00:00:00 I remember being interviewed by Kim Hayden for her show called Kim Talks Resilience, and she asked me this question that stumped me for a moment. She asked me for the one piece of advice I would give to podcasters. Now, just picture this. There's, like two minutes left on the clock, and she asked me this big question, this one piece of advice that I would give to podcasters. And the reason why I had a pause and it stumped me for a little bit is because it's so hard to just stop at one thing.

00:00:29 First of all, my mind was racing with the 10 million things that I wanted to give advice on, and then she was asking for the one thing in the last two minutes. And as you can probably tell by now, I want to share all of the things. I want to share all the things with you. But being put under this sort of pressure really highlights what you truly think, because so much of it is based purely on gut reaction. And even though I 100% stand behind my answer, a little part of me couldn't help thinking, oh, gosh, that was really cliched.

00:00:57 I wish I had a better answer. Yeah, it's some really great self talk that I have. But this one piece of advice, the one thing that you need to do, if nothing else, is so key to the success of your podcast and not just your podcast, but to your business, as well, which we'll go into a little bit later in this podcast, in this episode. So what was that one piece of advice that I have for you, the one thing that can absolutely supercharge growth in your podcast and your business? Stick around to find out.

00:01:29 My name is Deirdre Tshien, CEO and co founder of Capsho, the fastest way to market and grow your podcast. And this is the Grow my Podcast Show. Yay.

00:01:50 Welcome. We're going to just jump straight into this one piece of advice that I would give podcasters if there was just one to give. And to help me with this conversation, I have my Capsho co-founder and CEO Bona Rai with me. Hello, there. Hello.

00:02:05 It's good to be back. It sure is so much fun to have you on here. Okay, so Bona is in a little bit of a mood. We were just laughing and giggling before this because I've been a pretty chilled out, relaxed mood. You're chilling, and I'm in full moon mode.

00:02:21 She may start howling on this episode. We don't know. I think you'll get edited out, so we're good. I'm going to go my full out. All right.

00:02:28 Okay, cool. All right. So you know how when you're starting something new, you say a new business or a new podcast? Just say because that seems topical for this podcast, and really well meaning people give you a ton of advice. Oh, yeah.

00:02:44 Okay. We'll talk about our own experience with this particular piece of advice because I know that you very, very much resisted this and I bet that you don't know me. And if you're listening to this right now, you're going to hear this one a lot. Yeah. And that's why I was like when I mentioned, I was like, oh, this is so cliched.

00:02:58 Why did I do that thing where it's like, I give the same piece of advice that everyone else is giving, but if you're anything like me and definitely like Bona, you've probably ignored it, say, the first time, maybe the second time, maybe the third time as well, until you just had to give into it. And so I want to hear from you, Bona, your own experience with hearing this one piece of advice, which I guess I haven't even spoken about, really want to share the actual piece of advice. Yeah, but let's actually tell the story, a little bit of the story to this. So why don't you kick off with your own experience with this, okay? For those of you who know me, and especially Deirdre, as you know me, you know I'm an expert in everything.

00:03:37 I just know everything. Here we go. No, but all jokes aside, I think the story Deirdre and I think since we've been in business together, pretty much day not day one, but maybe from day three, we've been taking on coaching because I think we're very, very self aware, all jokes aside, about how much we don't know. So we're hugely coachable people. We've always surrounded ourselves with people that know better than us and can help us sound out ideas.

00:04:02 So I remember we were on this one particular coaching call at this point, hundreds that we've been on, right, as very coachable people, always asking for advice. And one thing that I try to do on coaching calls is I'm so afraid of taking up too much time. And I'm very, very specific about my ask and say, I just have this one thing, I need help and I'm going to let everyone else speak. So the piece of advice that I was looking for was around our webinar conversion, we thought was a pretty good offer and we thought was a really great landing page because, of course, we created it.

00:04:35 And our conversion was just not quite there for a free event. And I thought it had to do with the headline because, of course, there's so much that goes into the headline. And I just needed some help from this coach who's now become a dear friend to say, hey, can you just help me with this headline? I don't think it's quite punchy enough, it's not working. And then we're going to go and A B tested and come back next week and report back.

00:04:54 So I thought it was this fairly simple ask. What followed was instead a complete deconstruction of our entire business. And I think maybe your life and mental state as well. Exactly. Because with that goes, the business is my life right now and a complete undressing, I'll say very publicly.

00:05:11 This is a group coaching call as well. And it was because what I thought was a discussion about copy, very high level copy, that I thought we were just tweaking was actually a symptom for a huge problem that we had about not knowing who we were talking to. But as a copywriter, as a marketer ourselves, we can kind of be very elaborate about that, to say, oh, well, okay, it's just this discover instead of find out, or we think it's about that, but really that's the symptom. And it was just a complete you're right. I completely deconstructed is probably putting it kindly.

00:05:41 Right. Completely self combusted on the call, I would say, as I was definitely sweating bullets and this whole time Deirdre is on the call, but not on the call as in she can see me taking it. She's not joining the I do not have the courage for this. I am going to just hang out over there, watch you, watch you sweating bullets and be pacing myself because I knew that this was a pivotal moment, actually, for our business. Yeah, exactly.

00:06:06 And so if you're following along, you can see where we're getting at with this. What the one piece of advice is that I have for any podcaster, actually, any entrepreneur, which is you have to know exactly who it is that you're talking to and create everything for them. And there is a little bit of a nuance here because I do want to shout out Jerry. Jerry Dugan from beyond the rut. I said that really quickly, so I wanted to be mindful.

00:06:29 Jerry from beyond the rut. Anyway, Jerry, he hopped on a live session that I did with Podbean recently, and it was actually about SEO, and he hopped on that session. And then he sent a really, really nice email, which was like thank you in capital letters, like he was shouting at me. So thank you, Jerry, shouting thank you at me. And he listened to what we had to say about SEO, and he took that on board and knew that this was something that was completely applicable to him.

00:07:04 And the reason why is because on this call with this live session with Podbean, I was very, very deliberate in saying two things. So one is you have to know who you're speaking to, and by the way, Jerry knows who it is specifically that he's speaking to. But the implication of that goes then deeper when you think about content and you think about SEO especially, and then you think about sales as well, which is kind of the three things that we're going to go into in this podcast episode about why it is so important that you know specifically who it is that you're speaking to. So you can know specifically who it is that you're speaking to. Right?

00:07:43 And I think we all have done the demographic thing and we've all done the but then when you go the layer deeper and the layer deeper and the layer deeper, deeper, you have to, at each step, actually keep Niching. And it's incredibly uncomfortable. And this was actually because, by the way, we have done a podcast episode on Niching. I think it was one of maybe it was maybe even the third episode that we missed for you. We'll link it yeah, we'll link it to this episode.

00:08:08 But I actually wanted to extend on that because it's not actually just about Niching. When you think about it, that is step one. But then there are all of these other steps that you then have to go to to continue Niching. So the example was, again, when I was on this session with Podbean, and I was talking about SEO specifically, and I got this off Jason. So also we'll link Jason Barnard's episode as well, because we were really going deep on SEO and what actually moves the dial from an SEO perspective.

00:08:35 And Jerry and likes of Rasean, they know their audience inside out, but their podcast and the content that they create is quite varied for this person. And we all know why. Because everyone is multidimensional, right? So we don't want to be going, oh, each person only has one dimension they're talking to. So, for example, both Jerry and Rasean, and they talk about family, faith, fitness, finance.

00:09:03 Maybe there's another F. I don't somewhere in there they both love in the duration. They do. They do. But they know exactly who it is.

00:09:09 And by the way, all of these pillars of content is completely applicable to this person that they're speaking to, who they know inside and out. But it doesn't do you any favors from a content and then an SEO perspective to actually be this varied for that one person. So that's why I'm like, okay, I feel like I've maybe confused people. No, it's very clear. Yeah, okay, cool.

00:09:33 Because the one step is know who it is you're speaking to, which, as Bona mentioned, was our first lesson in terms of even being able to build a business off the back of it. But then, as we've learned in the journey, you actually have to be very specific then as well about your content and the content pillars. And then we'll go into the flow and effects from there. Okay, so let's go with step one around knowing who it is that you're speaking to specifically about the actual person. So maybe I'll pick up the story from here.

00:10:02 You had to watch it unfold. I did. So as Bona was sweating bullets on this call, trying not to cry public. Yeah. And she was being undressed very visibly and publicly, and I was just like, Giggly.

00:10:16 I was not giggly. You were stressed. I was pacing. Yeah, but I was to be fair, I was letting you take all the heat. Very unlike you, you could already tell the dynamics of our how this co founder relationship works.

00:10:29 But I did take that on because, again, we are very coachable. I went on a three hour walk, it feels like, and I needed to just sort things out in my head. Carl had given us a really great starting point. He was like, okay, who is it that you want to be? Who is it already that you don't have to convince?

00:10:46 And at that point in our business of the very baby Capsho, it was like capture version zero two. Not even like, I wouldn't even say it was 0.5. It was very much centered around copy creation. It still is, to be fair, but very much. And so he was like, is it authors who's already writing stuff that you can basically pick up and help them?

00:11:10 And so as I was walking podcasters that didn't actually even enter my brain automatically. It was like, okay, authors. It's like, who else is writing? Maybe blog writers? And then it was literally in this three hour walk that I was like, oh my God, podcasting makes so much sense because I'm already podcasting.

00:11:27 I'm already trying to solve this problem for myself through creating podcast content, of course, that makes the most sense. And so that was a light bulb moment for me. Came back and I was like, okay, Bona, what do we think about this podcasters? And I think you immediately were like, you're not a natural podcaster, but you're a consumer of podcast. Consumer of podcast.

00:11:49 Podcasts, yeah. And so we were like, okay, cool, awesome. We're going to go all in on this. We're going to focus on podcasters, hence why we're here talking to you. And then we launched capture version one, the beta.

00:12:03 And then what happened was even recently we were talking about content because we go through, by the way, we go through all of the same things as you do. I hope you know this. We do not have our stuff chisel chisels figured out. We do not have any of it. I mean, we have a bit of a figured out, to be fair, but we are still learning and relearning things along the way because I think we intuitively know these things, or we've heard it, or again, we've been coached, we've heard it one, two, three times.

00:12:35 But it's like at each step we almost have to relearn it and apply it in that particular scenario. And so that's what I found ourselves doing, again with content. Because step one, we knew who it is that we were speaking to, right? We know specifically. Oh, and by the way, let's talk about relearning on this, on step one, because the who.

00:12:55 The who? Yeah, the who, because we went through this year. So we launched beta. It was a few months of just really but then we kind of lost our way a little bit, I feel like. And this is what happens.

00:13:07 And if you find yourself doing this, then just know that we're along with you on the journey and figure out when you need to recenter yourself. So for us, we were so excited about what we're building. There was a lot of buzz in the industry, a lot of people talking about Capsho, which thank you very much. If you're a capsho user, you're just talking about Capsho. Thank you from the bottom of hearts.

00:13:26 It is so, so helpful for us. And we were starting to speak to people who weren't who we didn't set out to necessarily solve for. So people with narrative style podcasts, narrative by way of it was more like fiction based people who and I guess because we met actually someone at Podfest at last year's Podfest, and he had like a Dungeons and Dragons style podcast. And we're like, hey, Harry, if you're listening, yeah. We're like, well, why don't we see whether we can solve for that style of podcast?

00:14:03 Because if anyone is like us, you want to be able to help everyone. And I think that was the thing too, wasn't it, where we thought podcasters as a niche was niche enough. I mean, A, we were probably ignorant to all the different the many, many types of podcasts that are out there and what people need from those and what their intentions are with those and the varied audience. But I think we were like, we thought we were just solving all of the dimensions of our niche when really we had a niche down far enough. Exactly.

00:14:29 And so we had to relearn this lesson again, that was a painful one. Yeah. And really how that came about was because the episode that I did on Chat GPT actually, so we'll link that episode as well to this. But I spoke about the process of us relearning this and applying it again, the who. And so we came out of that with a lot more clarity and a lot like stronger than ever.

00:14:55 So definitely go listen to that episode. We're not going to go into it again. But this is a lesson that you don't learn and apply once. It's a constant thing, as with every other thing that we're going to go through. Okay, so it's step one, right?

00:15:07 You have to know your who, you have to know your audience. Then step two is then the layer deeper than this and let's go into the content side of it. So podcasters, for example, we are creating content every week, almost every day. And so how do we almost apply this lesson, this lesson of niching down? So, again, if we step back, we zoom back, we go.

00:15:33 My one piece of advice is that you have to niche down. And step one is Niching down to who. Step two, I would say, is Niching down to the what right. What is it that you're going to actually speak to them about? Absolutely.

00:15:47 Do you want to kind of go through how it is that we've been trying to figure this out ourselves? Yeah, and this is such a tricky one because I think, like you said, there's a lot of advice out there about the who and lots of probably helpful structures to do that. And I think it's a lot easier to visualize, to be like, yeah, this is exactly who I'm talking to. And to your point earlier, immediately as we visualize that person, we're so passionate about them and we recognize all of their dimensions. Right.

00:16:11 So I think this is, for me anyway, the most challenging part to say, what do we want to talk to them about, which are those pillars? And if we use Jerry and Rayshawn's example, they've got those four to five that makes up this faith based person who's trying to really be their best selves for personal development. And I think that extra nuance from there that I found has been the work is okay once really it's about going, what are you speaking to them about at this point in time? So I think that's the part that's really hard because we could talk to them about all of those things. So in our case, with even our specific niche of entrepreneurs who podcast, so these are people who have businesses, they're using their podcast to drive to or they are looking to launch businesses.

00:16:53 So they're very entrepreneurial in nature for those people, there's so many things we could talk to them about, about their podcast. Everything from editing stuff and not pretending we're the experts, but creating content for them around that, right through to the entrepreneurial journey that we're on, right through to how to think about content for your podcast. There's so many things. So I think it's really being getting it all down that's been helpful to say. Then at this point in time, you and I are sitting across the table and saying, let's record at this point in time, what do we want to talk to them about with this specific post?

00:17:25 What is a very, very specific thing? Knowing that there's only 87 things you could put into this piece of content, what is that? And I think that is the challenge for us. How we've gone about that is to say the biggest thing that we get asked about is podcast growth, which is a huge topic, of course, but alongside that early, I think we're talking to people who want to launch podcasts eventually to people who want to get their really well established podcast sponsored. But really, I think we've really honed down to say no, those are good things too, but we're going to talk about podcast growth.

00:17:56 Now, within that podcast growth, we apply the layer of who is our person. So our person is an entrepreneur who podcasts. They're extremely busy. So what we've been finding just through spending more time with them is if we talk to them about something like, okay, YouTube Now is encouraging people to get on podcasts. It's not actually that creator who has more time and is looking to nerd out on all the specifics of getting YouTube on podcasts.

00:18:19 It's the person who's actually super overwhelmed and saying, hey, Bonna. Hey, Deirdre. Can you just tell me the three things either I should do or it would be great if you tell me how to hire someone that can do this because my time is really important. Or just tell me I don't have to do it. Exactly.

00:18:32 Or give me a decision tree to say it's not for me right now and when makes sense for me to do it. And that's a very specific piece of content because that means that we, as it relates to that would probably spin up either a really quick checklist to say these are the must dos and these are the nice to haves another piece of content around how to find a cost effective VA to get you going on YouTube. And the third piece could be very well, which we haven't done, which maybe we should. Is this decision matrix around when is the right time for you to get on YouTube? And we actually want to help you avoid shiny object syndrome so that's our value add to you because we understand that's something that you face more than, let's say, the average podcaster.

00:19:11 So I think that's how we and it's such a practice because it's so tempting to just create topic level content to say, oh, we need to be on YouTube now. Let's just find all the YouTube related things and create content about what to do on YouTube without kind of factoring the who and exactly what you want to be talking to them about at that time. There's so much content out there. So I think that's how we're trying to be disciplined about it. It's difficult.

00:19:34 It's difficult. And I do want to layer on that the practical and tangible implications of this. Because again, if we go back to the SEO discussion and if you listen to the episode I did with Jason Barnard from Capsho, he spoke about how important it is because ultimately, at the end of the day, even though machines are getting smarter, as we know, they're still relatively in the infancy around dimensionality. And so what that means is that they are looking again, because everyone likes the shortcuts, especially the machines love shortcuts. They are looking.

00:20:10 If you want to get discovered now, this is if SEO is important to you. And I would offer that if you're an entrepreneur, it should be increasingly important to you because it is still the number one way for people to get discovered for the thing that they do. Now, the only way that you can get discovered for the thing that you do is if you actually niche down not only on the who, but you niche down on the what, this is actually really key. This is really important. And this is what, in a way, why we are learning and relearning this particular step.

00:20:42 Because we had to be like, oh, it's not enough just to know who you're speaking to and to just to try to cover the breadth and everything that they might want to hear about. Because entrepreneurs who podcasts, they also want to know about how to run a business, not just their podcast. They want to know about how to hire a team and create systems and operations and grow that business and funnels and all this sort of there's so many things that we could be talking to them, but if we did that, we would not be able to be discovered for the one thing that we want to be discovered for. And I know that you might be listening to this going like, oh, but I want to be discovered for multiple things. And I would just say, I get it.

00:21:21 We all do. But honestly, the way that SEO works right now is that you have to choose one. When you can lock down that one and the machines know that you do the one, then you can start to go from there and add on the next one and the next one. And for us, how this came about was we're looking at our SEO strategy and the types of content that we can and the buckets of content, I should say. So we already said there's podcast growth and there's like, monetization and there's launching podcast.

00:21:49 Like, there's already three. If not, let's say we were like, okay, let's just cap it at three. And then even in that, we were like, oh, but do we want to be known at this stage for monetization and for launching? Does that make sense? Like, probably not.

00:22:04 Okay, let's just focus on growth. And then even under that, it's like, okay, do we want to be known for growth via YouTube? We don't know, right? There's so many actual layers. Like, you're never going to be stuck for content, because I know some people are like, oh, but I don't have enough to talk about.

00:22:20 There is so much that you can talk about just if you keep Niching down, like, just keep going, Niching, even in your content, in the what that you want to talk about. And once you can really nail that and you just create content around that, that is when you start to get discovered through SEO. That is when you start to get known for the thing, the one thing that you are ultimately trying to help your who, your audience, your your step one person actually find success in. And so that's why, from a practical level, it's so important to do this step two, which is niche down your content as well. Absolutely.

00:22:54 And I think just to call out there, there is no intellectual way to figure this out. I know we were having a conversation when we were like Deirdre said, thinking about our SEO content strategy. And I had so many hypotheses about what it could be, and I was like, is it monetize it? And you went, these three pillars. And you're like, no, we're going to stick with growth.

00:23:11 And even in growth, it's like, I don't know, but it's in terms of what's really going to resonate, because surely we can talk to quite a lot of things inside of growth. But I think it's the because know, some of us can get stuck in analysis paralysis to say, okay, now let me research all of the keywords under podcast growth and let me see what content I've created around that and analyze what's been going on there. And then really I'll figure out what's the one thing you want to be known for. A lot of it is also once you have that direction and you lock it in to say, okay, this is a physical pursuit, not an intellectual one. So you just need to get out there and put things out there too.

00:23:41 So that's the only other piece I thought I'd add there. Yes. And by the way, I hope that this gives you a little bit of permission. I know it's hard to do the first bit, the planning bit, but honestly, this also gives you permission to not have to spend as much time than creating content, if that makes sense. Hopefully you can see this as an efficiency, like, time saving thing because it's like, all right, I'm just going to talk about this one thing.

00:24:05 Maybe there are satellite things around this one thing that you need to talk about, but really it's just the one thing that awesome. Saves like mental capacity time, mental bandwidth time, I should say. And it also saves actual time because you're not having to research, you're not having to do extra things to create content. You should just be able to talk about the one thing that you're an absolute expert in. So that's step two is to niche down your what.

00:24:30 So step one, niche down your who. Step two is niche down your what, because there are so many benefits you can get from and then step three, I don't really know if this is step it's maybe a byproduct of then the Niching process. But I do want to talk about then how that converts from a sales perspective. I don't know if that's is that too much of a leap to make. No, I think people want to make sales.

00:24:52 Yeah, because you want to get discovered. You want to get discovered. And through that discovery process, people will find you, they'll find your podcast. You'll be able to nurture them through your podcast. That's what and that's the content dripping strategy.

00:25:04 Again, we'll link that episode so you can. Hear about the content dripping strategy and how you essentially nurture someone through your content. But then step three is really then about that sales process and sort of came about for me or was really highlighted to me was I think by the time this episode goes live, we would have gone live without a virtual summit. The grow my podcast, the annual grow my podcast summit. And on this summit, I have Aleasha Bahr, who's also a capshovian but a really, really good friend of mine and she is an absolute sales expert, sales gun.

00:25:37 By the way, if you need any help with your sales and the sales conversations you're having, you have got to reach out to Aleasha. She's just amazing. And her whole thing is, or her tagline is, if it's a fake, if it's a fit, it kind of gave it away there. If it's a Fit, it's a fact, and there's no, oh no, I'm going to butcher this and there's no sales involved. Something like that.

00:26:04 Yeah, we've mutually butchered it. Yeah. Anyway, you get the point, right, that essentially if you can get all of this right, you actually don't even need to sell. That's a great thing. That's why I say it's not with your step.

00:26:18 It's more a byproduct that if you can get your who absolutely nailed. And by the way, when I say nailed, I mean nailed at that point in time because we all know it's a journey and we all know we're relearning these things. So nailed and renaled, get your who. Nailed and Renailed, if you get your what nailed and Renailed as well, you know what it is that you're speaking to at them about what it is that you're nurturing them with. By the time you get to this third step of sale, of having that sales conversation, it's actually not a sales conversation because, hey, they know what it is that you're an expert in.

00:26:54 They've probably discovered you that way as well. They've been following your journey and your content, which is very, very specific to the what to them right now. By the time that they're on a sales conversation with you, they're like, okay, I know that you're speaking specifically to me. I know that you're speaking specifically to the result and the process by which I need to get there. So now just tell me, hey, how much is it?

00:27:20 What's involved? What do I need to do? It sounds simple and I'm like, surely it cannot be that simple. But it actually is that simple because that's what happened in our first coaching business. All by accident, by the way.

00:27:35 Again, with the benefit of hindsight, we're like I was like, oh, we actually did hone in on a who, which was female ecommerce business owners who were literally just starting like they were just they're trying to grow. They're trying to get their market to market themselves. We had Nailed our Nailed, Renailed our what because we were very specific about talking about the digital marketing strategies that they could use for a product based business, by the way, with a very female lens, and talking about all the things that can sometimes hold us women back. And because we were going through the same journey with them, with a product we launched to show this process. Yes, we could speak very specifically about how this particular product launch went and how I think, again, kind of by accident, not knowing all of these things, but we were like, this seems like a compelling way to share our learning.

00:28:24 Yes, exactly that. Yeah. So then by the time and we were content dripping, so we had a whole content strategy in place. So by the time that we were either in a launch, whether that was a challenge or whether they just reached out and were like, I just want to find out more about this program that you have. It was not really a sales conversation.

00:28:44 It was like they were like, yep, I've been listening to your podcast. I know what you I know your your values. I know your strategy. I just need to know what's involved, how much it is, what's time commitment. For me, let's do this.

00:28:56 It was really actually that simple. So that's kind of step three is make the sales conversation. Not really a sales conversation. If you've done step one and step two, step three just falls into place, and you can bank that more. Is that my full moon moment?

00:29:12 I do. I love it. More of that, I say. Okay, cool. All right, so hopefully this was helpful for you to listen to, at least, if nothing else, just to relearn some of the fundamental things that you should already have applied or be applying in your business, and definitely for your podcast.

00:29:29 Reach out. Let us know if you have any questions. There is a Leave me a message section in the podcast website content. So you go to the description for this podcast, click on the link. There's only one link that we ever put in there.

00:29:43 And when you land on our episode page on the website, then you'll see another link that says Leave me a message. Shoot me a voicemail. I'd love to start to actually start featuring those voice memos on this podcast. So if you either have comments, feedback, questions, yeah, we'd love to play that on the podcast. So definitely do that through Leave me a message.

00:30:04 All right, that's it from us today. That's all we are. Bona Rai and Deirdre Tshien from Capsho. Stay awesome.