you're looking to get clients to grow your business. There are lots of ways to make money with your podcasts and we're going to be getting into all of them right over the course of the podcast. Podcasting bad-ass. But to get started. Whatever that means to you, whether you're looking to make big money or small money, whether you're the sky's the limit, or you're just looking for a small Patriot community of supporters, having a marketing plan of knowing how you're going to be making your money and what the plan is to get it so that people can know you can have a Patrion community. Accounts set up, but if you're not talking about at the end of every single episode, and if you're not encouraging the people that you talk with that are showing. Positive signs of really enjoying and engaging with your podcasts. If you're not telling them even one-on-one Hey, support me, join my Patrion Patrion community. It means the world to me. If you're not actively pushing your membership. They're not going to be growing the way that you would like them to be and having more than one solution, because there is that big hurdle between starting your podcast and getting to the point where you're getting the thousand downloads in your first 30 days that you need to start working on advertising and the bigger monetization strategies. And so I'm able to help my clients create strategies to get them. To be making money before they hit a thousand, download mark well beforehand and then get them to the 1000 mark so that I can grow further from there. But it all begins with having a strategy in place. If you feel like yours is treating you just fine and you're rolling in the money off. I have a fairly high score. And if you are not making any money and don't know how to make money, That would be a lower score and means that there's definitely a reason why you need to be following this podcast and possibly reaching out to come on for a brainstorming or a tuneup session. So we can. Help raise that score a little bit, or any of these scores for that matter. We then move on to community. I love my podcasting community. I have multiple podcasting friends, not just clients that I work with and help with their podcasts, but also people that have helped me with my podcast. People, I collaborate with that. Do other podcasts. I have Facebook groups and Instagram accounts that I follow about podcasting. I'm a very strong, diverse, podcasting community I've built and grown and that's. One of my secrets to success that I'll be talking about with all of you, of how to grow your podcast and community. But if you are a person on the island in their office and not connected to any other podcasters, your success is not going to be as great as if you are heavily connected into a podcasting community. It's very much like I've learned with my sobriety, where they say that the people in the middle of the pack are less likely to be picked away from the herd. If you're podcasting and you're in the middle of a pack of other successful podcasters that are growing and very excited about their podcast journeys. You're less likely to fall off than if you are on the outside of that pack. Kind of looking in. And pray to be vulnerable. So get involved with a podcast community. If you are so involved that you can't fill any more appointments because you were so socially maxed out with podcasts, or as you'll do very high in this category, maybe got a 10. And if you don't have other podcasters right now that you don't work with, unless you're paying them. There might be room to grow. So that is what the community category is about. And the last category is education. I love when one of my first clients Bridgette said that working with me is like getting a roadmap to success. So you can certainly be working with someone. To help make sure that they're going to give you all the education that you could possibly need. Tailored to you. Hand-fed directly VIP style. Cut the line, get full access. And that will be great for you. You will be guaranteed success, but a lot of people won't have the time or energy or interest in getting a coach to help them through the process. And so their education might be as simple as following this podcast and watching some other videos and finding other resources online that are affordable or free, like podcasts. Themselves where you can listen and learn and grow that way. You know, oftentimes it's that trade-off. You can either. Pay the extra money to. Cut the line and have it happened sooner, quicker, and more tailored directly to you, or you can consume all the free media and spend more time and get that same information in the end. Whether you want to put your time and energy into the education or whether you want to put your money and your mind into the education, whatever works for you, or a mix of both. Make sure that you're working on helping grow your podcasts education, because there's always new tips and tricks, especially in the age of AI right now, you better believe we're going to be getting into AI because I couldn't do my podcast at this scale without it. And there are always new tools and tips and tricks that I will be covering and sharing with you. So if you are following this podcast already, you can give yourself an extra point or two on education. And then with that eight categories, you're writing those out of 10. Yes. You might realize that that leads you to 80 points. But the one thing that I love about the way that I did my podcasting circle of successes, you also get 20 points just for downloading the guide. Yes. So if you went to sober steve.com, or if you go after listening to this episode, And you download my podcasting circle of success. When you complete it, you will not only have that circle laid out for UC, have that visual representation of how ready you are to be a podcasting bad-ass. And grow and monetize a successful podcast, but you'll also have a score, a number of percentage out of a hundred. So, whether that be in the fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties, or if you got a hundred good for you, tell me what that looks like. But I would love to hear what your experience of completing the circle of success has been. You can always reach out to me@steveatsobersteve.com. But definitely go over to the website. If you haven't already. And sign up and get that podcasting circle of success today to see where you land. And until our next episode, enjoy podcasting. You bad-ass is.