For creative entrepreneurs, there’s always a tension between the creative projects we want to undertake, and the need to make it easy for people to understand the niche we fit into. 

It doesn’t make sense for us to be everything to everyone, but niching down is challenging because it feels like we’re giving up our creative fulfillment. 

Can we niche down and still have room for creativity? How do we know we’re on the right track when it comes to finding the right niche? 

In this episode, I’m joined by business and mindset coach, and the founder and CEO of The Ambitious Introvert, Emma-Louise Parkes. She shares how to shift the way we present ourselves in the market, and why it’s such a valuable exercise. 

3 Things You’ll Learn From Emma-Louise Parkes;

• Why we have to accept pivoting and changing niches without self-judgment 
• The struggle creatives have with niching down 
• Why she deletes work-related apps off her phone every night

Guest Bio

Emma Louise-Parkes is a business and mindset coach, and the founder and CEO of The Ambitious Introvert. She helps high-level introverts, empaths and HSPs create the strategy & mindset for massive success. Emma-Louise is an 86% introverted INFJ-A who is passionate about helping ambitious introverts, empaths & HSPs build successful, sustainable businesses they love. 

Listen to Emma-Louise’s podcast, The Ambitious Introvert here and join The Ambitious Introvert Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/introvertnetwork/.

Joe Rogan is the exception that proves the rule.

For every 3 hour episode of Joe Rogan, there's a podcast that is shortening up their average episode.

And rightfully so, I think.

We're going on 10+ years of long-form interview podcasts, and the format itself is no longer rare and valuable.

So either your topic must be incredibly rare and valuable, or it's time to shorten your average episode to deal with shrinking attention spans.

Here are my 3 best tips to shorten your average episode, starting with Guest episodes.

1. Set Expectations before hitting Record.

I let my guests know that my goal is to have a fun, fast-paced 30 minute chat that covers a few compelling topics. 

We spend enough time before hitting Record that I know roughly what topics we'll start with, so I can tease those for the audience right away.

Then as I spot juicier, more interesting topics, we might go off on a tangent. But I try not to cram too many topics in, that's where you get into 45 minute-plus conversations.

I remember being on a podcast as a guest a couple years ago.

We were recording within 5 minutes of jumping on the Zoom session. As a guest, it feels super weird and you have no idea where you stand. Am I taking too long to answer each question? Should this be relaxed and slow-paced, or should this be rapid fire? Am I giving the host what the audience will want?

It was like flying blind, and you never want to make your guests feel like that.

So set good expectations, and most guests will try to give you exactly what you ask for.

2. Open Strong. 

One thing that keeps your average episode long is asking the guest about their background too soon.

This invitation to share their background slows down the pace and tends to start at the very beginning of their story. We've all heard it.

"Well, it started on a dark and stormy night at the hospital in 1957. I was a strapping 11 lb 4 oz baby boy, and I took my time coming. "

No one wants that. 

Think of a Bond movie like Casino Royale or Spectre. 

You want to start with an action scene.

Then you reset and slow down, go back to the beginning.

Depending on what kind of podcast you're running, you can start strong in different ways.

If you run a business podcast where people expect actionable tips and tactics, start with that. Invite the guest to share something actionable as soon as possible.

If you run a podcast more focused on inspiring stories, start with a question about one specific anecdote from their life. Something that hooks the audience's attention, builds the guest's credibility and sets up the audience to be interested in hearing the rest of their story.

Managing the guest's expectations and helping them start strong will go a long way toward producing fast-paced guest episodes that hold your audience's attention.

That brings us to the last way to shorten up your average episode...

3. Publish solo episodes. Just you talking directly to your audience.

I'm a big advocate of solo episodes, at one point this podcast was ALL solo episodes, nothing but me teaching and sharing.

I'm mixing it up more now, but I encourage all my clients to include at least one or more solo episodes per month. That's part of my Weekly Podcast Formula. 

Especially if you're in coaching or consulting, you are selling YOU.

In order to sell access and proximity to you, your audience has to trust you and come around to the way you see the world.

They can get some of that from the conversations you have with guests, but they'll get a lot more from solo episodes. Just you and the audience.

The example I gave in the MicroFamous book is Barbara Walters.

While she's a skilled interviewer and journalist, I don't know what she actually believes about the world. I have no idea whether she actually likes her guests. She's a vehicle for their story, and her job is to shine the spotlight on the guests and pull something out of them they didn't plan to share.

If your ambition is to be a skilled interviewer, by all means do that.

But being a skilled interviewer won't get people clamoring for your coaching, consulting, programs or courses. 

That only comes when people get to know, like and trust you. 

Getting back to the length of episodes...

Solo episodes put you in complete control, where you can dictate the overall length. Some of my clients naturally do a solo episode in 12 minutes, others flow for around 25 minutes without even thinking about it.

I like to see solo episodes clock in at 12-15 minutes. 

Almost long enough for a standard commute, short enough for a quick trip to the grocery store and back.

To do this myself, when I prep for a solo episode I write no more than 3 bullet points. Couple minutes for intros and outros, 3-4 minutes per bullet point, and I'm out. 

So that's my perspective on solo episodes. 

As attention spans shorten, even long-form formats like podcasting aren't immune. We have to adjust with the times. 

I'm seeing examples like Lewis Howe's mailbag episodes to Blinkist's Shortcast episodes at 15 minutes, to PFF's NFL daily at 10 minutes, to Seth Godin's Akimbo podcast which runs around 25 minutes.

Speaking of Akimbo, I used to listen quite often. 

Then it fell off my radar. Why?

Cause my podcast listening time is limited, and his podcast episodes take too long to get to the point. 

It may be a valuable point, but I don't have a 25 minute commute like most of his audience.

I work from home, so my average time in the car is under 10 minutes around my little beach town part of San Diego. 

If he shortened his episodes, speeding up the pacing especially, and maybe cut back on the content to just the most compelling parts of the stories he shares to make his points, I'd listen to every episode.

So format matters, even for the biggest names out there.

As introverts, it often feels like other people can’t relate to our inner experience. We feel awkward in social situations, and work really hard not to convey that awkwardness to others. Our extrovert counterparts can perceive our behavior as stuck up and antisocial, and advice to just “be ourselves” feels rich coming from naturally gregarious people. 

But what if more people share this experience than we believe, and what if there was a way to change our mindset and create the motivation to put ourselves out there? 

In today’s episode, I’m joined by Monica Parkin, the author of "Overcoming Awkward, an Introvert's Guide to Networking, Marketing and Sales." She shares why putting ourselves out there as introverts is a lot easier than we think.

Things You’ll Learn from Monica Parkin; 

• The surprising feedback she got from extroverts about the book 
• How to take part in speaking engagements without taxing yourself 
• The introvert super power we don’t tap into enough 
• The interesting science-backed distinction between introverts and extroverts 

Guest Bio

Monica Parkin is an international speaker, podcast host, mortgage broker and author of "Overcoming Awkward, an Introvert's Guide to Networking, Marketing and Sales." The book is written to free introverts from the crippling social constraints that come with launching and growing their businesses and careers. For more information and to buy the book, head over to https://www.monicaparkin.ca/. 

This might be an odd thing for me to talk about.

I spend all my time helping entrepreneurs and experts become MicroFamous. So what do I know?

Yet there are some really critical lessons we can all take from Rogan’s history.

There is no original reporting or investigative journalism or exclusive interview here.

But I am going to tie together the 4 big cultural waves that propelled Joe Rogan to being mega-famous.

That way we can be on the lookout for similar opportunities in our own world, big or small.

Let’s start with a rough timeline.

You’ve got Rogan’s childhood scattered, where among other things, he picks up tae kwon do and ends up winning a US Open Championship and doing some martial arts teaching.

He gets started in stand up comedy in the late 80s going into the 90s. 

He moves to LA, gets picked up by Disney on a development deal and ends up on a sitcom called Newsradio. You might remember that as the last thing Phil Hartman did before his unfortunate death. Newsradio runs from 1995-99. 

This whole time he’s followed the UFC from almost the very first event. The live event UFC 5 takes place about a month after the first episode of Newsradio airs.

In 1997, while Newsradio is still on TV, Rogan starts doing backstage and post-fight interviews, does that for a couple years but leaves and doesn’t reconnect with UFC till after 2001.

So Newsradio ends in 99, Rogan is working on a sitcom loosely based on him, when the opportunity comes to host Fear Factor instead. Fear Factor was NBC’s answer to Survivor, which launched earlier in 2001.

Fear Factor does really well for a few years before it starts to lose steam. By this time Rogan is working with the UFC again, now partially under Dana White, and is doing color commentary.

UFC starts to explode in the mid-2000s, that’s when even I was paying attention. All the UFC names I remember were active around this time. Georges St Pierre, Anderson Silva, Frank Mir, Rich Franklin, Ken Shamrock, BJ Penn, Tito Ortiz. 

Around the time Fear Factor is on the way out, the UFC launches its own reality TV show, The Ultimate Fighter. It went a long way toward helping the UFC hit a mainstream audience. I remember talking over the fighters with guys in the office I worked in at the time.

So Rogan is doing color commentary for UFC as it’s exploding in popularity, this is mid-2000s. This is the period where Chuck Liddell hits the cover of ESPN magazine. UFC goes mainstream and Rogan is there for that ride.

Then we come to 2009 when Rogan launches his podcast, and by August 2010 it hits the iTunes Top 100, and the rest is history.

Now, let’s dive into what happened and all the things that had to come together for Rogan to become mega-famous.

1. Rogan got into stand up comedy at the tail end of the 80s stand up boom. That boom turned to bust by the mid-90s, which is when Rogan pivoted to Newsradio.

2. Newsradio catches the 90s sitcom boom, launching less than a year after Friends. In fact, the lead in show for Newsradio when it launched was Wings, to give you an idea of how good of a head start it was given.

3. Meanwhile, a few years later as Newsradio is losing steam, reality TV is starting its boom. The Real World was well known, but reality TV as we think of it today started more with shows like American Idol and Survivor.

That’s when Fear Factor comes along, and Rogan is able to ride the wave of reality TV in the early 2000s.

4. The UFC wave really gets going in the mid-2000s with Rogan doing color commentary and cracking jokes in front of millions of pay-per-view subscribers. 

5. While riding the UFC wave, Rogan parlays that into more stand up gigs and then launches the podcast in ’09. 

To give you an idea of timing, Adam Carolla launched his podcast about 8 months before Rogan, and everyone thought he was crazy for doing a podcast. That’s how new it was.

The podcast capitalizes on his stand up career by featuring all his comedian friends, and catches the podcasting wave in its earliest stage. 

So that’s a total of 4 distinct, massive cultural waves. 

Rogan caught all of them at various stages.

Stand up comedy

Reality TV

UFC

Podcasting

Plus he catches smaller waves along the way, from the 90’s sitcom boom to live-streaming on YouTube and Justin.tv, the forerunner of Twitch. 

Now, I don’t think Rogan did any of this intentionally or through any special foresight.

He’s genuinely been interested in mixed martial arts since he was a teenager. The fact that UFC happened to hit its massive cultural wave right in the lull of Rogan’s post-reality TV career was a very, very lucky break.

If not for that, Rogan might just be a touring comedian with a small podcast that maybe your brother-in-law listens to.

Now, what are the lessons I think anyone can take away?

1. Find a wave in the culture that can carry you. Not a wave you have to create yourself.

Just like it’s easier to invest in stocks when the whole market is going up, it’s a lot easier to get famous when you ride a wave that’s already moving in the culture.

Trying to create a cultural wave on your own is like trying to make the stock market go up by buying a bunch of stock yourself. Odds are, you’re going to waste a lot of time and money.

2. Catch one massive cultural wave as early as possible. 

Rogan was late to the party on the stand up wave, but he pivoted to sitcoms and caught the reality TV wave at just the right time. Then he caught the UFC wave relatively early and podcasting super early. 

You don’t have to hit every wave early, but if you want to be mega-famous, you’ve got to hit a massive wave early. Building the #1 comedy podcast as the entire podcast wave was exploding was a huge part of Rogan’s success.

3. As one wave loses steam, start looking for the next wave.

Once you have attention and fame, you can never rest. The wave that made you famous might lose steam or even dash you against the rocks.

Just like a surfer, you’ve got to get out of a wave that’s losing steam, regroup, and start looking for the next wave. 

Here’s the key: The next wave will never be about you and what you want.

This is the hardest thing to understand once you’ve already achieved a certain level of fame.

Maybe you’ve achieved a lot. Maybe you’ve set big goals for growth. None of that makes a difference to the market.

People don’t care about your big goals. 

People care about themselves.

So the next wave that comes along won’t be about you and what you want. That next wave will require you to adapt. 

Joe Rogan didn’t get mega-famous because another wave of stand up comedy came along. 

He adapted. He shifted. He experimented.

Hosting UFC events, livestreaming on early platforms, blogging, a video web series. 

He kept iterating. Trying new technologies and new formats, until finally he hit the podcasting wave.

That’s what we all have to do.

To catch the latest wave, we have to adapt and change and shift. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot.

So those are the 3 lessons anyone can take away, and we can apply them at any level, Big, small and anywhere in between.

Find a wave in the culture that can carry you.

Catch that wave as early as possible. 

As one wave loses steam, start looking for the next one.

That’s how Rogan did it, that’s how Tony Robbins did it, that’s how Oprah did it. That’s how everyone in the public eye did it.

And the savvier you get at spotting waves in the culture as they build and break out, the more successful you’ll be.

In today’s media landscape, it’s no surprise that all roads lead to video. It’s what we consume. It’s the beating drum of content marketing, and its platform agnostic because it applies to every industry including coaching and consulting. 

What is surprising though, is the kind of video content people are consuming and what drives them to take action. In lieu of advertising, organic, value-driven content has made a real comeback, and it’s centered around stories more than ever before. This even applies to people whose services exist to solve a particular, niche problem. 

The question is: how do we make our content more magnetic in this landscape? In this episode, I’m joined by a special guest, the founder of FeedStories, Bob Regnerus. He talks about what’s happening in video marketing, and how we can implement it in our own businesses. 

3 Things We Learned From Bob Regnerus 

• The current state of paid online advertising 
• Why there’s more demand for solutions-based organic content right now 
• How to back up ideals and big ideas with magnetic stories

Guest Bio

Bob Regnerus is the founder of FeedStories and the author of 5 books, including The Ultimate Guide to Facebook Ads, which sold out on its first day. His gift and passion is to help you promote yourself and your business. Throughout his career and working with clients in over 105 markets since 1998, he helps clients promote a powerful message to the marketplace, and target specific customers to deliver that message through Paid Advertising. Bob gets results for his clients through Facebook Advertising Management and Consulting. Bob has had the opportunity to work with a number of remarkable individuals and companies over the years, and spoken to crowds from 20 to 2000 all over the country. For more information, and to find out more about Bob’s work, visit https://feedstories.com/. 

One of my friends in the coaching space forwarded me Sam Ovens’ video on how he’s spent the last 2 years breaking down and rebuilding his business.

If you don’t know, Ovens started a business that became Consulting.com, which helped beginner experts and course creators turn their expertise into courses and productizable consulting.

At one point he was doing $30 million a year in revenue.

However, in remaking the business he decided to discontinue Consulting Accelerator, their signature program for beginners.

Turns out it was more headache than it was worth, at least for Ovens. And I can completely relate. 

In our podcast agency, I’d rather work with those with genuine and deep expertise in their space. They may be new to the coaching or consulting space, but they already have skills and expertise, the only question is how to best position them for ideal clients.

So all this got me thinking of the question I see lots of my friends and clients wrestling with, “Should I sell to beginners?”

I think we all struggle with this question at some point because that’s where the biggest businesses are.

There’s simply more beginners than intermediate or experts. So there’s more people to buy from us if we make something for beginners.

Think about ClickFunnels. If Russell Brunson only sold that software to advanced course creators, there wouldn’t be enough customers to make a profit, therefore the product could never get better.

So we need brands who sell to beginners, and brands who cater to the more advanced.

The big question for any coach or consultant is, Which will you be?

Putting it in terms we can better relate to, will you be the Mercedes-Benz of your market, or the Toyota Corolla? 

If you want big sales numbers and a huge brand, get ready to sell to beginners. That’s where you’ll find big markets and big opportunities. 

Yet beginners come with a lot of frustration, and I wanted to flesh out *why* and what can be done about it.

So first let’s get into the 3 things that hold beginners back from getting results and creates headaches for those who sell to them.

Foundation of Performance

Beginners often lack a basic foundation of methodical, consistent action in their lives. 

So when you try to help them take action, there’s no foundation of consistent action to build on. There’s no ongoing action for you to tweak and improve. They have no history of successfully building new habits or making uncomfortable changes.

As a personal trainer, it’s much easier to work with someone who is active and has already made some basic diet changes, than to work with someone who’s never hit the gym in their life.

I asked a mentor one time if I should go to a Tony Robbins event. He said I might get something out of it, because I had the foundation of performance to handle it. 

But he had seen many who didn’t have that foundation, and once they came back from a transformative experience, and they couldn’t translate that experience into action, it actually had a terrible, negative effect.

Some even slipped into a major depression after they came home, and he had to help them pick up the emotional pieces and get back on track.

So working with beginners often means working with folks who don’t know how to break old habits and build new ones, which makes coaching them extremely difficult.

Clarity

It’s impossible to take bold, confident action when you’re unclear on what you want.

Yet beginners are looking for programs and courses to give them the clarity they can’t get on their own.

They simply don’t know what they don’t know.

If they knew exactly what they wanted, they’d probably be well on their way to having it.

The dirty secret of selling coaching programs to beginners is that often, the testimonials you’ll get will be based on clarity. 

“This program helped me decide to _____! Now I know exactly where I’m going and how to get there” 

If you sell programs for beginners, don’t expect them to just take your word and run with it. 

If they don’t feel clarity, they probably won’t take confident action. So plan your program accordingly.

Good Decision-Making Process

Many of my friends in coaching or consulting aren’t the first experts that people find online.

Often many of their clients and buyers have come through other programs first and not had success, or were disappointed by the low level of content in those other programs.

That’s because beginners don’t have a good decision-making process.

They’re scattered, chaotic, and go from one shiny object to another.

Today it’s a program about Instagram, tomorrow it’s a group coaching program about Clubhouse, the day after it will be a full website redesign, after that a LinkedIn messaging system.

Beginners typically find the biggest brands first, the ones who spend the most on ads.

Then they get excited about those programs and sign up for emotional reasons.

Coming to terms with this process will save you a lot of frustration.

And in today’s online climate, whoever is willing to outspend everyone else on ads will probably continue to reach the beginner market first. 

So if you’re not willing to outspend everyone else on ads, accept that beginners will often come to you after going through several other programs, and might even leave your program because they get shiny object syndrome for another program.

It’s all a natural part of selling to the beginner market.

Maybe that makes me sound cynical, but I actually don’t look at any of that negatively.

We need brands and experts who bring in beginners. And we need brands and experts that serve the more advanced.

So this episode is about helping you make good decisions for yourself on who you serve and why.

Because you can either sell to beginners, or sell to the intermediate and up.

It’s nearly impossible to sell to both.

When I hear coaches and consultants talk about partnering, my ears perk up.

Not because I’m a big believer in partnerships (as you’re about to see). 

It’s because I’m listening for the real reasons they want a partner.

Most of the time I hear things like:

We would have a lot of fun building something together

We have complementary skill sets

We have similar audiences

Then in podcasting, there’s this one, We want to start a podcast together, so we need a way to monetize it.

And there’s nothing wrong with any of those impulses.

I started my first podcast with a partner, and we weren’t sure how we would monetize it. 

Now it makes us 6 figures a year. 

However, partnerships are tough to sustain over the long run.

It’s really hard for two partners to put in the same amount of effort, energy and focus into a project for years and years.

At some point, one partner will feel like they’re putting in more than the other partner. 

Sometimes even both partners feel this way. 

That’s why in partnerships like law firms, profit goes into a pie and the pie gets split along the lines of seniority or billable hours. 

Dividing the pie “fairly” is really hard - even for firms who have decades of experience.

In one of my favorite books of all time, Managing the Professional Service Firm, consulting legend David Maister devotes 50 pages of the book to partnership issues.

It’s all the nitty gritty stuff people don’t think about until they’re already in a partnership, like…

• Partner performance counseling (year end appraisals, self-evaluations & feedback)
• Partner compensation (billable hours, seniority, rainmaker vs. operations activities)
• Strategic decision making, goal setting and aligning incentives with strategy
• Partner relationships (partner archetypes, managing partners, division of powers)

In other words, making a partnership work is complicated.

In fact, Maister said that it was fairly common for a firm to bring him in for consulting, and the result was one or more partners leaving.

One of my clients says having a business partner is like getting married (except you don’t get to make out with them). So there’s a lot of potential for friction.

So here are 3 questions to help you make good decisions on partnerships…

1. Do I really have to give up equity to build this business?

Look for ways to hire people, and where you can’t hire a skillset, create joint ventures, revshare or commission agreements with pre-agreed caps, all in writing.

2. Could I pay for the skills and expertise instead of partnering up?

Partners are permanent, so make sure their skills are permanently needed. 

Chances are, you only need a certain skill set for a short time. 

Think about Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. One was a visionary marketing genius, the other was the tech genius who actually made stuff work in real life. They needed each other. But even the tech genius was a skill that could be hired out. Steve Wozniak was crucial in the early days, but it was Jobs’ drive and vision that made Apple a trillion-dollar company. 

3. Could I create a sense of mission and camaraderie within my team, instead of with partners?

Entrepreneurship is lonely. Part of the draw of partnership is the sense of community and shared mission.

The good news is, you can still have that without giving up equity.

Look for ways to create that sense of community and shared mission by building a team of contractors or employees. Get them fired up about your mission and their role in creating a new future for themselves and others. 

Everything that is truly valuable to others takes energy, effort and focus to succeed. 

In some cases, partnership can be greater than the sum of its parts and produce amazing things with less effort.

Yet I’ve noticed that a major allure of partnership is the assumption that it will take less effort, energy and focus to succeed.

And that’s a dangerous assumption to start with.

So when a partnership opportunity presents itself, just take a minute, step back and ask these few questions. It might help you stay focused on the areas where you can make the most impact and reap the most rewards.

On a consultation recently I found myself explaining something that I hadn’t quite articulated before.

So I wanted to lay it out here in writing. 

Writing helps to get my thinking clear and integrates new concepts into my whole Point of View.

I was speaking to a coach who is in a growing niche, with a good (yet limited) sphere of influence. 

They have a big decision to make, where do they choose to reach new people?

Put another way, what ecosystem will they invest time and energy into to attract new clients?

Before we get to that, let’s set the scene for why this question is so important.

I have a key belief from experience and observing lots of coaches and consultants, and it’s controversial but hear me out.

Sales come easiest from your sphere of influence.

Now you’re probably thinking “Yeah, no kidding, we all knew that.”

Yet in the world of coaches and consultants, we forget that all the time.

I see experts make major decisions on program launches or where they invest their time and energy, based on the sales numbers that come from their sphere of influence.

They expect those same sales numbers and percentages to hold true even as they sell more and more programs.

It’s easy to forget that once we have sold to our sphere of influence, we have to start selling to new people. 

People who don’t yet know, like or trust us.

So the sales don’t come as easy.

(I did a whole episode about this concept, so if you want to dive deeper, check out this episode)

But if you’re with me so far, we’re setting the scene with this basic principle:

Sales come easiest from your sphere of influence, therefore once you’ve exhausted your sphere of influence, sales will start to get harder.

Most coaches and consultants find this out the hard way.

When the sales start to get harder, they look for solutions, which leads them to look for ways to grow and reach new people.

This leads them to the question we started with. What ecosystem will they invest time and energy into to attract new clients?

So we have the big 3 right now, social media, podcasting and traditional thought leadership.

Social media is where most of the attention goes because it’s sexy.

On the other hand, you can still go the traditional route, get a book publisher, do a TED talk, get booked on stages, get on the Today Show, hire a PR agency. 

Some of it works, most of it’s a complete crapshoot these days.

Which brings us to the world of online content and more specifically podcasting.

Podcasting is where most coaches and consultants who are drawn to the MicroFamous approach will fit in the best. It’s definitely where introverts will fit the best.

Why?

Because social media has become mostly a playground for extroverts.

And traditional thought leadership relies heavily on public speaking, which is incredibly draining for true introverts because of all the obligations and travel that goes along with speaking.

On top of that, traditional thought leadership has high barriers to entry. It’s expensive, high-risk and high-reward. 

You can drop $20k on a PR agency and get nothing, or they might get you on national TV three times a week. Total crapshoot.

To me, podcasting is the sweet spot where coaches and consultants can thrive by dominating a very focused, fast-growing niche.

A niche where there is buzz, maybe a counter-cultural trend, or there’s just a group of people who feel overlooked and underserved by the content that’s already out there.

Either way, podcasting is a very unique ecosystem that has relatively low barriers to entry (unlike traditional thought leadership), which can also be massively successful with very little time required (unlike social media). 

So let’s sum up.

If you have something to sell, like a program or a service, the sales will come easiest from your sphere of influence.

But don’t be misled by those early, easy sales.

If you want to keep selling more and keep growing, you’ll have to go out beyond your sphere of influence and pull new people in.

Otherwise the sales you have now will start to taper down and down as you exhaust your existing sphere of influence.

So choose your ecosystem with intention and thought, and then go all in.

We don’t often feature guests on the show, but when we do, it’s to spotlight authors, coaches and leaders who dive into introversion and why it’s not a deviation from the norm or a handicap - even in the world of coaching. 

There are many natural advantages to being an introvert, but they often get lost in the misconceptions, misidentifications and baggage people have about the word. How do we break out of the misconceptions and embrace the strengths of being an introvert? How do we build our schedules and priorities around how we are, instead of how we wish we were or think we need to be? 

In this episode, creator of QuietandStrong.com and author of “Minding Your Time: Time Management, Productivity, and Success, Especially for Introverts”, David Hall shares how we can understand our introversion and use it to our advantage. 

Three things we learned from David Hall; 

• Why an introvert’s natural ability to think deeply helps us as leaders and experts
• The huge misconception about introverts and podcasting 
• How to manage our time, schedules and energy according to our personalities 

Guest Bio- 

David Hall, M.Ed., is the creator of QuietandStrong.com. He is an author, blogger, podcaster and speaker on a mission to help introverts find success by discovering their strengths and honoring their needs. David has also spent 20+ years working in higher education, and has given many workshops, trainings, and presentations on personality, strengths, and introversion/extroversion.

His book, “Minding Your Time: Time Management, Productivity, and Success, Especially for Introverts”, helps readers understand themselves and their introversion to be more successful in managing their time and productivity.

For more information, and to listen to the podcast head over to http://quietandstrong.com/. 

There are two ways to find easy sales.

One is a good long-term strategy, the other is a trap.

Now we know from Richard Koch's work on the 80/20 Principle and his book the Star Principle...

that the most likely way to build a sustainable, profitable business is to identify a niche with 10% yearly growth potential...

Then build the #1 business in that niche.

Just about every successful business can be boiled down to those two elements.

NOW, if we start from there, that reveals a couple very interesting things about what's really going on when sales come easy.

There are two ways initial sales come easy:

1. You sell something easy to understand in an established niche. 

You might call this the Fast Follower Strategy.

I see this a lot in the real estate space, where even new, inexperienced agents can generate sales because consumers' expectations are low and competition is mostly part-timers who don't treat it like a business.

However, I also see this in real estate COACHING, where the same lack of seriousness makes it easy for a successful high-achievers to get 5 or 10 coaching clients if they speak at a few events or go on a few podcasts.

The market is established, agents know what a real estate coach is, they may have people even telling them to hire a coach. So initial sales can come easy if you have good content and you're likable and trustworthy.

Now let's look at the 2nd case where sales can come easy...

2. You sell something new and different to early adopters who are looking for something new and different. You might call this the Trailblazer Strategy. 

That's what almost all big businesses do in the early days. The early adopters are looking for something new and different, so when we come along and give that to them, they're at least open to hearing it. If you're likable and trustworthy, you can pick up some easy sales in the beginning, even with something new and different as long as you're going to the early adopters. 

The problem is there aren't enough early adopters in most niches to build a long-term business.

So when we look for easy sales, it can be misleading. Let's take the scenario where you sell something in an established space.

When you're a fast follower, most of the time the best case scenario is you become Pepsi to someone else's Coke. The Samsung Galaxy to the iPhone. Amazon Fire to the iPad. 

That's why looking for easy sales can be a trap. They can lead you right into a position where you get stuck behind a leader you can never overtake. They are already #1 in that niche, so you're mostly hoping they make a mistake or give up their position.

Building a business that takes off and gets popular, whether it's online or not, comes down to creating something remarkable. Something that raises people's social status when they buy it and especially when they talk about it.

And that rarely happens when we're the Fast Follower. 

So when we seek easy sales, remember that one path leads to dominating your niche, the other is a trap that leads to 2nd place. 

The harder road of selling something new and different, creating a new niche, and going from early adopters to the mainstream, that's the path to a REAL sustainable, profitable business.

And that takes leadership. Stepping up and claiming a leadership position in a niche that doesn't exist yet. It takes courage and a lot of hard thinking and interacting with the market to give them something new and different they are willing to try.

Steve Jobs and the iPad is a great example. The category of tablet computers basically didn't exist until he created it. The tech was getting close, but he had the vision and Apple had the team that executed that idea. And they created a new niche that Apple continues to dominate.

So here's the big takeaway. 

Easy sales can be an indicator that we've created something new and remarkable, so early adopters are jumping on it. Or it can indicate that we've actually just created something that is capitalizing on someone else's leadership, and we're following. 

Being a follower, no matter how fast you follow, is a losing strategy in the long run. Better to do the work up front to create something remarkable, compelling and memorable. 

That makes sales easy to early adopters while also setting to dominate a new niche that really matters.

Let's start with a little thought experiment: What is draining your time and energy right now?

Not all tasks are equally draining. That leads us into our first big idea.

1) Go after the things that drain the most energy first, not necessarily the most time.

Chances are, your business only needs a few key skills from you. And of all the other things in your business that you do, some of those things aren't a big deal, and some drain your energy.

If you're like me and it hurts your soul to check your email, create a simple system and hire someone to handle your email immediately. A few years ago I realized that my podcast agency only needed 3 things from me, and they were the things I was highly skilled at and enjoyed doing.

Everything else I ruthlessly started to get off my plate.

So how do you get everything else off your plate?

2) Systems first, People second.

We're living in a massive labor shortage. A-players are hard to come by. A-Salespeople and high-level integrators always have been hard to come by and always will be.

If you focus on rockstar systems, you don't need A players all the time to have a great business. The better your systems, the better your baseline level of performance in your business.

Rockstar systems means you can hire good, smart, capable people, and still get rockstar results. So what happens when you have an A player? Squeeze them for everything their worth by having them upgrade your systems while they're with you. Plan on them to outgrow the role and probably leave.

I hired an A-player in the middle of last year, and together we built a great system inside my agency. He even documented the whole system step-by-step and helped hire and train the 2 people it took to replace him. So when he got an opportunity with an awesome startup, he was able to turn over the keys of the system to the people he'd trained and I wasn't left scrambling. I was actually better off for him being with me for a year.

So I don't plan on retaining rockstar people for my business to work. If you're building a lifestyle team, at some point you're going to hit a business sweet spot, where you're not looking to just grow for its own sake. And at that point you have to be honest with yourself and the people on your team. You may not be able to retain all your A people by giving them a vision within your team. Their vision may take them out of your team, so you may as well plan for it.

McKinsey Consulting is the best example. They've known for decades that they'll retain 1 out of every 5 people they hire, because they only keep the best of the best.

That creates the famous "Up-or-Out'' structure McKinsey is known for, and creates an international fraternity of former McKinsey types who weren't retained but ended up at other companies. They then turn around and recommend their companies hire McKinsey, so often the candidates that didn't make the cut end up being McKinsey's best clients.

And McKinsey gets the best out of all their people while they're there.

We can all do the same thing by having an informal "Up-or-Out" policy. You only retain the best, those who can make you a lot of money or save you a lot of money. Everyone else will "outgrow" their role and move out of your team at some point, and you support them in that journey.

That brings us to one of the biggest challenges in building a team: Losing too many good people, especially A players. Rainmakers and founders tend to burn through good people, and some do it over and over again for years.

I have a client who made 1.3 million last year in billings all by himself.

That means he is worth $650 an hour, every single working hour a week for 50 weeks a year. If he paid a VA $650 a week, all they'd have to save him is one hour of work to be worth it.

Yet he's the classic rainmaker. He's burned through so many people over the years that now he shies away even from hiring a part-time assistant. And so he continues to do a bunch of energy draining activities, like checking his own email, setting his own calendar appointments, sending follow ups, etc.

And it's a shame because it's all fixable, and it starts with building systems first and adding people second. So once you have rockstar systems run by good people, how do you keep those people and get great performance out of them?

3) Manage people by metrics, not by your feelings.

One of my mentors is a very high-level performance coach. He's built these incredible spreadsheets full of formulas and data tracking and visualization to help his clients track and raise their performance level.

What's the problem? People couldn't handle it.

Even the highest sales performers, routinely billing 7 figures year after year, have trouble caring deeply about more than 3 metrics. The people on our teams are definitely no different. We need to give the people on our team a definite and secure way to know they're doing a good job.

I've been in both positions, working for the founder and being the founder. And it's HARD to work for a founder. You never quite know where you stand, what's expected of you, when you're doing a good job and when you're not.

The best thing you can do is when you hire someone, narrow everything down to numbers, and base their performance goals on no more than 3 numbers. No more.

If they hit those numbers, they're doing a good job. If they don't hit those numbers, they're not doing a good job.

If our people hit their numbers and we're still not getting the results we want in our business, who's fault is that? Our fault for not knowing our numbers:)

When our people know exactly what we expect, and that we take responsibility for setting the numbers to get the outcomes we want, it gives people exactly what they want.

Security. Stability. Support. If you create that culture, that extreme ownership type of culture, your people will not only want to reach those numbers, but when something goes wrong, they'll want to roll up their sleeves and help you fix it.

They won't mentally check out and say, "Not my problem."

I'll leave you with this.

In our agency we have a weekly meeting, it's run by my head of content who's based in South Africa. And she runs that meeting, not me. She asks all the key questions that everyone knows in advance. Everyone reports in their key numbers. She interrogates and tracks those numbers.

I offer suggestions and little tweaks, so I'm valuable in that meeting, but I'm not necessary. That meeting happens whether I'm there or not. So I could leave the business for weeks, even months, and we'd continue to perform at a high level for a good long time.

And as the founder of a lifestyle business, that gives me the security, stability and support I want.

So to sum up, here are the 3 big ideas we covered:

1) Go after the things that drain the most energy first, not necessarily the most time.

2) Systems first, People second.

3) Manage people by metrics, not by feelings.

That's how you free up time and energy while your team is in high-growth mode.