Podcasting serves many purposes, but you might not realize what an engine it can be for personal growth.
So today, we’re really gonna get into all the value you can get from being a podcaster — and it’s not what you would think.
Grow with the trend
First, a couple of fun facts for you. Podcasting is scaling. One of the things we always wonder is how big is this thing? It is just something people are doing in garages?
No. Something like over 750,000 podcasts exist, and over 60 million homes have people who have listened to podcasts. Half the population has listened to a podcast. Seventy percent of the population is familiar with it, and 32 percent of people have listened in the last month. So it’s definitely something that people are doing and getting more familiar with.
Podcasting is something that has been such a life changer for me, especially as I went out on my own. I think if I had done this even earlier, it could have been even more massively valuable for my career and my personal growth.
And I think anyone can podcast. Especially if you’ve got an iPhone, jumping into the Podcasts app is pretty simple.
If you put the right amount of effort into it, you can do it as a side hustle. You can do it while you still have your job as a way to break out of your rut.
If you are still in a job and even if you plan on staying in the job, this could still be something that really helps you kind of move out of the box you’re in. It can help you break out a rut, think differently, and not only grow yourself as a human but grow your network, which I think we don’t often think about.
Network growth
If you are podcasting right — which means the right equipment, the right training, the right commitment to doing a podcast of high quality — the first valuable takeaway is that you get to network and meet great people.
The best thing to do is to use an interview format. Start with people you know, so you get comfortable with doing interviews and asking questions, and create a podcast where you interview them on a topic you’re curious about. Maybe it’s entrepreneurs, and you want to talk about how they built their business.
For me, it was marketing.
I’m a marketing practitioner, and I want to always know what’s happening in marketing. So I want to talk to the best marketing experts out there: the people who wrote books, the people who speak…
For you, it might be something else. Maybe you’re in sales and you want to talk to the best sellers. Or maybe you want to talk to CMOs or people who have built accounting firms.
Whatever it is, pick something in your industry or something you’re insanely curious about. Some people say, “Do your hobby.” That’s fine, too. But I think it should be something that you want to work in. Choose something in your industry that you want to be doing to help move you forward in your career and in your business.
That helps educate you. But in addition, the number and quality of people you start to meet by doing these interviews are extraordinary. You could be talking to the leaders in your industry overnight. Before you started the podcast, you’d have no reason to do that, and now you do because you put the time and effort into building something worth their attention.
Authority growth
So start there. It’s a great way to build your network because once you spend an hour with someone on the phone doing an interview, you feel like you’re connected. You shared something, you have their contact info, and if you ever need anything, you can ask or reach out. Or vice versa.
You can continue to build that relationship over time. And you’re not just getting to know someone — now you have content that you’ve built together. You’ve collaborated on something that’s credible. It’s not just a selfie with the person you idolize that gets you nothing. It’s actual content that you created together that you can point to, and you get credibility from that.
Source growth
So build your credibility, and build your network. And build it from each of those people you interview. You don’t have to hunt down a person every week. Once you get the first two, three, four people in your industry, you can then ask them, “Hey, who are one or two people you’d recommend to come on this podcast who you think would be a good fit?”
They’re going to give you someone they think is a good fit, especially if you did a quality interview and they felt like you really got the best out of them. They’re not going to care what your listenership is — they’re going to care that you did the work and you did it right.
That’s amazing because suddenly your network is working for you in a way that it never did in real life. Because you can meet someone at a bar and say, “It was great networking with you. Do you know anyone else that would be great to know?”
No one does that. No one passes on your information after meeting you at a networking event or a bar, but they do in podcasting, especially if their name was mentioned during the recording. You can follow up with an email, and they’ll follow up and get you that introduction.
That was the first thing that made me say, “Wow.” Podcasting can help you with your networking and with your credibility. That is huge and can move you forward in your business. That alone is inspiration.
Passion growth
Another advantage of podcasting is the learning you’re going to pick up by having a focus and by continuing to talk to the smartest minds in your industry. That’s going to inspire your curiosity. It’s going to inspire you to do more writing and more recording on your own. It’s gonna inspire you to have things that you can think and can talk about.
It can also help you come up with something you stand for — your point of view. If you have your own belief that you can talk about, then you can become a guest on other people’s podcasts, or you can write up your talks and be on stages or whatever else.
That influence comes from doing the podcast first and then starting to form your perspective.
Audience growth
Now imagine you take that show on the road. Guess what. Getting on other people’s podcasts means you now have credibility as the person presenting the content as guest speaker. And now you’re picking up their audience as well. That audience is saying, “Who’s this guy? I want to get to know him.”
So you start to generate discovery. You start to generate an audience.
And you can generate an audience from interviewing people, too. Every time you are the interviewer and you bring a guest on it, they’ll probably tell their audience about the show, and a few of them will check it out, stick around and subscribe.
So by interviewing others in your industry, you’re picking up an audience and generating discovery. And that amplifies if you are the guest speaker, the authority that is giving knowledge.
Authority is a big part of this — the credibility, the audience, the discovery… Building your reputation motivates you to start putting things down on paper that you can build as your framework for what you believe, and that can lead to actual business that you get paid for, like speaking or writing a book.
Now you have something that brings in people to your world, some kind of useful document that you create or piece of content that you create. So you can bring them in, ask them to provide their email to get it, and now you have a list of people you can market to in the future.
If you ever decide you want to sell something like a program, product or service, you have started to build an email list, which is the backbone of selling and building a business.
Start small and grow
This all came about because you started to spend a couple hours a week doing a little bit of podcasting homework and starting to get to know cool people and doing things that you’re already interested in.
I’m telling you, the value and personal growth for me have been astronomical for me, and not enough people are doing it.
The No. 1 way to rocket your personal growth and development is by putting yourself out there, getting insanely curious and giving yourself a forum, a format, a platform to build your name on.
Podcasting is an easy way to do it, but you can do it in other places. You can interview people in a blog or on a Facebook live. That’s another good place to start, but it takes a lot more work, more consistency, more credibility, and more setup.
If that’s a little intimidating, then I would start with something more like a blog or a podcast. For me, podcasting has been No. 1 and super helpful in terms of me growing and investing in myself. It is helping me build my own reputation, brand and business on the side.
I hope you find it just as valuable.
LOOKING TO START A PODCAST?
Check out my article covering 10 Podcasting Ideas for Beginners to help you get started!
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