Imagine that in the past few days, you’ve started suffering from back pain.
It started as a dull ache just above your tailbone but has now sharpened into an acute needling pain that shoots up your spine in waves.
Realizing that the problem isn’t going to resolve itself on its own, you take the logical next step: Head to WebMD and search “lower back pain”.
You know what happens next.
Within minutes, you’ve gone down the rabbit hole and have self-diagnosed yourself with everything from lumbar retrolisthesis to foraminal stenosis.
You spend hours scrolling, discovering ever more dire possible problems with ever more expensive solutions.
Convinced by now that your condition is surely terminal, you brace yourself and call your doctor’s office, who quickly refer you to a chiropractor.
At the appointment, the chiropractor examines you, asks you some questions about your symptoms, has you do a series of stretches and exercises, and then performs a few spinal adjustments.
In total, you spend 20 minutes at the appointment.
Almost like magic, the next day, you feel remarkably better.
If you produce a show with the goal of educating your listeners, there’s a lot to learn from this situation.
It’s easy to get caught thinking that what’s most helpful to your audience is sheer volume of information and resources—to become the one stop on the internet for everything one of your ideal listeners might ever search for related to your topic.
In fact, however, it’s the opposite.
Your job as the expert is to do the work of absorbing the vast amount of information that’s out there and then condense, streamline, and simplify it.
They’re already drowning in information, self-diagnosing themselves with various maladies in the process.
Your job is not to add more information to their plate, but to subtract from it.
To tell them, “You can ignore all that. Here’s one simple thing you should focus on instead.”
Just the right information for just the right person can have a remarkable impact.
And a podcast is a perfect vehicle for delivering just that.
Plan every episode around one specific person, with one specific problem, providing one specific solution.
It’s not easy to constrain yourself.
To go narrow when your urge is to go broad.
To give less information than everything you have to offer.
But as with the chiropractor, the greatest value we can provide our audiences is not to show off how much we know.
But to exercise that knowledge by withholding all of it except that which is absolutely relevant, providing a few minor adjustments, and then sending them on their way.
