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Kevin
This is Grow the Show, the podcast that helps you grow your podcast. And today we are going to talk about copying other podcasters, or in a more friendly way, emulating other podcasters, modeling other podcasters that you might see and might look to to learn what you should do for your show. And so a lot of you do that with me. And what I'm going to share today is going to outline how that might actually hurt you in some ways. And I've actually seen this hurt other podcasts and other clients that I worked with, where they copied, they emulated, they modeled another podcast that they admire, and it actually hurt their show, it hurt their growth, it hurt the performance. It got them fewer leads, fewer sales. And so that's what I'm going to talk about today. And by the end of this episode, you are going to have a framework for deciding whether or not you should do something that you see another podcaster, another business owner, or another creator do online. So take this as your warning to not blindly copy everybody else and use this episode as a guideline for deciding when you should copy somebody else. And remember, this includes me. Because if you're hearing my voice right now, this episode is only available on the Grow the Show audio feed. So you have heard of me somewhere else. You saw an ad, you might be listening to me for a while, and odds are that you look too to this feed to see, okay, what should I do? Right? And so let's talk about this now. This was inspired by a question that was asked in the Grow the Show academy last week by a new student in the academy. And so the student wrote in and they, they said, hey, Kevin, I have heard you say before that when somebody presses play on your podcast, the first thing that they should hear is your voice introducing the episode and selling them on why the listener should listen to that episode. And that is very true. I have said that many, many times. But the student then went on to say, however, recently in your episodes, when I press play, I hear your Grow the Show theme song. I hear the ba ba ba ba. So what gives? Is it no longer true that people should hear your voice as soon as they press play? This is a great question, and this is a little tiny thing that exemplifies the larger point here, which is something that I've noticed over the five plus years of me being a quote unquote, podcast expert online. And that is this. People analyze the crap out of my podcast feed and assume that everything that I do on my feed is gospel, right? Or is the formula is exactly what they should do. And they could be forgiven for thinking that, because I certainly make sure that, you know that I am a podcast expert. I need to do that because I have an expert business. But what's also true is that not everything that I do on my feed needs to be exactly emulated for a few reasons. And this is true with other podcasters, other experts, many of whom are way better at stuff than I am. But the fact of the matter is, our human brain likes to outsource knowledge. What we want to do is we want to find an expert that we trust and say, okay, I don't want to spend the time and the energy to learn all this stuff from scratch. So. So I'm gonna find an expert that I trust and then just do what they say to do and do what they're doing. And that is wonderful. It works wonders. And it's. I highly recommend it. I do that for tons of things within my business and in my life. But here's what you need to understand about podcasting and online content. Online content and podcasting and online marketing is not something where there is one singular formula and somebody cracks the formula and that's it. They have the secret. That's not how it works. What I've learned the hard way is that the formula is constantly changing. And I learned this the hard way because I originally launched Grow the Show way back in 2020, after I had spent 18 months crushing it as a solo podcaster. And so I launched Grow the Show back then, teaching people what I did then to grow my show and to create my Philly podcast into a six figure podcast. But what I quickly learned is that the strategies that work to grow a podcast are always changing. And so it was about one or two years until the stuff that I did way back in 2018 and 2019, to grow and establish Philly who stopped working. Or at least it didn't work as well. The online landscape totally changed when I launched Philly who and grew it, there was no short form video. In fact, I remember distinctly in the early days of Philly who, when Instagram started allowing you to post just videos, not like reels, but just a video post. And so audiograms started crushing it because it was the first time that people saw Instagram posts move. Think about that. That was 2018. Before 2018, Instagram was only pictures. Oh my, how things have changed so freaking fast. So while our brains want to find someone who knows the formula, quote, unquote, and say, okay, great, I'm just going to do exactly what they do or what they said to do in a podcast episode that's four years old. Hint, hint. The problem with that is the online landscape is constantly changing and what's working to grow and monetize podcasts is constantly changing. So here's why this is important. There's three reasons. So when you see me or another podcaster or business owner or influencer or creator that you admire doing something that is contradictory to what you've heard them say, what you've heard me say, what you know to be true, what one of these three things is happening. We'll get back to the show in just a moment, but first, a quick question. Are you pouring your heart into your podcast but not seeing the growth or engagement that you hoped for? Well, imagine if there was a way to not only grow your podcast audience, but also create better content more efficiently and unlock the secrets to transforming listeners into buyers, aka monetize. Well, there is a way. It's called the 12 days of podcast Growth. It's an email course that is completely free and packed with everything that I know about how to grow your audience in 2024, how to make captivating content in less time, and the strategies that I use to drive over 2.5 million in sales from my podcast to my business. This email course is your golden ticket to elevating your podcast game and in turn getting more clients and customers. It's just 12 days and every day you'll receive a bite sized email lesson straight to your inbox that'll give you the tools that you need to achieve remarkable growth. So if you're ready to learn how to take your podcast to the next level, just go to 12daysofpodcastgrowth.com or you could just click the link in the show notes, enter your email and you will receive the 12 days of podcast growth from me. All right, that's it. Let's get back to the episode number one. And most of the time I am testing something to see if it performs better. So this is really, really true with my current efforts on YouTube. Me and Grow. The show being on YouTube is still in beta. I don't publish YouTube videos regularly quite yet. I'm very much learning what works on YouTube and how to grow a podcast on YouTube. So everything that I'm doing on YouTube and every single way that this audio feed is integrated with my YouTube channel is all still just a test. I have still not decided on a quote unquote formula that I really like for me and I'm testing out different growth strategies different ways to combine the audio feed and the video feed, or keep them separate, whatever it might be. So while I am absolutely teaching my clients and my members of the Grow the Show academy what is working on YouTube, I'm using my show and my feed as a sandbox to figure out what does and what doesn't work. So for that reason, you probably don't want to copy exactly what I am doing on a given episode, because I'm just testing things out. This also has happened in the past with, like, CTAs. For example, people have heard me say, you should only CTA one thing per episode. And then they'll put on an episode and they'll hear me make three CTAs, and they're like, what the heck? You said you should only ever give one. And I'm like, yes, I did say that, and I do believe that, but I'm testing my own belief on top of that. The second reason you might see contradictions between what I say and what you see is that I might have ran a test and I might have discovered that the thing that you heard me say in a previous episode might no longer be true. A current example of that is in the very, very early days of Grow the Show. So if you scroll all the way back and listen to all my episodes, which I know people recommend because I've seen Reddit threads where people are like, you should listen to every single episode of Grow the Show. Go all the way back to the beginning, which is amazing. But the problem with that is in earlier episodes of Grow the Show, I'm talking about the explosive growth of Facebook groups, because in 2020 and 2021, Facebook groups did explode. It was. Everybody was home because of COVID and Facebook groups got massive reach. Nowadays, they do not. It is extremely difficult to reach even the people who are in your own Facebook group. So it is not a good strategy to podcast right now. And so while that strategy crushed in 20, 18, 19, 20 and 21, it really doesn't anymore. Number one is, is this potentially a test? Number two is. Is the thing that I thought to be true no longer true. And then the third reason which happens is sometimes I just mess up. Sometimes I just execute imperfectly. So there was an episode of Grow the Show a couple years ago that got published, and there were editing errors. And the reason that was was because I made a bad decision, and I basically got caught needing an episode to be published really quickly, and I didn't have enough time to send it to my editing team. So I just really quickly, threw together the episode, edited it myself into script at like, 11:00 at night, and published it so I wouldn't miss my publication. And of course, because I did it so hastily and I didn't use the incredible editing service that I use, Podcast Boutique, I published errors, but I didn't find out about those errors until somebody emailed in. And I am not joking. They said, hey, just wondering, did you have those editing errors in there on purpose so that people pay closer attention? And I was just like, I am flattered that you would think that that was intentional that you think I'm that smart. Trust me, I am not playing 4D chess here. I just made a mistake. So that's the third one. That's the third reason you might find things that seem off is that I or the creator you admire might have made a mistake. So here's the lesson here. This doesn't just apply to you listening to me about podcasts. This applies to any creator or influencer that you follow online. Be careful emulating what you see. You might not have the full context, and you might not want to actually emulate what they're doing. I learned this one the hard way because there are a handful of online marketing entrepreneurs that I admire, and I am always looking at their sales funnels to see what their funnels look like. And it has happened a couple times where they have done something in their sales funnel that was new. And I was like, oh, my gosh, this is genius. Let me copy this. And then I spend tons of time making my funnels look exactly like theirs. And then guess what? Two weeks later, they put their funnel back to the way it was before. And there was one case where a mentor of mine did this. And I reached out and I said, hey, why did you put it back? And he was like, oh, we were just running a test, and the test really didn't perform well. So we put it back to what was working, and I was like, oh, my gosh. Now, I had taken two days creating a new funnel to match their test. I didn't know it was a test. I just assumed because this person is an expert that I admire. Oh, like this person's a genius. Clearly, I should always do exactly what they do. Well, I didn't know they were running a test that failed miserably. And so now I have to spend another two days undoing all the changes that I did. Because, of course, I didn't clone my old funnel. I overwrote everything. Lesson learned. So in summation, in conclusion, just Keep in mind that we are all on this journey together and that the online landscape is changing so freaking fast that there is no formula. As soon as you crack the formula, it's going to change. The variables will change. And I know that sounds exhausting, and it is, but that is the journey that we are on. Would I rather it be that this is something that we can just figure out once and then execute for the next 40 years of our life? Heck, yeah. But also, I wouldn't have the role that I have if you could just figure it out once. Reality is, it is constantly changing. And it is my job to constantly be testing, constantly be learning, and constantly be challenging. The things that I have said are true, because otherwise we're gonna all get left in the dust and we're gonna be one of those podcasters that's still publishing audiograms, which worked in 2018 because way back then, nobody had ever seen anything move on Instagram before. But today doesn't really work as well. So that's going to do it for this episode. Please keep this in mind as you go. Careful who you emulate, careful what you copy. Just put a little bit of thought behind it and maybe get in touch with the creator to understand, hey, is this working for you? Why are you doing it this way? Even if you think you already know? All right, that's gonna do it for this episode of Grow the Show. I will see you in the next one. I have two things for you before I let you go. Number one, real quick, if you've ever gotten any value from the show, please, if you haven't yet, leave us a five star review. I get a notification every single time reviews come through and they almost always make my day. So please, please, I would love to hear from you. It really, really helps us. And then the second thing is, if you are a podcaster who needs help with production, if you are struggling with all the time it takes to make these things and you haven't yet, definitely set up a conversation with Podcast Boutique. They are the team that I've been working with for five, six years. They're my most trusted production agency. And recently they added an incredible service that you're going to want to hear about. They call it Record and Forget. I've been using it for months. It is amazing. You just record your episode and send it to them. They do the content editing for you. They create titles, show notes. They can make it into an amazing YouTube video clips, and of course, high value production. So the content editing piece is the thing that I know people have been asking for for a long time. It is unbelievably good. All I do is record. I send it off to them, they handle the rest. And by the way, they're also closely in lockstep with me. So anytime I discover something that is working to grow and monetize a podcast, I immediately share it with them. We work to implement it with my show and then they implement it with the other shows that they work on. So if you're spending time yourself doing any of the editing or post production or if your current post production team isn't cutting it, maybe they're an internal team that doesn't know what they're doing or they're an external team that's either too expensive or does not keep their promises, which is very common. Check out Podcast Boutique. You can go to podcastboutique.com, let them know that I sent you. All right, I'll see you in the next episode.