How I'd Grow a Podcast from 0 to 1,000 Listeners (If I Could Start Over)

Most podcasters jump straight to the third stage, and then they find themselves really frustrated when their attempts at posting on social media, or pitching really big brands, or pitching really big podcasts just doesn't yield them what they thought it would, or that, what they thought it should.

And that's really sad to watch.

So in this video, we're gonna walk step by step through each stage and how to execute when you're at that stage.

I want you to picture dropping a pebble into water.

You're gonna see that the first ripple is quite small, and then the ripple above it is a bit bigger, and then bigger, and then bigger, and even bigger.

And that's basically how podcast growth happens.

It's through each individual ripple that grows over time that you will start to feel like you have a community of listeners that love your show and are aligned with your mission.

Before we can go into each of the stages, though, we need to be really clear on some fundamental questions.

So let's do this exercise together.

The first question is, who is your podcast for? And I'm asking that because if you're saying you wanna grow your show, you need to be clear about who it is that you envision listening to this show.

And alongside it, you need to be able to answer the question, what is your podcast about? And if you find yourself answering this in half a paragraph or rambling on as you're talking about what your podcast is, that means you don't yet have clarity around exactly what this thing is.

So you wanna be able to answer it in less than 30 seconds, and it needs to be very clear and very succinct so that anybody listening to it can know very quickly, "Yes, this is for me," or, "No, this is not for me." The third question is, why would someone listen to this podcast? Meaning, what is it that this podcast offers that no other show out there offers? And part of this could just be your lived experience, or your storytelling, or your expertise in some shape or form.

But you need to be able to articulate that, because without it, it's gonna be very hard for people to understand why they need to listen to this when there are so many other shows that exist.

And I don't mean to discourage you from making your show when I say that, because I really do believe there is room for your story.

But if you're not able to articulate what the thing is, it's gonna be hard for people to buy in.

And then you need to be able to tell us how often is it published, and where can we find it? If you can answer these five questions, then it makes sense for you to go into stage one of trying to grow your podcast.