#186: Aligning Your Podcast Goals with Impact
Podcasting has become a noisy place. There are now A LOT of voices sharing what makes or breaks a podcast creator's success. But the truth is - only YOU can make that call. Your success markers will look very differently than another's, which means your goals sets will best serve you if they are created based on your unique version of success in the stage you're in. Yes - there are always best-practices - but what measures success is usually a little deeper than a download.
Creating and achieving small, purposeful goals—rather than rigid benchmarks set by others—can transform your mindset, boost your confidence, and help you build a podcast (and life) you truly love. You’ll learn the powerful difference between outside expectations and goal-setting rooted in your “why,” discover actionable steps to start your own podcast adventure, and get inspired to celebrate every bit of progress along your path. If you’re ready to give yourself permission to succeed and show up as your boldest self, this episode is your guide.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
The power of crafting goals that align with your authentic self and unique creative vision
How to distinguish between external expectations and purposeful, self-driven goals
The brain science behind positive self-talk and giving yourself permission to be successful
00:00 The Power of Self-Talk
05:29 Mindset Matters for Success
07:59 Podcasting to Eastablish Your Voice
12:41 Clarify Goals, Embrace Growth
Read the Full Transcript
Christina Barsi [00:01:07]:
Hi, this is Barsi, your host. Welcome back. I'm so excited to be sharing this with you and I hope it brings you some great ways to begin your process. Or at least begin thinking about your process when starting your first podcast. Today we are killing the expectations and creating the goals. So what do I mean by that? I don't know about you, but each time I focus too much on what I expect and believe should happen, I am always disappointed. On some level. It's almost a recipe for feelings of failure and letdown.
Christina Barsi [00:01:41]:
So put simply, I'd rather focus on the goals. Goals I can create from a perspective that is measured by realistic factors that exist in the present moment and that are unique to me. Expectations often come from a place of what I imagine should happen based on things that other people are doing or say should happen, or on false belief systems like I should be further along by now, or if I don't meet this certain number by this certain time that that means I'm failing. You may have noticed the word should was showing up again here and phrasings like if I don't, which to me both have feelings of failure built into the structure of those phrases. There's no grace, there's no freedom. I also don't like other people telling me how things should be, but I can create a goal of my own and then try to meet it. So yes, you could say that is based on semantics. How do I meet a goal without some expectations of what should happen if it's met? But I'm trusting you to understand the difference in how I'm using the word expectation.
Christina Barsi [00:02:49]:
What I'm trying to outline here is that how we talk to ourselves makes all the difference and the words and phrases we use have the potential of having a positive intonation or a negative one. And that can have huge impact on our belief system, our belief in whether we will meet that goal or if we already think we can't, and also in how we create these goals. We can create them from a place of comparison based on what outside entities might say we should be doing. Or we can create goals from a place of specificity that is born out of the details that apply to us and our project specifically. And one last thing I want to mention about the importance of how we say things to ourselves and the influence it has on our belief system, which in turn influences our action steps Is the brain science behind this? Our subconscious mind will believe whatever it is that you decide to tell it. If the messaging in your mind, the voice that speaks to you in your head, those thoughts and feelings, if that voice is saying things like this won't work, but I'll try it anyway, or I should be further along by now, I must not be as good as everyone else is at this, then your subconscious mind has now taken that to be your true reality. This is now fact. So imagine if you could control your reality this way, because the truth is, you can.
Christina Barsi [00:04:15]:
You have that power. What if you took that knowledge and fed yourself positive messages of attainable goals and successes and now that became your reality and your brain believed that is fact. When what do you think would change in your life? How would that affect your action steps not just in this venture, but in all areas of your life? Don't believe me. In an article in Forbes by senior contributor Brianna Weist, she says, and I quote, the subconscious mind is the realm in which you can either habituate yourself to expect and routinely seek the actions that would build and reinforce the greatest success, happiness or wholeness or healing of your life. She also titles Step two in her article in Beginning a Process in Seeking Actions that are reinforcing and success driven as such. Quote Give yourself permission to be successful. For example, I allow myself to be successful as a form of giving yourself permission rather than I will be happy when or I will be successful when. Like when I have five figure weekly downloads, then I can consider myself successful at podcasting.
Christina Barsi [00:05:29]:
This article, by the way, is really good and is a very short read, so I'll include it in the show notes in case you want to dive deeper. So what I'm saying here is the mindset matters. Goals that are created based on your path and bigger picture are where your focus should be in order to create a clear measure of success that is applicable to you. Which worrying about what others expect of you and your process and taking those on as your own goals and measures of success are not great ways to serve you and what you're on the path to accomplish. So the application here is awareness of what you can incorporate into your goal setting to measure your success with permission to feel successful while letting go of the expectation created by others who are not invested in your process. The success rate of meeting a small goal tied to your why tied to your purpose is very high. Here are some common examples put into Podcasting Outside Expectation by episode 10 I need at least 200 downloads per episode or my podcast is not considered successful versus a purposeful goal. By episode 10, I want to be better at crafting my episode's themes in line with my mission and be less nervous on the Microsoft here's another Outside expectation I want to be making enough money from my ad sales by episode 20 to pay for itself and make a profit.
Christina Barsi [00:06:55]:
Purposeful goal I want to grow the community I'd like to engage with in my designated niche to include them in future offers. I will have the expectations outlined Here are examples of how people create goals that are based on things that have nothing to do with what they're building in the long run. It doesn't really quantify success because it doesn't add value to what you're building specifically. So I hope you're starting to get the idea of how I'm differentiating expectations and goals here, and also how it ties into the previous episode of Creating from purpose. The key to good goal creation is staying connected to your why from all angles. Okay, now that we have the mindset around how this all works, I do have a step by step process of how to kill the expectations and create the goals. Step 1 this is focused around literally determining what your goal is, your overall goal, the one that is motivating this venture in the first place. It's connected to your purpose and your why and is what you're hoping to gain and accomplish with the podcast.
Christina Barsi [00:07:59]:
It may just be the goal of what we talk about here in this mini series, which is to develop the mission of your venture through creating weekly content that is spoken through your voice literally since it's a podcast and and figuratively as you develop what that voice looks like for you in this construct for your business or venture or brand. By the way, I do also want to mention that consistency and a weekly schedule where you are creating content in this way for the audience and community you want to be a part of and or develop. It's a big part of the takeaway of doing it this way too, of making podcasting your first step. It allows you to create a library that you can literally draw from and even repurpose into social media posts or even a blog or a white paper or even a book. I want to share something with you because it was really affirming for me, I was asked to create and moderate a panel for Outlier hq, which they're a podcast event platform, so shout out to Outlier and Ever Gonzalez, the founder of Outlier hq, by the way. So I had the pleasure of kicking off the first panel that Outlier will be doing once a month from now on, and one of the questions I asked the panelists was how each of them measures success with their podcast, and they immediately talked about their goals, which I was like yay. But what I was even more delightfully surprised to hear was that many of them said they chose to start a podcast to develop their voice in the space they wanted to grow into or create, and that they felt successful because that goal was being met. They saw all kinds of inner shifts within themselves in conquering fears related to putting themselves out there and gaining knowledge around what it is that they really want to lean into based on just starting and trying things out with the podcast platform all the way to more tangible results and discoveries like making connections through guests with people in their industry they would normally never have been able to connect with to building a community of influential people and designing and innovating together to pivoting and growing their businesses based on what they learned podcasting.
Christina Barsi [00:10:05]:
And what was so interesting about those answers was they had nothing to do with downloads and numbers when they spoke about their growth. It was all about the depth and richness of the experience and knowledge they were gaining as they continued to step out of their comfort zone and grow their venture in a way that goes way beyond ad sale monetization. That's nice too, and you should do it when you get a chance. But I have to tell you, it will be your lowest yield as a return. In most cases, at least for a while, your biggest gains will be like the ones I just mentioned, and those are invaluable and can only happen if you do the thing. If you get out and take steps. Speaking of steps, moving on to step two, this step simply builds on the last once you know your overall goal, your overall thing you want to gain, then you create a reasonable small goal or set of goals that branches off of this larger one. So to get started, it might be just that in itself.
Christina Barsi [00:11:04]:
It might be just showing up and choosing how many episodes you want to begin with, let's say seven or maybe ten. And committing to it and figuring out your systems and processes within that goal. You may choose to step out of your comfort zone and reach out to two to three people who are on your guest wish list, but you have some access to them, right? Or another goal might be talking about things you've never spoken publicly about. That can be really scary. It might just be sharing the podcast publicly. If you're not used to thinking of yourself as a creator or sharing things that you make, this can be a really difficult step. And if you do it, it's. It's a huge success and it's worth celebrating.
Christina Barsi [00:11:49]:
You are great at your thing or very capable of becoming great at your thing. But if you don't take steps towards building it and putting it out there, then you'll miss out on all of those gains and all of the people who would have joined you on your journey that you would be helping. Honestly, sometimes the best way to help someone is to show them that someone just like them is trying and is taking steps. So the more you show up as the type of person you admire, the closer you get to becoming that person, the bigger you, the one your heart knows is who you really are. The one who learns that playing small is no longer worth it, that you deserve more. You deserve to take up space and be your authentic self. Someone who has given themselves permission to become successful. So to summarize, it's about getting clear.
Christina Barsi [00:12:41]:
Getting clear on your goals from a larger scope, and then getting clear on your goals each step of the way. And about giving yourself permission to think positively about your success and to have success now in the ways that exist in the moment. And staying engaged with your process so that you can develop trust in yourself to keep going and to keep growing into who you want to be. And as you grow, you'll have new short term goals to add to your process that can feel more tangible. Like once you have some engagement from your listenership, you may want to lean into that by forming a group platform for them or creating a lead magnet for them to become a part of your email list or things of that nature where you can now start doing things that are tangible because there's something that you've created that you can now benchmark and leverage and look at numbers and all that stuff can start to work into your goal system. But just Keep in mind what your translatable goals are to yield the results that will make a difference for you and your venture. Only you can measure what success looks like for you. Your impact is waiting for you.
Christina Barsi [00:13:50]:
All you have to do is begin. And I will see you next week.
