Make Your Show About You

“What is your podcast about?”

You can count on that question being asked every single time you tell someone you have a podcast.

And the truth is, if your podcast is NOT about you, you’re doing it wrong!

We’re hesitant by nature to put ourselves in the limelight. That’s just the way we’re wired. 

The very act of hitting record, and then hitting the publish button with your name on it. You see your name at the bottom of the description of Apple Podcasts. You know other people see your name attached to that show. It’s a little bit unnerving. Because we humans are not naturally wired to put ourselves in the limelight.

It’s much more comfortable to stand in the shadows, to allow others to get the attention.

For some people, it just comes more naturally to be vocal publicly. It definitely is not natural for me. I can tell you that after over nine years of actively publishing podcasts, I still get a little bit uncomfortable seeing my name on the podcast logo, seeing my name on the description of the podcast, seeing my picture on the podcast logo.

And so when I say something like make the show about you, I realize I’m asking you to do something that quite frankly is not natural for you. 

We want our show to be about a certain topic, perhaps a certain cause or an ideology. It’s natural for us to want to shirk the limelight, but the fact of the matter is we want ourselves, our personality, to be front and center in the little world of our podcast. 

I feel like it’s narcissistic to even type these words, but it’s the truth. And if we reframe what it might mean to “make the show about yourself” it might help us feel a little bit more comfortable doing it.

Recently I had an email exchange with a podcast production client. He’s a really busy fellow and while he started out really strong in putting out a new interview every single week, his output of new episodes had dropped off precipitously over a period of a couple of months. This fellow is really involved in a tech type of business, their product was launching and he was working 80 hour weeks. As you can imagine, the podcast all of a sudden wasn’t his top priority. And so I sent him an email in a spirit of love and concern about what was going on with his show. He was apologetic, saying he’s extremely busy with the business, he’s working long hours, and it’s going to be this way for the foreseeable future. In fact, he even considered stopping the podcast.

In my reply, I said, “Why don’t you talk about this in the podcast?” In other words, make this process of developing the product part of the show. The problem is that this fellow had this idea of what a podcast should be because that’s what he knows. Other shows he’s listened to have guests on the show, and they discuss their latest book or their latest product that they’re promoting. And in his mind, this is how you do a podcast, and if I don’t have time to do it this way, I just don’t have time to do the podcast.

So I said you need to make your business the center of attention for your podcast. You need to make your podcast about your business. If you’re developing a product and people are excited about your product, why not make your podcast about the development of your product? Make it about the struggles that you have developing the product, make it about the struggles that you have finding time to even do the podcast.

So a couple weeks later, he recorded a podcast episode doing exactly as I suggested! All it took was an “interested third party” to make a timely suggestion to help him with his dilemma. I obviously had a self interest in doing this. My interest is making a living, and if my client doesn’t  record episodes, I don’t have work for that month. But the point is that when he made his business front and center in his show, it gave him ideas for content he hadn’t previously considered.

If you take a walk outside everyday, why not whip out your iPhone earbuds and record a podcast? It doesn’t have to be studio quality. People don’t expect that on a podcast. You just tell your audience, I’m really busy right now and I just don’t have time to sit in the studio and record a podcast, and this is the best I can do. 

Your audience will forgive audio quality that isn’t up to Joe Rogan standards when they see you doing the work in spite of your busy schedule.

You have to expand your vision a little bit of what people are going to tolerate because when it comes to your podcast, you don’t have to sound like you’re in a professional studio. Your audience doesn’t expect it. If you’re in that situation, you just say something like, “I’m super busy, and this is the only time I have to record this week’s podcast.” Don’t apologize, just inform them what’s going on so they’re not in the dark. Truth be told, they’re probably listening at 2x speed anyway, so don’t fret it!

Now, here is another thing that I see podcast hosts do. I’ve done this myself, so I’m not casting stones. I am saying this because I have made this mistake way too often. That mistake is thinking that the notoriety of our guests is going to make our show successful.

Ben Greenfield is a pretty well known podcaster in the health and fitness sphere, and I edited and produced his podcast for over 4 years.

Now anyone who knows anything about health and fitness has heard of Ben Greenfield. If you want a gold standard for a podcast, I wouldn’t hesitate to say that very few do it better than Ben Greenfield. 

Now let’s say you’re fortunate enough to get an audience with Ben Greenfield and he agrees to be on your show.

Don’t think for a moment this is going to make your show successful, or build rapport with your audience, because it’s not. What does Ben Greenfield have to do with you? You might have something in common that you’re both interested in: biohacking or diet or spirituality, but Ben is not the reason your show will succeed. He’s there for an hour tops, and then what? He’s off building his own media empire and wishing you luck. 

The truth is you’ll need to interview hundreds of Gren Beenfield’s (i.e. not famous folk) to even get to the point where you can get an audience with Ben Greenfield in the first place, so your focus would be better spent on improving your craft as a podcaster versus kissing up to a bunch of so-called “influencers” thinking they’re going to build your audience.

Is it going to hurt to have a so-called A-list guest? It will IF said A-list guest is aligned with your mission and vision for your show.

You have to have the “it” factor when it comes to your show. Does this mean you need to be brash and arrogant and demand the spotlight is on you at all times? Of course not. It doesn’t mean that at all. What it means is that you are the reason the show exists. You are on a mission to solve this problem, to investigate this issue, and to help do so, you’ve brought on such and such A-list guest in order to do it. 

I like to think of a podcast as a man and a woman having a dinner party. It could be every day. It could be once a week. It could be once a month. It really doesn’t matter, but they have a dinner party and they invite their guests over for dinner. It’s their house, their silverware, their furniture, their plates.

At each dinner party, they’ll invite a guest, a featured speaker that is going to entertain the guests for the evening. So this person shows up on time, they have a speech prepared, they interact with the guests, answer their questions and such. 

So the guest is the center of attention for the evening, and hopefully they meet new connections, sell books, whatever they want to accomplish by being there.

But the real winner is the host of the party. The hosts earn the reputation for bringing people together to discuss important issues of the day. They’re doing something special, contributing to the betterment of humanity by hosting these dinners. 

So you can have well-known guests, but you’d better make sure that A-list guest is going to support what you have to say through your podcast, because if they’re not in sync with you, it’s not going to work out. People who will tune in once because they see a name that they recognize won’t want to listen again, because you’ve brought on somebody for the wrong reasons.

Now contrast that with having a clearly defined niche, and you’re establishing yourself as an authority in this hyperfocused niche. And to grow your audience, you invite guests that are not well known, but they are in alignment with your mission, the message that you want to get out with your show.

They’re going to be far more effective in establishing your own credibility, your own authority than a couple of big name guests, because you’re being faithful to you. You’re being faithful to your message. 

In short, you’re making the show about you.

What I’m describing now is not even remotely close to being the brash, arrogant narcissist that you might think when you first read the words, “Make the show about you.”

You make the show about what is important to you, the message, the problem that you want to solve with your show.

If you do that, so many questions about your show –  who you should have on your show, what you should talk about on your show, how often you should talk, how often you should put out episodes – will be answered.

And then when you do reach out to those A-list people who are passionate about what you’re passionate about, they’re going to want to say “Yes” to your invite.

This is a true story. I went to Podcast Movement in 2016 in Chicago where I met Pat Flynn. If you’re in podcasting, I’m sure you’ve heard of him. And so I just wanted to introduce myself and shake his hand because he’s a great benefactor to people like me who make their living working online.

He asked me what my show was about and I said it was about trumpet. And Pat said, “Are you serious? I play trumpet!” It turns out trumpet was something that he was really passionate about when he was in college. He doesn’t play it that much now, but he still has his horn and he really became animated talking about it. And I just said, “You wanna be on the show?” And he said yes, he’d love to be on my show.

So maybe a month later, I interviewed Pat Flynn for a show I did at the time called Trumpet Dynamics. (I’ve recently rebranded Trumpet Dynamics to Brass Mastery, but that’s another story altogether.

I know for a fact that Pat Flynn doesn’t accept many interview requests, much less from complete strangers he’s known for less than 2 minutes, but we had something in common. Perhaps Pat saw an opportunity for people in a different niche to become familiar with him, so it was a win-win.

And when we did the interview, we talked about trumpet for a good 20 minutes before diving into some of the things he’s really known for and really shines in, that being internet marketing.

All that to say is you need to make the show about you. Don’t make it about the journey of anyone but you. You’re the one that is taking the risk. You’re the one that’s putting your neck out so that you can have the show.

It’s your picture, it’s your name on the logo. Keep things real, keep things in perspective.

When the show is about you, make it about you. If you truly don’t have time to do an episode for the week, it’s so much better to just put on your ear buds and record into your iPhone while taking a walk than missing an episode.

Because missing one episode makes it so easy to miss another, then another. Soon enough you say, “Oh well, I gave it a shot and it just didn’t work out.” 

You don’t want your legacy to be of one who doesn’t finish what he starts. Make the show about you, and you’ll never run out of content ideas!