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Consistency is a lie. At least the type of consistency that you have been told will grow your podcast. This is Grow the Show, the podcast that grows your podcast. My name is Kev Michael. I am your podcast growth coach. And today on the show, I am here to share with you the fact that consistency is a lie. I talk to entrepreneurs all the time who say, kev, I've published every single week for five years. Why isn't my show growing? And it's because posting Every Tuesday at 8am is not what grows podcasts anymore. Today on Grow the Show, we're going to talk about what consistency actually means today and why the podcasters who publish less often and sometimes infrequently are sometimes growing faster than you. Let's do it. So in the old days of podcasting, before pre2018, all you had to do was show up consistently. You just had to post something every week at about the same time and you could win. There were not a lot of podcasts available. And so check. Just showing up enough was enough. And these days, I talk to tons of business owners who, back before 2018, sneezed their way to 100,000 downloads a month. Those folks, unfortunately, are kind of doomed now because these days they refuse to do anything that is harder than what that was back then. They keep searching for a strategy that's as easy now as growing a podcast was in 2016. And to my knowledge, that does not exist anymore. And yet the advice to just be consistent persists. And there's a really good chance that you've experienced this too, where you're like, what the heck? I've been consistent. I've posted every day or every week for so long, and nothing has changed. Now, meanwhile, compare that to Caleb Ralston. So Caleb Ralston used to be Gary Vaynerchuk's top content guy. He then left Gary Vee's organization and led the growth of Alex and Layla Harmozi's brand as they blew up from 2021 until about a year ago. Then he went out on his own and he started building his own personal brand. So it was about one year ago that he launched his YouTube channel. And if you go look at his YouTube channel right now, you will see that for the first eight months, he published one video a month, and each of those videos got tens and some of them hundreds of thousands of views. Now, I know it's probably gonna happen next. You're gonna go pull up his YouTube channel, you're gonna look at his videos, you're gonna be like, oh, this doesn't apply to me because Caleb really went all in on production value. He had like, crazy, you know, lighting and cameras and shots and stuff like that. And so gonna see that and you're gonna be like, oh, well, this doesn't apply to me because obviously I can't afford to do it the way that he does it. So nothing on this channel applies to me because I can't afford that. But that's not true. The reason why his videos did so well is less so about the really cinematic production value of those videos. It may have helped, but I think Caleb would be the first one to tell you that it's less about the production value and more about the fact that he put more preparation into those videos. Now, at the same time, the folks who are like, ugh, I'm being consistent. I don't understand why my content isn't growing are being consistent. Yes, but the problem is they don't have time to put out a good podcast episode every single week. And this is very common for business owners. You've got a business to run. And with every passing year, the competition gets stronger for podcast episodes. So what most podcasters that I come across are doing is they are barely scraping by getting out one episode per week. Just barely, just barely crossing the finish line every single week. And here's the most important part. They're not putting a lot of effort into the preparation and the pre production and, and the takeoff sequence of those podcast episodes. I define the takeoff sequence as the series of things that need to be done right in order for a podcast episode to get reach specifically on YouTube. What that looks like is selecting the right topic, making the right thumbnail, having the right title, having a really tight 30 to 60 second intro that is consistent. There's that word again with the title and thumbnail. And then making sure that the first five minutes of your podcast episode cuts to the chase, starts addressing the promise that you made. Now, it's a lot of work, but it has to be done. And so I'm seeing these entrepreneurs who are publishing every single week without fail, but there was little to no thought put into the takeoff sequence. So while the content might be good, it really doesn't reach anybody because there wasn't enough effort and or skill put into the takeoff sequence. So folks like Caleb, who put more effort and skill into the takeoff sequence of a video and only publish once a month, get far, far, far more reach than someone like potentially you, who's barely struggling to get an episode out every single week. And each of those Episodes are super rushed and don't have a lot of preparation put into them. There's one other type of consistency, though, that is also required in order for you to build an audience and a personal brand and a podcast today. And that is you must consistently talk to the same person and make and deliver upon the same promise. So, again, speaking in the YouTube world, but this is also true to Spotify, because the Spotify algorithm is doing beautiful things these days. More on that in an upcoming episode. But when it comes to YouTube, every single video that you publish, YouTube, if you are consistent in making episodes for the same people that are related to the same promise with every episode, YouTube will get more and more confident about who to show your videos to. Because if YouTube shows your new video to people who like your last video and they like this one too, YouTube trusts you more and they're like, ah, wonderful. I know exactly who likes these videos and I'm going to show the next video to even more of these people, which is what you want if you want your audience to grow. But if you do what podcasters were able to get away with back in 2016, and you talk about whatever you feel like talking about, so you talk about business growth one week, you talk about real estate, the next week mindset the next week, investment the next week, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu the following week, you think that the Venn diagram of people who are interested in those things is really big, but it's not. And in fact, it's likely just you and maybe some of your friends. What really winds up happening is YouTube shows your video about Jiu Jitsu to the people who liked your business growth video last week. Those people, the vast majority of them, are not interested in Jiu Jitsu. And so they say, what the heck is this Jiu Jitsu video showing up on my feed? Let me make sure that never happens again. And they unsubscribe and YouTube notices this and gets gun shy and stops showing your stuff to people, even the people who would really like your video. So if you are inconsistent with who you're speaking to and inconsistent with the promise that you're making those people, AKA the topics that you're speaking to, what happens is you're sabotaging the algorithm and sabotaging your own audience growth. But you don't see that. You just see that you have been consistent every Tuesday at 8:00am what gives? Now, there is a little bit of nuance here. There's a little bit of difference between audio and video feeds today. So what is still true about folks that consume on audio is that audio listeners are more habitual. They have a tiny grocery shelf of like between two and six podcasts that they listen to every week as a part of their routine. Think about yourself. What are the two to six podcasts that you listen to on a regular basis? Probably this is one of them I got on your listening shelf and my goal is to not mess that up. So since you are an audio listener, because by the way, this episode that you're hearing right now is audio only, which you are allowed to do if your podcast gets on an audio listener shelf, you really don't want to mess that up. And so yes, in that case, you want to stay consistent with your publishing schedule. So it is still true on the audio side that you want to make sure that your podcast feed is publishing something every single week so that you don't lose your audio listeners. YouTube viewers, on the other hand, do not know or care for the most part, what your cadence is. They care whether the video in front of them is worth watching. And YouTube is only going to show that video to those people if you nail the takeoff sequence, if you've had the proper amount of effort and skill put into how to package and serve up your videos. So yes, holding yourself to a schedule is valuable when you're just getting started with content. It gets you past that horrible resistance of being afraid to record something or not knowing what to record. And it builds the habit of creating content on a weekly basis. So in the early days as a content creator, it is actually beneficial for you to hold yourself to a publishing deadline. But sticking to a schedule alone is not what grows your show. So here's what this all means for you. If you're publishing your episodes on YouTube before your next episode, I want you to spend more time on the takeoff sequence than you normally would. The title, the thumbnail, the intro, the first five minutes. Even if it means you publish a little less frequently. Lately. For folks who are in the grow the show academy, who I notice are struggling with the takeoff sequence, I have been giving more advice lately to to slow down, publish less frequently. Maybe don't try to make so many frequent clips. Take some of the effort that you're putting into publishing more and put it into publishing better. If that means you only publish one podcast episode every two weeks, that's fine. Because if you are able to have some space to breathe and really focus on getting good at the takeoff sequence, your show will grow faster even though you're publishing less. And just in general, you're probably more likely to put together two really good podcast episodes per month than four. And then, sure, once you get good enough at the takeoff sequence that every single episode that you're publishing starts to get more and more reach, then you can look at publishing more often, then you can look at publishing weekly. But for now, if your show really isn't growing, if nothing's happening, it's not growing, it's not growing your audience, it's not bringing you business, then you should probably slow down a little bit. Believe it or not, it's counterintuitive, but publishing less frequently with quality and your show will begin to grow. However, if you are somebody who already has momentum on the audio side. So that's me right now. My case in point. Right now. I've taken on a lot at the moment. I am currently in the midst of building up a Done for you agency. So I have recently started offering Done for you and we have been getting a lot of new clients, which has been great. And so it has taken a lot of my time and attention to get my systems and processes off the ground and, and to manage these shows. It's taken some time. On top of that, I'm currently in the midst of getting a new workspace in Philadelphia where I'm gonna build out a brand new podcast studio and it's gonna be a place for the team to work in person. Super pumped about it, but that takes up time and attention. So lately I've actually been publishing on YouTube a little bit less because I haven't had the ability to really dig into the takeoff sequence and to making sure I have the right packaging intro, the whole nine yards for these videos. So I have been recording more audio onlys to make sure that I'm continuing to show up in your feed my audio listener so that I don't fall off of your grocery shelf. Now, in the future, you'll probably see a video version of this message on the feed and on YouTube when I have a moment to put it together in video form in a way that will actually perform well on YouTube. So all in all, look at your consistency. While you have probably been consistent with your publishing cadence, have you been able to be consistent with quality? One more caveat before I let you go. Be careful not to let this become an excuse to not publish. So I'm giving you permission to publish less frequently, but you still want to hold to some sort of cadence because there is risk that you will slowly but surely, through the slippery slope, stop getting yourself to do the work to you know, create episodes and publish regularly. So if you are weekly and you are really struggling to get the weekly episodes out and the episodes aren't growing and you're on YouTube, I give you permission to go to biweekly. But stick to that, because like I said previously, the posting deadline does help you as the creator, to make sure that you hit your marks. But alone, it's not gonna grow your audience. All right, so that's gonna do it for this episode. If you are somebody who wants help with your podcast and you would like to join my community of folks who are all working on bettering the takeoff sequence together, I would head to academy.growtheshow.com and check that out. And if you want me and my team to come in and handle all of this stuff for you, the takeoff sequence, the strategy, the growing, the in qualified warm leads into your funnel. Head to accelerator.growtheshow.com and you can look at what that looks like. My name is Kev Michael, and I'll see you in the next one.