There’s an infinite list of things you could be doing to grow your show.
If you’re like me, your to-do list has already reached an insurmountable length… and that’s if you stopped adding to it today.
You can’t be expected to finish it all.
No one can, regardless of the size of their budget, team, or personal ambition.
The good news is you don’t need to.
Any show that has ever achieved any level of success has done so by crafting their strategy around just a sliver of the tactics and practices available.
That’s not to say you can expect to grow by putting the bare minimum effort into growth.
Rather you need to find the sweet spot between doing too little and trying to do too much.
In short, you need to do enough.
But how much is enough?
If there’s a universal answer that applies to every show, I don’t know it.
I suspect there isn’t one.
But I also suspect that if you’re not doing the following things, you haven’t come anywhere close to giving yourself a fighting chance at success:
- Talked to 50 listeners and/or potential listeners
- Produced 100 episodes of your show
- Listened to many hundreds of hours of podcasts… including at least a couple of episodes of each of your five closest competitors
- Thought critically about the shows you love, what attracted you to them, and what keeps you coming back
- Deconstructed the structure of those shows to find out what makes them work
- Made some significant changes to your initial show concept and/or shut down one show to launch a new one
- Shipped a whole lot of shit you cringe to look back on
- Made some good creator friends whose opinions you trust
- Asked explicitly for their unadulterated feedback
- Invested some significant money into your work
- Consumed more than a few books, workshops, and courses on the craft of podcasting, marketing, writing, storytelling, and any other core skill that intersects with your craft
- Spent thousands of hours (perhaps tens of thousands) thinking about your show’s topic, turning and twisting it like a Rubik’s cube in your mind
There are probably more.
But I don’t think I’ve ever met a highly successful podcaster, marketer, or entrepreneur who hasn’t checked every one of these.
So consider this list a start.
And then start.
