You Don't Have to Be Good to Start...
"You don't have to be good to start, but you have to start to be good"
-the late, great Zig Ziglar.
It's one of the foundational quotes of sales. So how does it relate to making audio for your business?
Zig is trying to get you as a new salesperson to realize that you will not be good at the start of your sales career.
You just won't.
What he's pushing folks toward is that they need to put in the work. They need to put in the hard work in order to be successful in their new endeavor.
You have to practice to be perfect.
This concept is very common in podcasting and other audio areas as well as sales.
As this article is being written there are approximately 1.4 million podcasts on the market.
However, almost 40% of them are defunct. They never made it past episode 1, 2, 5 or 10.
So if you have a podcast that makes it to episode 25 you are already ahead of so many other people in the audio space because they quit 10, 15, or 20 episodes ago.
The biggest hurdle to any audio endeavor is consistency and sustainability.
These two ideas ensure that your listener base builds trust with you and is able to keep your product top of mind on a regular basis. Now this can be a different span of time for various organizations. Maybe you release weekly. Bi-monthly. Monthly.
Anything less common than that had better be either the most amazing piece of content the world has ever seen, and you simply aren't going to make that on your first few times out of the gate.
Remember, the goal of being in the audio space is to be present frequently and keep the people who you want to be either your customer or your listener coming back for more week after week, month after month.
You don't have to be a world-class show person at first, but you have to continue to consistently put out content over an extended time and it has to improve with every iteration.
You have to Start, and chances are at the beginning, you won't be very good.
Your content might actually be pretty bad.
When content isn't good, people don't watch, and when people don't watch or listen, no customers come in the door.
This is a problem for a number of businesses who move into the podcasting or audiobook type of space. Businesses run on money.
Often times, there are people in the organization whose job it is to make sure the organization makes responsible financial decisions.
Before anybody from Finance gets on me, that's a good thing.
The trick with audio content is that you you may be using it as a lead generation or a loss leading type of product and sometimes that's really hard to swallow for the folks who work with the company books.
My warning to you here is that if you do start and you want this to be a successful endeavor you have to keep going at it.
You will likely have to put more resources into it at first then you get out of it. This has to be an acceptable case for potentially a period of 5 or more years!
This doesn't mean that you're going to be throwing away or burning tens of thousands of dollars (It might, I've seen it done!), but you may actually find yourself not seeing any appreciable income or revenue from your audio product at first.
Let me stress that.
At first.
One of the biggest misconceptions in corporate America when it comes to modern social media and other types of content generation platforms is that if you just make one thing and you do it just right it'll go viral.
The reality is that in the audio and social media space, most folks do not get famous in any way shape or form, at least without significant financial investment. Their channel or company doesn't get popular organically. There's a paid component.
Often times these are lead generation channels for companies that need to be invested in heavily in order to make sure that sufficient time passes to find a true ROI on your efforts in the audio space.
While I can't advocate for hiding your podcast or your audio Endeavors from your finance department (don't do that, they're great people and they help keep your business afloat!) getting your Finance or accounting team on board with your efforts in the audio space, understanding that they are a long-term investment that may not pay off, is very important
So then why do anything in the audio space?
Because it has the potential to transform your business.
All of your competitors are there already.
This is an area where your business has to have a presence because if you don't, people will not remember you.
It's a new cost of doing business if anything, and can be an amazing boost for your business.
You need to get into the audio space.
You don't have to be great.
You don't have to be the person who is knocking it out of the park with 2 million listens in month 3.
You have to start, often from ZERO, and you have to cultivate your audience and your community around your topic.
That takes time and building day by day.
Your show may not be amazing to start. That's ok!
As Zig said, you don't have to be good to start but you have to start to be good.
Want a better chance at being good with your show sooner? Book a FREE consultation with us here at Westport Studios.
~WPS