Kev Michael (0:00)

Last week, I announced that I was walking away from a brand I've spent the last five years building. It's called Grow the Show. And okay, I'm not walking away entirely, but I am rebranding this podcast and the new name is Chief Audience Officer. Now, when I announced this last week, I asked you for your feedback, the good, the bad, and the ugly. And I got the good, the bad and the ugly. The responses were all over the place. Some people loved it, some people, some people didn't, and a lot of folks just didn't quite get it. And that's exactly why we're here today. This is Chief Audience Officer, the podcast that helps you build an audience of buyers. And in this first episode under the new name, I want to walk you through three big things. First, why I believe that every audience driven business needs somebody to wear the Chief Audience officer hat, like a CFO or a coo. A. I believe that every business will need a Chief Audience officer. Second, I'm going to take you behind the scenes of this name change and why I broke my own podcast naming rules so that you can understand what's behind this and why I picked a name that isn't perfect. And finally, there's actually another name change that's happening today that I believe may be more important than the podcast rebrand. I'm going to explain what that is and how it directly impacts you as a listener and as a business owner. So if your goal is to build an audience driven business where the content that you publish drives real trust, sales and freedom for you, then you're in the right place. My name is Kev Michael and episode one of Chief Audience Officer starts now. So in order to fully understand how this name came to be and why I picked it and why I picked a name that isn't as self explanatory and doesn't roll off the tongue as much as Grow the show does. Because that's a lot of the feedback that I got with this change of hey, the Show' now going to be Chief Audience Officer. A lot of people were like, but Grow the show is so good. Like it rolls off the tongue and it's so self explanatory. And I'm like, yes, that is a great name for what that show was about. It was about how to grow and monetize a podcast. This show is not going to be about that. And other people were like, well then why don't you call it Grow the audience or Grow your audience or just audience? And I'm like, yeah, I could call it that, but the problem is it can be mistaken who that show is for. So let me tell you the story of how I came to this name, because it's been a long time coming. It's really been the past two years that I've been thinking about this shift. I really haven't been pushing this business. I haven't been trying to grow my audience that much. I've been just focusing on serving the one on one clients that I have. All the meanwhile, I've been just kind of kicking around like, what is the next evolution of grow the show and what I'm doing. So I knew that I wanted to expand the topic of the show. I knew I wanted to get beyond just the tactic of a podcast. And I want to zoom in out to marketing and content marketing and audience growth and business building and stuff like that. So I knew I wanted to do that, but I also didn't want to just like blend in with all the other content gurus out there. So I was speaking to a mentor, and this is like a year and a half ago, and I was like, I think I want to expand to talk about how business owners can grow their business by publishing content. And he is somebody I trust so much. You know, he's company. He's younger than I am, and his companies have made several tens of millions of dollars. He's a good friend. He's given me great advice over the. And he was like, dude, if you do that, you're just gonna sound like everybody else. And he's right. I took that to heart. I was like, you know, there's so many people online that are like, I help business owners with content and some of you are my friends. So I'm not trying to make fun of you. Some of you might be listening to this, but there's a lot. It's all the same. It's all the same. So I'm not interested in the sameness. I really want to stand out. That's something that's always been important to me. So I was like, I'm not going to make this move until I feel comfortable not being one of those content bros. Nonetheless, I was thinking, okay, what could I name my show that is more accurate to I want to serve business owners. I do not want to serve hobbyists. I don't want to serve musicians and artists. I want to serve people who are building a business. I also don't want to purport to serve creators, people who just make content, who are trying to figure out how to do business so that they can make money from creating content. That is different in my mind than somebody who is a business owner or is looking to build a business. And building an audience is a way that they want to build that business. Do you see the difference? There's so many people that talk to creators and say, here's how you monetize. And that's. To me, there's like the creator who's trying to become an entrepreneur, and then there's the entrepreneur or the CEO who's trying to become a creator. That's who I'm trying to serve. Now a lot of people are kind of in the messy middle of that. And if that's you, stick around. This is still going to be helpful. But that's the distinction that I wanted to make. I want to make it so that this show is about business. It is not about being a creator. It is not about the art of creating. I've never personally identified with being a creator, which is funny because I totally am one. But either way, that name just hasn't resonated with me. And also, like, there's just tons of other people who have already claimed that term. So when I help clients brand a podcast, what I always say is, we need the title of the show to convey an outcome, an identity, or, or an ideal. The most obvious one is Outcome. Grow. The show was an outcome. If you listen to this podcast, you will grow the show. You can also name the show after an identity. So something like the Intelligent Investor or the Financial Feminist. That's a really popular show from Tori Dunlap of her first 100k. She named the show after an identity, the Financial Feminist. You can also name your show around an ideal. So Chris Williamson's podcast, Modern Wisdom is an Ideal. You know, you can never be completely wise. You're always getting closer and closer and closer to wisdom. So modern wisdom is an ideal. And so while I was thinking about how do I want to rename my show, what do I want the name of the show to be? Should it be an outcome, an identity, or an ideal? I thought identity more so because I just was feeling identity more than anything else. I had spent five years with a show that purports an outcome. And the problem is when that outcome happens, they don't need your show anymore. So I was like, okay, what would I call a show that purveys an identity for a CEO or a business owner who has a content driven business? And again, there's that word content again. I kind of cringe at it. But that's what I was thinking. So I was like, what if I called it the Content CEO? And what's cool about that is it could like have wordplay the Content CEO. And so I looked around and I googled and there's some guy on Instagram who calls himself the Content CEO. He's regularly publishing, not interested, you know, whatever, he can have it. And I was kind of relieved too, because again, I really didn't want to brand myself around content because that's just icky and I don't want to be another content bro. Then I was like, okay, can't do the Content CEO. But in the spirit of CEO, Chief Executive Officer, cfo, Chief Financial Officer, I want to convey that this is a business show with C level importance. So I was like, okay, well what about Chief Content Officer? And I kind of tried that on for size for a couple days. You're listening to Chief Content Officer. But again, there was that word content. Again, I was like, ah, I don't know. And then I googled around and Chief Content Officer is the name of a newsletter for the same type of purpose, aiming to help businesses with content. And you know, it's put on by a company that I really respect. They're really great and you know, they're kind of already using that term, which again, I'm fine with it. I don't want to brand around the word content. So I was like, okay, by now we're talking, like this is like a six month process of my subconscious working at this. And then it became clear in recent months, I'm really, really ready for this change. I'm ready for the rebrand, I'm ready to expand. It is time. So I started thinking more and more and more about it and, and I was like, if I don't like the word content, what word is it that I like? And I explained this in last week's episode on how I came to this name. But I was like, business owners don't care about content. They don't want to publish content. They want their team to handle content. They want to spend less time making content. But why? Why do business owners want to publish content? So they can have an audience. Audience is the thing that they want. They want an audience that trusts them. They want know like and trust factor. So I was like audience Chief Audience Officer. And what's funny is I came up with the name Grow the show in the shower. I literally was in the shower, was thinking about what to call my podcast about how to grow a podcast. This was in 2020 and I was like, grow the show. And I got out of the shower, put a towel on, and went to GoDaddy and looked up growtheshow.com and it was available. Same thing here. I'm in the shower, I'm like, chief audience Officer, and now I have a notepad in the shower. I write stuff down. So I wrote chief audience officer. I looked at it, and I was like, you know what? I think that might be it. That feels right this time. I got dressed, you know, dried off, got changed, sat down at the computer and went to the podcast app and searched Chief Audience Officer. Nothing. Nobody's ever used that as a podcast name. Okay, cool. I look on Instagram, Chief Audience officer handles available. Awesome. Then the big one. I go to GoDaddy, chief audienceofficer.com, click, available. 12 bucks. I don't know why, but having the dot com domain has been huge for me. Maybe that's because my first podcast was called Philly who? And some dude owns phillywho.com and it's just like this 1995 website of his pictures. And so I never got it, but either way, I was like, holy crap. Chief Audience Officer. That's who I want to be for my audience. I want to serve the role of their chief audience officer. I want them to imagine me and my show having a seat at their table, advising them on how to build and serve an audience of buyers. And that was it. And honestly, I told you last week I wanted your feedback on it. It was literally then when I got the domain, it was go time. It was the green light. I was like, it's time to do this. So I submitted my 99designs request for a podcast tile, and I was like, this is it. This is my new evolution. Now I'm going to play in the big leagues. Because, like, I feel like everybody who's in the big leagues of, like, business influencers, like, they all started with something more specific and more tactical. First, Alex Hormozi did gym launch. Pat Flynn did architecture. Amy Porterfield did Facebook ads. Lewis Howes did LinkedIn growth. It's the stepping stone for a lot of people. And I always envisioned that I would do podcast growth for a time, and then I would graduate into something more broad where I can, like, play in the big leagues. Right. Well, it's time. You see, for over two years, I've been kind of feeling the edges of this shift, but it wasn't until I spent the last year and a half working one on one with every grow the show Accelerator client that I started to see why this was necessary. And that's because what I found is that the biggest client breakthroughs and the podcasts that grew the most and drove the most business, that happened not because of the podcast itself in a vacuum, but it came from zooming out and looking how the podcast fit into the overall content and audience ecosystem. That includes social media, it includes email, it includes their sales funnel, their offers, all of these things. It's one cohesive thing that the podcast was a part of. So the clients that I've worked with that got the most success and got the most results are the ones where we zoomed out, we looked at the whole ecosystem, and sometimes the time that I spent with them wasn't changing anything about their podcast, it was elsewhere in their ecosystem. And then once we fixed things, their podcast started to grow and they got more sales and revenue. So I was like, okay, what's clear to me now, working really deeply with several business owners, some of whom have eight and nine figure businesses, I think in order to serve people at the highest level, I need to zoom out a little bit and I need to evolve beyond just a podcast. At the same time, as I outlined in last week's episode where I announced this name change, I was just a little burnt out and uninspired with Grow the Show. You know, publicly I was only talking about podcast growth and it was kind of exhausting because podcasters churn, people start and quit podcasts all the time. And so I was just handling a lot of beginner questions all the time. And what I'm really excited to talk about is that zoomed out approach where it's here's how all this stuff fits into a system. There was also something else that I kept noticing happening with the business owners I was working with and also just you, my audience, the people who are paying attention. And also I experienced this myself. And it's this consuming business content online today is very tactical. Everybody loves tactics. And in the responses that I got when I asked for your feedback on this name change, everybody said, don't lose the tactics, don't lose the tactics, and don't worry, the tactics aren't going anywhere. However, what I've noticed for myself, and I've started to notice with the other business owners that I serve, is that every day we are all consuming business content. We all at some point in our day consume business related content. That is very tactical. And I've started to notice that this is a problem. And it's a problem because every single day we Listen to a new podcast episode or a new YouTube video, or watch some reels or something like that, and we are introduced to a new idea, tactic or strategy and we think, oh, maybe I should do that. And that feels harmless on the surface, but what's really happening is all of that content is just serving to make you doubt the path that you're currently on. And what's funny is a lot of the same business influencers who are sharing all this tactical advice would also tell you, you need to focus on one thing. You need to stop trying to be everywhere at once, stop changing all these different tactics and just focus on something. And that's true, but we can't resist the tactics because when you hear these tactics, you're like, oh, maybe I should go on LinkedIn. Because maybe if I did that, things would be easier. Maybe it would be really easy, maybe things would blow up and maybe I'm wasting time by not trying this tactic that this other person just said is crushing for them. So this cycle happens. And what I found for me anyway is that I'll go and I'll listen to a YouTube video that's like 30 minutes long with some sort of tactics, and I just like create this list of things I should do. Oh, I should try that hack. Oh, I should try this tip. Ooh, I should explore this. And I end the day with more to dos than I started the day with because I'm just consuming all this. You should do this and you should do this and you should do this. And you just get so overwhelmed. And what winds up happening is the business owners that I am trying to help build an audience. I can't help them because they can't focus. They're so overwhelmed and distracted. And there's certain clients, you probably know who you are, where every single time we get on a one on one call, they are thinking about a new strategy. They're like, oh, I heard this episode from so and so. I think I'm going to try that. I'm like, okay, great, let's try that. And then the next week there's like, oh, I'm like, what happened to that thing you were going to try? And they're like, oh, actually I'm on this new thing now. And it's because they're consuming all this tactical content and it's like, yo, you just have to, you have to stop. You have to pick something and do just that for six months before you try anything else. Because here's the thing, they all work, all of the tactics work. But none of them are working for you because you're not giving any of them enough of a chance. Business owners are overwhelmed, they're distracted, they're stuck in fomo. And. And I want to build something that helps people zoom out and get the strategy and stick with it regardless of what the tactics are. So what I'm talking about here is the vibe that I want to get across with this show. I want to build something that, yes, can present you with tactics and can present you with strategies and give you all the stuff that you want. How did they do it? How can I do it? But at the same time, I want to make something that can help you make good decisions and know what not to do as well so that you can stay focused. Basically, I see you as the CEO of your business and I want this show and me to serve as your chief audience officer. When you have a chief financial officer, you as the CEO, you have somebody that is an expert in finance that knows more about it than you do and can help you make decisions and stay on track. You rely on that person to help you not spend too much money. You rely on that person to help keep the finances organized. That person makes decisions, but they ultimately report to you. I want this show and my role on this show to serve a similar role to you, but for your audience. I want to be your fractional chief audience officer, where every week I present you with something that will help you grow your audience so that you can get the benefits of an audience driven business, like easier sales, cheaper marketing, tons of access, a life of freedom, all those types of things. But as your chief audience officer, I'm also responsible for keeping you focused, keeping you on track, and not sharing with you any bad advice or tactics that you don't actually need. So that is what I'm going for with the name, Chief Audience Officer. So last week I asked you for feedback on the name and the feedback started rolling in and some people really loved it. They were like, yes, this is awesome. This is such a good evolution for you. Some people really didn't get it and they were like, very kind. They were like, I don't really know, man. It's kind of. It's okay. It seems kind of corporate to me. I'm not really sure. I had to think about it for a minute. But, you know, whatever, whatever you say. And then there were a handful of people who really didn't like it and they were like, kind of mad, which is funny. And so I took all this feedback and it was a nerve wracking. Day. Like I have a Slack channel. Every time somebody submits the form, the Slack channel lights up. And so it was not the most productive day because I was just like checking the Slack channel and looking at people's feedback the whole time. So Chief Audience Officer is the name of the show. My goal is to serve as your chief audience officer here. And hopefully hearing my process here gave you a little bit of an insight in how I selected the name. But it's true. I am breaking several rules that I have made for naming a podcast. And by the way, anybody who's worked with me one on one has been surprised at how willing I am to bend the rules because they are not rules, they are not laws, they are guidelines. So ideally, yes, your podcast name is as self explanatory as possible, but it also should only appeal to the right people. So a lot of people ask me, why don't you call it grow your audience? Or why don't you call it just audience? And the reason is that's too broad. There's too many people who want to grow their audience who I don't want listening to me. I don't want to serve them. As much as I love music, like musicians, like a struggling musician, dj, rapper, who's like trying to grow their audience. Not for me. I'm not going to serve those people well. And really it's like the artists and creators who just want to create and they want to build an audience and achieve revenue just so that they can create more. That's not who I'm looking to serve. I'm looking to serve people who are aiming to build an audience in the context of a business. And so Chief Audience Officer is meant to filter a little bit and to make it clear that this is a business show. And some of this comes from some pain that I felt as people listen to grow the show who are not business owners who would write in and complain about business episodes because they, you know, it might be somebody who is just like a fireman who's got a podcast about their favorite football team and they want to know how to grow that podcast. And I don't know, like, I hope that they grow it, but that's just not who I want to make content to serve. I'm a business owner and I want to make content that serves me and other business owners. So Chief Audience Officer does a little bit of filtering. A lot of people also wrote in to say Chief Audience Officer isn't a good title because it doesn't have good SEO. And this is Funny, because I've never talked about SEO. There is another podcast expert who I really admire. Her name is Courtney Elmer. She talks about SEO all the time. And I'll probably have her as a guest on Chief Audience Officer to finally convince me why SEO is important for podcasts, because I trust and believe her, but I've never found it useful for me. So people are like, people aren't going to search for Chief Audience Officer. And I hear that. And some people even said, I found Grow the Show because I searched for podcast growth. That's cool. But did you search Grow the Show? No, you searched podcast growth and Grow the Show came up because mine was the best show. So SEO has more to do with is your show good and does it have an audience? Then are people searching for the exact term? SEO is so much more than terms. And when platforms calculate SEO, they calculate how many people pay attention to this thing. So it's true. People are not going to search Chief Audience Officer in their podcast app, but if they search audience growth, pretty soon Chief Audience Officer is going to show up because the platforms are going to understand that the show is about audience growth and it'll be the best result. Here's another reason why I'm less concerned that Chief Audience Officer doesn't roll off the tongue and isn't super, super searchable. And that is because of a phrase that I have not uttered so far in this process, but is still very important with this world that I'm describing, and that is personal brand. A lot of people that I know are creating content on how you can have a great personal brand. And again, maybe I'm just a contrarian. I did not want to brand around having a personal brand because so many other people are branding around having a personal brand. But having a personal brand is super, super important. I think it's going to continue to be even more important in the age of AI. And quite frankly, I actually think the name of your personal brand might be more important than the name of your podcast. Because in my private conversations with some clients, we have made the decision that the best way to grow their podcast is actually to grow their personal brand first. And you ask a lot of I know that there's a lot of big time business influencers who they put out business content. They were talking about the same things, but it wasn't until, like they had a book go crazy or for some reason their personal brand exploded that the rest of their content started to work. So personal branding, quote, unquote, absolutely fits into all of this. And so you may have noticed, if you've been following for a while, that I used a different name at the beginning here. And that is because today my podcast name is changing to Chief Audience Officer. And on the same day, my personal brand name is changing as well. My legal name is Kevin Shmidlin. Do you know how to spell that? Did you even know that that's how that was pronounced? When I first started my personal brand journey in 2020, I told myself my name is Kevin Shymidlin. And I know that that's a very confusing name to people. Shmidlin. It starts with a C. But I was like, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to become so well known with the name Chymidlin, it's going to be like Lincoln. How? Everybody knows that there's an L in Lincoln. However, sure enough, five years in my last name, Chymidlin has become a little bit of a speed bump every single time I'm invited to be on a podcast. Do you know what happens before we hit record? Without fail. It's all right. We're about to get started. Real quick, though, how do you say your name? I'll be like, haha, yeah, it's Schmidlin. They're like, schmidlin. Wow, I wouldn't have guessed that. Schmidlin. Okay. All right, let's get started. Click. You're listening to the XYZ podcast. I'm here with Kevin Schmidlin. Yeah, yeah, you got it. So, long story short, I'm changing my name. Not legally, but publicly. I'm going to go by Kev Michael. Why Kev? Well, Michael's my middle name. And I was like, maybe I'll go by Kevin Michael, because I know a lot of people who go by their first name and their middle name, but I don't know. Kevin Michael. That's like, that's what my mom calls me when I'm in trouble. And it just seemed so boring. And I was thinking about it for a while and then. And I also, like, looked up a bunch of Kevin Michaels and there's a bunch of them. And I was like, yeah, I don't know, that's kind of boring. Which I get it. Like, if you have a common memorable name, odds are it's going to be used. But that day I was thinking about what my name should be and I was sending an email. And my email has. Since college, my email has been Kevin blank dot com. So in college, my email was Kevemple Edu. Don't ask me how I got that. It was awesome. And then ever since then, my email has been kevatever website. I sign my emails Kev, and everybody in my life that I love calls me Kev. So I was like, huh, what if I just went by Kev? So that's what I'm going to do. Kev Michael is my name. You're going to get used to it. If you know me by Kevin Schmidlin, there's going to be a time where it's weird to see me as Kev Michael or to think of me as Kev Michael. It'll change. Think about all the people in your life who changed their name after they got married. You got used to it. And above all else, guess what domain was available? Kevmichael.com so today is a big day for me. My show is now called Chief Audience Officer. My name is now Kev Michael instead of Kevin Schmidlin. And so it's scary for me. It's kind of weird sharing this in this way. Usually I make such tactical episodes and don't really talk about myself. So here's what I'd love from you. Number one, let me know if you found this kind of reflective content valuable, if this helped you at all, or if this was just kind of lift service. Like, if you think this was a waste of your time, please let me know. If you're on YouTube, leave a comment. If you're on Spotify, leave a comment. And if you're on any of the listening platforms, there will be a link in the show notes. And if you're on any of the listening platforms like Apple Podcasts or another app, there is a link that says submit feedback. So I'm going to be doing this on a regular basis where you can like comment just by submitting a form. So I'd love to know if this was valuable to you. And then number two, here's the real action that I want you to take. I want you to think about your audience and your business and think about the role a Chief Audience Officer would play for you. What would that person tell you right now? Would they tell you you're trying to do too much? Would they tell you you need to engage more with your audience? Would they tell you you need to understand your audience better? All those things might be true. Let me know what you find and let me know if you want me to make an episode of Chief Audience Officer that serves that role for you. And hopefully my goal for this is that you're gonna remember this. You're gonna be One of the OGs who remembers following me. Now before this blows up, and if I may toot my own horn a little bit, it was cool to watch Harmozi blow up. I was following Alex Harmozi in 2020 when he did not have a lot of followers. Like we would DM all the time. And then he exploded in 2022 and it was really, really cool to watch. My hope is that you get to experience that with me. All right, that's gonna do it for this episode. Please let me know what you think, let me know if this was helpful and let me know what episodes you want to see from Chief Audience Officer moving forward. My name is Kev Michael and I'll 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 are 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 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.