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...

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...

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...

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...

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...