Morgan Franklin: You know, one of the hardest parts of
podcasting, or let's be honest, making any kind of content at
all, is being yourself. I don't know about you, but for me,
knowing hundreds, 1000s, possibly millions of people will
be listening to what I'm saying or watching what I'm doing is
really intimidating. Opening yourself up to just one person
is hard, right? So when you're faced with the idea of millions
of people, debt is almost too much to comprehend. Over the
past few months, I've put a very conscious effort into figuring
out how to actually be myself online, which turns out, is a
lot harder than I thought it was going to be what it takes to let
down that guard of the manufactured version of us that
we want the world to see us as, and how to overcome that year of
vulnerability for long enough to actually click Post Hello and
welcome to podcast for profit. My name is Morgan Franklin. I'm
a Podcast Producer, strategist and educator. This podcast will
help you create and grow a podcast that cuts through the
noise of social media and speaks directly to your target
audience. If you're ready to create a podcast that will align
you with the experts in your industry, position yourself as a
trusted leader and create another source of revenue for
your business. You're in the right place, trying to be
yourself online. Kind of feels like the first day of school,
you know, like your teacher sits everybody down and they say that
we're going to go around the room, introduce ourselves and
like, say One fun fact, it has that same level of stress to it.
You want to be cool, but not too cool. You want to know what to
say, but you don't want to be too rehearsed. You want to seem
friendly, but like not too eager, right? You want to be
perfect, but also not too perfect, that nobody wants to
hang out with you at lunch. And that quest for perfection, that
wanting to be just the right amount of everything for most
people, that pressure is enough to stop them from ever posting
online, besides a few vacation pictures and random concert
photos, they'll stay behind the safety of their screen. They'll
stay behind the safety of a private profile. But not you.
You're a podcaster. You know what it's like to share yourself
online? Or do you? Do you know how to be yourself online? Or do
you know how to be the brand, or yourself with four major content
pillars, because that is not you, and this comes from a place
of total vulnerability and honesty from me. I have really
struggled with this. I want to separate myself from my podcast,
from my brand, from me online, and I've told myself for so
long, it was because I'm a private person. I'm a private
person. That isn't true. The truth is, I'm afraid of someone
contradicting me. I'm afraid of someone making me question
myself. I'm afraid of being seen and someone thinking I'm not
worthy of their time or energy. I'm afraid of rejection, and
more specifically, rejection of who I truly am. And I think
that's how so many of us feel, but we can't even put it into
words, because we've put that brand out there instead of us.
So if the brand gets rejected, it's still not us. We still
don't feel that pain. Because, you know what, we never really
put ourselves out there in the first place. And you can't hurt
me if you don't actually know me. And we all feel this from
the Creator with 10 followers to the Creator with 10 million
followers, why do you think Beyonce doesn't do interviews? I
mean, totally serious. Why do you think she only posts the
most curated version of herself and her family and her work?
Because she doesn't want us to come in and to critique and
comment and give our opinion she's Beyonce. She doesn't have
to. But you know why she doesn't have to? Because she spent 75%
of her life putting everything on display for us, and we do not
have that luxury. If you want to build a brand around yourself,
as so many of us do, you have to share yourself, and not just how
you scaled your business or created a product or did
whatever you did. We want to know you. What are you
interested in? What makes you happy? What are you thinking
about, besides being a one dimensional person in your
industry. And of course, this is so much easier said than done,
right? I know, because I've been doing it, I have been
drastically shifting my content from only being about my
business to being about what it's like to run this business,
what it's like to be a professional Podcast Producer,
and more importantly, what I'm interested in, who I am, why you
should care in the first place. Think about it like this. Let's
just pretend that we're at a networking event, and you're
shaking hands with people and asking them, like what they do.
We're chit chatting. What's one of the main objectives that you
have in this literal moment? It, it's probably to find a point of
commonality that's outside of work, right? We're all
desperately trying to find, okay, what is something that
connects us, that is not your literal job title, and most of
the time, if I'm being honest with you, I just skip straight
to the compliment where I talk about what's going on at the
event. I'm trying to leave the boring parts out and get to know
you hey, I love your shoes. What's been your favorite event
here? Oh my gosh, me too. Did you see so and so? Yes, I love
her from this. And can you believe this? And, wow, I've
just made a lasting connection. And, better yet, a friend. You
know what an unsuccessful interaction at a networking
event usually sounds like, hello, I work at such and such,
doing such and such. Oh, cool. I work at such and such, doing
such and such. Nice to meet you. You are never going to talk to
that person again or think about them ever again, like the people
that you just meet on the surface level and you're talking
about your credentials with each other, you will never think
about that person ever again. And why would you it was such a
surface level conversation about just your professional work, it
meant nothing to you. It meant nothing to them. And so all this
being said, Why are you only being the I work at such and
such, and I do such and such with your online persona, and
when you think about it in the context of real life and social
media being an extension of you, and all the content that you
create your podcast being an extension of you. When you know
that people don't really connect with this in real life, why are
you making it the only kind of content that you're showing up
with online? You know what I'm saying, and I'm 100% guilty of
this. I'm still working on it. It's taken me a long time to
wake up to this information, because I've been so stuck in
wanting every single thing to be tied up with a beautiful
matching bow that I neglect to realize that no one really
cares. They don't. They don't care about the beautiful graphic
or the perfectly designed pin or the meticulously scripted
podcast. We're living in a world of fast paced content. People
want it and they want it now, and most of the time they don't
care if it's at the cost of it not being exactly perfect, of it
just kind of coming out how it is. Because everything is
happening so fast that if you actually want to grow an
audience showing up consistently is so much more important than
showing up perfectly. But how do you really get past this? How do
you climb cringe mountain? How can you make that messy Lo Fi
content that is performing so well right now and is getting
all the views and likes and downloads first of all, the
first step towards success is accepting failure as your
friend, people who never try, never fail. But on the flip side
of that, people who never try, never succeed. And this is a
necessary vulnerability to doing anything new, and you have to
start to pursue that anxiety. You have to see that anxiety of
failing as your friend. I like to think of this as a numbers
game, because really, that's all it is. Let's say that you make
100 podcast episodes over the next year, and two of those
really take off. On the other hand, let's say that you make
100 podcast episodes over the next five years, and two of
those really take off. It's the same amount of work and it's the
exact same results, but it feels like it's happening much less
consistently, because instead of you having a really successful
episode that's popping off every six months. You're now having
one every two and a half years, and that's really hard as a
creator and just a person with feelings to keep going when you
are seeing that success so inconsistently. Because, like I
said, it's the same amount of work, it's the same results, but
it's just happening at a different frequency which makes
us perceive it so much differently. This is what helps
me the most. Make a goal for yourself and stick to it. I am
never accountable to myself for posting unless I have a
predetermined goal. For example, on Sunday, I'll say this week,
I'm posting four times on threads, two times on LinkedIn,
four times on Tiktok, once on Instagram, and I'm sending out a
newsletter. And that sounds like so much when I'm saying it
right? And honestly, that is usually about half of what I'm
putting out in a week. But when I have it all mapped out, it
makes it so much easier. It goes from being 12 pieces of content
individually to making four pieces of content and
repurposing it across five different platforms. That way
I'm not just relying on my old set of tricks and only talking
about my business. I can take that extra time to think about
if this is actually connecting with someone and coming from my
heart and is actually something. I am interested in right now,
and I want to talk about I don't just feel pressured to only
share my podcast episode, and then I get so caught up in
everything that I can't even think about what would actually
connect with my audience. Let's talk about how to correctly use
authority content marketing. I think this is where so many of
us have misconceptions about what our future customer or
listener or follower actually wants to hear from us again?
Let's act like this is you meeting someone for the first
time. You would never walk up to someone and say, Hey, I've made
$500,000 in sales in the past three months, and I've got four
clients from this email sequence. No, that'd be insane.
So why are we using that kind of content at the top of funnel to
draw people in? I understand that it's impressive, and I know
that, again, authority content does have a place to prove your
credibility. But instead, what about authority content that
talks about your story, that shares a struggle you've had,
and like how you overcame it, and how the audience can too.
What about what it looks like to work with you, or how you
actually have achieved all the success that's brought you to
where you are? That's what's going to grow your community.
That's what's going to make you a personal brand and podcast
that people want to follow and that they can't wait to listen
to. I remember in college, we had a representative from
Lululemon come to our university, which, for our rural
Tennessee School, was a really big deal. I remember thinking
even then, wow, Lululemon, if I could ever figure out how to
market my business like Lululemon, I'd never have to
worry about anything ever again. She started her presentation
with showing us a bunch of pictures of women working out
and smiling and a whole bunch of stuff, nothing really directly
linked to Lululemon, just basically vibes of what a upper
middle class woman who wore Lululemon and spent $300 on a
workout outfit would like, and she said, It's not the product
you create. It's the tribe, the tribe. I still think about her
saying that, because in that moment, it was awe inspiring to
me. The funny thing is, I thought I knew exactly what she
meant. And now, 10 years later, I still think about it. I'm not
sure I exactly know even now, but I do know one thing, people
want to feel a part of something. They want to align
themselves with, someone that they relate to and that
represents them in a better way than they could even represent
themselves. If you aren't taking the time to cultivate that tribe
through your content and your podcast or even the way you
interact with people online, it is going to be a very long road
for you to arrive at any successful destination. I went
to a podcaster's event in Nashville a couple weeks ago,
and their featured speaker was Jad Abner Rob he's the creator
of Radiolab on NPR, and Dolly Parton's America, arguably two
of the most successful podcasts to ever exist. Right during the
Q and A someone asked him about how long it took him to find his
voice, quote, unquote. And I thought this was so interesting.
He said it'd sometimes take him two hours of warming up and
reading and practicing bullet points to get his voice ready to
record so that he didn't just sound like he was reading off a
piece of paper, or being that kid that stands up in front of
the whole class on the first day of school and doesn't know what
he's saying. This was really shocking to me, because
throughout his entire presentation at any podcast I've
ever heard him on, he's been the most captivating person to
listen to during his presentation, he was telling the
story of a girl who walks down a hall and sees a ball. And I was
paying attention to this like it was a prophecy. But there's a
very important lesson to be learned here. Most of the time,
the people that we think are so effortless and naturally good at
being themselves, online or even in person, have spent a lot of
time and effort to just come off like they showed up one day like
this. And I just want to say the Internet is a scary place.
Sometimes there's a lot of people with a lot of feelings,
and not that many places for them to direct those feelings.
No matter how much of yourself you share or what you post,
someone that starts following you online is never really going
to know you. They might think they do, but as you know, they
don't, don't ever take someone saying something about you
online personally. I know this is the hardest and most
intimidating part, but it's the truth. They don't know you. They
don't know your experiences or your knowledge or your life, and
even when they try to comment like they do. So they still
don't block every person who makes you doubt yourself or
makes you feel less than the absolute superstar that you are.
There is no time, and they don't deserve one second of your
attention. You don't have to remake the wheel. I know I say
this in almost every episode, but it's because it's true, you
don't have to remake the wheel. If you listen to this entire
episode and you're thinking, Okay, I know I want to start
showing up online more as myself. What do I do now? Where
do I start? I just want you to go into your saved content
wherever that is, whether it's on Instagram or Tiktok, or
Pinterest or wherever, look at the content you liked so much
that you took the time to save it and start there. What do you
love about this content? What connection Did you find with it?
And just start there. There is nothing new under the sun.
Everything is just a reuse of a recycled piece of content
inspired by something else that happened 50 years ago, that
someone else ripped off. Remembering that always helps me
when I feel overwhelmed and I feel like I just don't know what
to create or how I can do something new that someone else
hasn't already said or done. You can do this. You can show up as
the amazing, interesting, complex person you are online,
and your podcast and your brand and your business will be better
for it. And as always, I can't wait to listen to your podcast.
Hey, thank you so much for joining me on this episode. If
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