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If you have been podcasting for quite some time and you find yourself a little frustrated, it feels like a grind. And you just have this hope that one day, if you stick it out, you'll finally reach that larger audience. They will discover you, they will find you, and it will just grow at scale. If you have that belief that finding that bigger audience is going to solve your issues with your podcast, well. Well, I have some bad news for you, but I have some really great news as well. We're gonna talk about that in this episode of the podcast, Answerman. Well, hello my friend, and welcome back to another episode of the podcast, Answerman. My name is Cliff Ravenscraft, and I am here to help you take your message, your business, and your life to the next. That's right. It doesn't matter if you have been creating content for many years or you're just getting started in the content creating world. There's something we can all do to take everything we do in life to the next level. And oftentimes to take things to the next level, to take your podcast efforts and your enjoyment and your enthusiasm about what you can accomplish with your podcast to the next level. All it takes is a shift, a simple change in your belief. And today I want to speak to this common belief that if I just had a bigger audience, most of my issues related to how I feel about my podcast and what it's achieving, all of it would be solved if I could just get more people to know that my show exists. If that's your belief, I have some bad news for you. A bigger audience isn't going to fix what you're experiencing with your podcast if you are not already fully, enthusiastically passionate about your show. And it does not matter how many people who are currently downloading your show, if you reach 10,000 people between now and the next 12 months, it's not gonna fix what's going on with your podcast. And the great news that I have for you is you don't need that larger audience to immediately and instantly experience a significant shift in the momentum of your podcast. As far as your feelings about the traction that you are getting, I recently was engaged in a conversation with somebody. This is a direct quote from an email that I received. It says, well, we've been podcasting consistently with weekly episodes for about 14 months and have not seen any real traction. But my understanding is that it usually takes a few years to get off the ground. We're trying what we can to get there quicker, but at this phase, it's still a grind. And I will tell you that this person has a great head on their shoulders, and they're not too far off the mark. I've been engaging with them in dialogue and been hopefully, a source of support and encouragement. And so everything that I'm about ready to say in this podcast episode is not directly related to this individual that I'm having an email exchange with, but it is for those of you out there who believe wholeheartedly that, number one, your primary focus is to get there quicker, which is to reach a much larger audience. And I did, by the way, confirm that by seeing real traction. This person was defining that as more number of downloads, more number of views, more number of follows, more number of likes on posts. And in a conversation with me, I shared some of my early stages of podcasting, and I had a number of shows that took off instantly. And they're like, oh, my gosh, I was so blown away by that. And there's this belief that that can't happen today. And there's all sorts of factors. And one of the things that I think I would caution anyone to do is never hear somebody else's journey of what they put out into the world, and then the response that it received, and then all of a sudden, compare your own results to that. There's an infinite number of factors for which you may or may not be aware of as to why certain people experienced certain things when it came to the reception of their podcast. The whole point of this episode isn't to give you strategies and techniques for how to create a show that will instantly attract a large audience, because the purpose of this episode is to help you understand that that's not necessarily the focus that I think is important right out of the gate. But if you've been podcasting for 14 months, it is time for you to start experiencing and feeling some real traction. If you've been podcasting every single week consistently for 14 months, and you're still defining it as a grind, there is not a magical number of downloads or views or follows or likes that's going to change that. So what is this common belief? It's kind of like this. It's like, okay, if I have growth, I'm gonna define that as size of my audience. And then if my audience size grows, then the number of opportunities that will be presented to me will grow also. They see opportunities is what they define as success. And. But the thing is, is that if your audience isn't growing fast enough, the whole thing feels like a grind. You're missing out on all of the passion and enthusiasm and excitement for your show every week. If you feel like after 14 months your show is still a grind, whether you ever communicate that in your content or or not, it actually comes through. When an audience feels like what you're doing is a grind, it's not enjoyable. When you are not passionately, enthusiastically gracious of the opportunity to speak to the person that's listening to you right now, they feel it. You may not consciously be aware that you're communicating, that you feel like what you're doing is a grind, but if you define it as a grind, it's it will shine through. What if growth came in other measurements such as maybe alignment or leverage or even relational depth? And I want to explain each of these measurements to you because I think if you've been podcasting for 14 months and you've got 470 subscribers, here's how this could be exciting if you were to define in your mind real traction is alignment. Alignment is when every episode that you publish is serving a very specific, intentional, defined outcome. To have this level of alignment, you have to be clear. Number one, who exactly is your show for? Have you figured out who your ideal client avatar is? And if you don't even know what that phrase means, just go into ChatGPT or your AI model of choice and say, hey, I need to figure out what my ideal client avatar is for my podcast. What questions can you ask me that will help me determine this? And go from there. Once you've done that prompt, you will then have more clarity and about who your exact ideal client avatar is. This is something that needs to be defined. Who exactly is this for? Why is this show here for them? What is this show designed to do? Where do you want that audience to go next? What do you want them to do next? What is it that you want not just for this episode, but also where are you expecting this podcast to go long term? And then ask yourself, how does this one episode move me at least one step closer towards that desired outcome? You just need to know how this podcast fits into the bigger business or mission that you have for creating the podcast. And if you do not have all of that, you do not have alignment. Alignment will create momentum and get you excited and enthusiastic about everything, every single episode. Even in the days when you have small numbers. And the cool thing is, is even with small numbers, if somebody is out there in your audience, let's just say you have 32 subscribers. If one of them is that right listener, they feel it immediately. The second additional measurement that you could Use for judging the traction you have is is leverage. The idea of leverage is that your podcast can provide you opportunity and benefit that is disproportionate to the amount of time, effort and energy you put into it. I'll give you an example. Let's just say you have 300 subscribers to your podcast. I need you to imagine, though, that five of them become high level clients. Let's just imagine that one listener introduces you to somebody who becomes a strategic, strategic partner. And you can imagine what that partnership might be and how it would benefit you and what size of that partnership could mean as far as revenue for you. What if a guest becomes a referral source? These are the people who start mentioning your name in other rooms when you're not around. When you start measuring the traction that you're getting by the measurement of leverage, you'll recognize, wow, I can do a lot with this single episode that is just meant to reach these 10 people. You'll reach more. But what if you only needed to do something intentional to reach 10? And so for me, I'm not concerned about how can I grow my audience from where it is now to the next 5,000 or 10,000 more subscribers? No, it's how can I take the existed audience that's already listening and serve them so powerfully that they never want to miss an episode, that they respond to my call to action at the end, that they talk about me in rooms that I'm not in, that they email a friend of theirs who they know needs to hear that episode. This is what leverage looks like. And let me wrap up with the third measurement that you could use to determine whether or not you're really getting traction. And it's relational depth. Now, this is the one area of measurement I think most everyone underestimates. I've been saying this for 20 years now. Some people will say, I've been podcasting for six weeks now and I only have 45 people who are downloading my episode. And I'm like, wow, that's amazing. And they're like, what are you talking about? I said, well, I want you to do me a favor. I want you to go down to the public library and I want you to reserve a meeting space. And I want you to go and set up 45 chairs and invite the community and everybody in the library and everybody you can find to sit in those 45 chairs and then stand up in front of them and look at that crowd and tell me that that isn't awesome, that you now have the privilege, the Honor to communicate about what this show is about and that these people may just be your exact ideal client avatar. And that's why they were attracted to your show. And they're actually listening for your clarity and for your excitement and enthusiasm for the fact that they are there. And you're like, oh, my gosh. And here's what I have for you. And this is exactly what your next steps are. I would love to hear back from you. Email me, come up to me afterwards, and let's chat. Just imagine that every single week you publish an episode, 45 people instantly fill that room. And that's just 45 people. I've heard people say, I only have 300 subscribers. I only have 700 subscribers, and I've been doing this for three years. I'm like, that's amazing. Unless you don't have a lot of alignment with who your audience is. Alignment with your messaging, you're not really leveraging what you've got going on. And also, you're running the danger of underestimating the potential for relationship depth. Relational depth means that you're there to be known. You're there to be understood as somebody that they can trust. You're there to be somebody that they will be influenced by in a profound and positive way, that you're there to be known as somebody who is making a difference in their life, as somebody that will be somebody that they credit their success to. They'll write books one day and put your name in their book and talk about the influence you had in their life. That's the level of relationship that you're going for. If you're measuring for relational depth, your listeners will feel like they know how you think. In fact, they'll ask things like, what would Cliff say in this situation? I've had a number of people in my community say, you know what, Cliff? Every time I go to buy this or every time I go to invest in this, or every time I look at my download numbers, I hear myself asking this question, what would Cliff say to me in this moment? And they actually know the answer because there's that level of relationship. There are people who will reference specific episodes months later. And that is something that can clearly come out in a conversation when you finally engage with somebody one on one from your audience. And they're like, you know what? That reminds me of something I heard you say. Gosh, what was that? I think it was back during the pandemic. You dropped an episode where you talked about this and said this. That's how you know you have relational depth. You've got clients who will one day come to you as brand new clients and they'll say, you know what, Cliff, I've been listening to you for years. And of course you'll know that you have relational depth when you take somebody who's out there in your audience listening to your show, and you schedule a 30 minute call to connect with them, to get to know who they are, what's going on in the world, just to build a relationship and find out what's going on in the lives of your audience. And, and then all of a sudden, you recognize something instantly. You have skipped all of the surface level conversation and you've gone deep into the content of that conversation that really meets their needs. Because they're your exact ideal client avatar and they already know you like you, trust you, and you have this relationship. You're going to have trust and respect before you ever have your first conversation with somebody in your audience. And in the event that you jump on a call where somebody's gonna ask you questions about signing up for one of your programs, let's just say you have one of those call to actions and they're like, yeah, I would like to talk about what it would look like to be a part of your Mastermind. Cliff, I've been hearing you talk about the next level mastermind for those of us who are on the entrepreneurial journey. I've been doing this isolated and alone. I've heard your call to action and, and you know what? I'm ready to spend the next year in relationship with you and other established entrepreneurs. By the way, if you're serious about building leverage and relational depth with your audience and being surrounded by other people who recognize that you don't need to reach the masses, you just need to get clear about serving the select few that you're meant to serve. That is exactly why I created the next level Mastermind. This environment where you could be surrounded by other people who think like this. If you're interested in that, email me cliffravenscraft.com or if you want to learn more about it, you can go over to my website. Go to cliffravenscraft.com Click on mastermind in the nav menu. When I started this episode today, I knew that I wanted to resonate with people who are content creators, who are on the entrepreneurial journey, who are creating lots of content and feeling a little frustrated because they're not seeing the size of their audience grow exponentially. And they've done all the things, they've created the Short form video content. They've hired social media managers, they've hired people to book high level guests and all of this other stuff. And they've been doing it for 14 months and they're still not getting traction. And they're feeling like 14 months later and doing this every week. It's a grind. And I know that it's impacting their content when they show up. And so if you're one of those people, next level mastermind. Let's get you really excited and passionate about what opportunities already are. Right there. The Acres of Diamonds, as they say. There's a book called Acres of Diamonds. If you haven't heard about it, go look it up. It's an old story. It's a wonderful metaphor for success that is right there in front of you and you just can't see it because, well, your beliefs are keeping you looking for your success elsewhere. When it's right there, it's in the download numbers you have, it's in the follows you already have, it's in the views you already have, it's in the likes you already have. Matter of fact, there was back in the day, I used to give this as an assignment to almost all of my clients. And that would be anytime somebody says, cliff, I've been podcasting for X number of months and I only have X number of downloads per episode. Let's just say that that's 300 downloads per episode. I said, great, here's what I want you to do. I want you to create a spreadsheet. The first column is going to be a number so that you can actually number this and keep track of how many people you have a relationship with. The second column is going to be the name of the person that's a listener of your show. The third column is going to be their email address. The fourth column is going to be their phone number. The next column is going to be personal detail number one, and then the next column personal detail number two. And then the other column is personal detail number three. Do not ever think about your download numbers. And until you have at least 50 people filled out on the spreadsheet, where every column that I just told you is filled, just build relationship depth with those who are already there. I'm not saying that if you have 300 listeners, you have to know the names of all 300 of them. I'm just saying that if you can't tell me about 50 of those people, then it tells me that you're not taking advantage of the leverage that's there. Get to know your audience. And I've heard people say, well, nobody ever responds to my call to actions. And I'm like, so you're telling me you've been podcasting for three years and you've been asking people to email you? Well, no, I haven't done that consistently. Well, start asking. Well, I have asked in the past and nobody's ever. And I say, okay, so you've done this consistently for a few weeks and nobody's ever. Well, two to three people. And this is the problem. I'm like, did you jump on a call with those two to three people, find out who they are? What is it that they like about your show? Have you done this? If you are serious about real traction for your podcast and you've been podcasting for 14 months or more and it still feels like a grind, it's because you're measuring growth under the measurement of the size of your audience, when you could start seeing real traction as defined by alignment, as defined by leverage, and as defined by relational depth. Do these things and you could instantly find enjoyment, passion, enthusiasm and excitement for your show. Also, if you do this, you'll find that those who are already listening to your show will help refer others to your show. They'll promote your show, they'll share your show, they'll talk about you elsewhere. This is not theory. This is my own personal experience. And it's not just my own personal experience. It is also the observation of thousands of other podcasters who started small and grew some pretty interesting things. And not to mention that some, like myself, have had incredibly large audiences. I've had many shows that have had tens of thousands of subscribers, and today I've I focus on shows that have less than 10,000 subscribers. I produce shows, some of my best shows, some of my most exciting shows, and some of my most profitable shows have had less than a thousand subscribers over the years. It is amazing what happens when you begin to start experiencing the measurement of growth equals alignment, leverage, and relational depth. I encourage you to go do that, and I hope this episode has encouraged you, inspired you, giving you some clear next steps. And if you enjoyed this episode, I'd love to hear from you. Email me cliffliffravenscraft.com and if you are on the entrepreneurial journey, if you want to surround yourself with other people who also think this way, who will consistently keep you motivated to serve those who are already right there in front of you, check out my Next level Mastermind. You can check out nextlevelmastermind.info or email me cliffravenscraft.com and maybe we can jump on a 30 minute call to discuss if it's a good fit for you. Until next time, I encourage you to take everything you do with the audience you already have to the next level podcast. And Samantha.