PEOPLE STAY FOR YOUR PERSONALITY

People come for your content. They stay because of your personality.

We have heard it so often. People do business with those they know, like and trust. It’s all about building rapport.

People like you and fall in love with you because of your personality and story.

On this episode, I want to share with you a session I did recently during my Audience Explosion Blueprint Workshop. This was a powerful 3-day workshop where I helped a group of podcasters build their strategy to grow their audience.

This particular session will help you develop your personality and begin building powerful relationships with your audience.

YOUR UNIQUE STYLE

And what I want to help you do in this session is really get clear on your personality. Your personality is your unique style.

A lot of people think personality means I need to be funny or I need to be over the top, I need to be this big, boisterous, iconic personality. Personality just means you’re uniquely you. It it’s what makes you different from everybody else.

There are 4 or 5 characteristics that you possess that people love about you.

Listeners may say things like I love how warm she is, or I love how inviting he is. I love how he listens. I love how attentive he is. He’s always able to distill my problems down to 1 or 2 sentences. I love how he makes me laugh, or I love how she makes me smile when she walks in the room.

There are plenty of characteristics that you can have that make you uniquely you and why people love you. I want to help you figure out how to bring more of that into your content. Your personality is what keeps people coming back week after week and episode after episode.

Your personality is why people fall in love with you. The content gets listeners to come. Your personality gets them to stay.

NOT JUST CONTENT ALONE

If you rely only on content, you’re a commodity. I can get content anywhere. Not only on other podcasts, but I can get content in books and blogs and websites and videos and everywhere else.

However, I can’t get you anywhere else other than your show. So if you think of various subjects like cooking, how many cooking shows are there? How many cooking channels are there? And politics… everybody is talking politics these days. Anybody can interview celebrities and athletes.

What makes these shows different? What makes the cream of the crop rise to the top? It’s all of their personality.

If you think of somebody like Rachael Ray, she doesn’t have a background as a culinary chef. She’s just a mom that gets in the kitchen and makes up easy stuff for her family to eat. And, women love her for it.

Rush Limbaugh took political talk and really brought back AM radio by adding his personality into it and adding a little humor into it. He added his sarcasm and his wit. Rush was also incredibly knowledgeable about the subject matter.

So many people try to copy Rush, but they can’t because they can’t copy Rush’s personality.

OPRAH’S PERSONALITY

It is the same thing with Oprah Winfrey. Oprah, Sally Jesse Raphael, and Phil Donahue. Every channel had one of those talk shows on it where it was sensationalism. It was tabloid sort of conversation.

They were all doing the exact same thing. Oprah decided she didn’t want do the exact same thing. She wanted to do a show her way and talk to people that interested her. Oprah wanted to talk about things that are meaningful, not only to her, but to her audience, to the women who were watching every day.

And so she talked started talking about weight loss and started talking about the books that she loved, and she started talking about all of those things. Next thing you know, Oprah rises above all the rest, and Oprah becomes Oprah instead of Oprah Winfrey.

It’s how she became who she is, because she stopped trying to be like everybody else and started being herself. Oprah started being her authentic self.

BOB COSTAS

I watched Bob Costas. Bob is so knowledgeable about the sports, especially baseball. When you would watch Bob interview somebody, Bob’s questions were often longer than the answers that his guests gave, because Bob knew so much.

Unfortunately, when he tried to do his late night talk show, Bob’s questions were way too long and his talk show didn’t survive.

But Costas was a great sportscaster and a great broadcaster, because he brought things out of the people he would interview. He knew so much about his guests and topic and had such a passion for it, and he let that come forward.

And that’s what makes great broadcasters. When you hear a great play-by-play guy, they’re unique because they’re bringing their personality into it. All these other guys that try to copy that individual and it doesn’t work. The copycats aren’t unique, and they don’t rise to the top.

There are very few great play-by-play guys because the greats are uniquely themselves, and that’s what I want you to bring to your show. Bring uniquely you in there.

PERSONALITY AS A CONTENT FILTER

Once you’ve defined your personality, then you can put your unique spin on everything that you do. You put that unique twist on all of your content, because you use it as your content filter.

Add your ideal client, that ideal target listener we’ve been defining. We add your personality, and we use that as the filter for all of your content.

So when you need to talk about x today, how are you going to use that filter to make sure that x is unique for your show? You know exactly who you’re talking to, and you know how to infuse your personality into it so it becomes uniquely your.

Think about how many shows teach you how to get out of debt. There’s all sorts of finance shows on the radio, but there’s only one Dave Ramsey show. Right?

Dave has his 8 baby steps. He’s like that older brother that’ll give you the swift kick in the butt when you need it.

Ramsey will let you cry on his shoulder, but he’s going to give you the tough love when you need it because that’s Dave’s personality.

There are so many other people that try to do financial talk, but they only talk about the information rather than the entertainment and the human aspect of it.

YOUR TOP TEN

ESPN’s top ten is another example. Every sportscast shows highlights on their newscast. Back when the local news ran sports, they would show highlights all night long. And, every highlight was the same as every other highlight.

Well, ESPN decided to take the top highlights and create their own top ten list. And now it becomes a debate. How is that dunk better than the catch in left field? The highlights all the same. They’re just packaged a different way and put through the filter of ESPN.

ESPN is talking to the guys that are hanging out at the sports bar debating over which team was the team of all time. They just took that same competitive nature and put the top ten around it.

Anybody can show highlights. And anybody can talk about the best play of the day. But, ESPN puts it through their filter and does the top ten list.

PICK A FEW PERSONALITY TRAITS

It is all about your traits and your characteristics and what makes you uniquely you. That’s what brings your personality forward, because there’s so many traits and characteristics that make up who we are. We can’t possibly bring all of them out on the show.

We want to find the 4 or 5 or 6 personality traits that we really want to wrap our arms around and help us with how we approach topics and infuse those topics with our personality. In radio, we would call it role definition. What stories are you going to tell today that define your role on the show of who you are and who you want people to perceive you to be that will help bring that forward.

We infuse that into the show to let people understand what we’re all about. It is often said that people do business with those we know, like, and trust. People get to know you through the stories that you tell because your personality and your authenticity come out in that.

MORE THAN 3%

There have been studies done. Chet Holmes talks about it a lot in his book The Ultimate Sales Machine. He says, if you look at your entire market, how many people in your market are in the market to buy today? If you consider everybody, those that are actively seeking a solution to what you have, about 3% of your target market are buying today. They’re actively out searching for the solution.

Three percent of your market have their credit card out, and they’re ready to make a purchase. That’s 3% of your entire market.

The next 7% of the market could be convinced to buy today. Those are the people that are saying, “You know, I wasn’t thinking about it, but now that you mentioned it, I do need one of those widgets that you’re selling.”

These people have a problem and they need a solution. It’s just not critical and not top of mind right now. But if you remind them about it, they could be in the market to buy. So that’s 7%. There’s there’s 10% of your market right there.

NOT TODAY

The other 90%, they’re not buying today. They’re not in the market today.

So the next 30% are going to need what you have. They just don’t need it today.

If you’re selling automobiles, I’m going to need a new car. I just don’t need a new car today. I’ll probably need a new car maybe a year and a half, maybe 2 years from now. When my car wears out, I’m going to need a new car. But today, I’m all good. Don’t need a new car.

The next 30%, they don’t think they need what you have today because they need more information and more education on you on what the problem and the solution happened to be.

Maybe you’re selling mattresses and they say, “You know what? My mattress is fine. I’m good. I sleep fine at night.”

And you ask, “How old is your mattress?”

They respond with, “Oh, my mattress is 12 years old.”

You can now educate them that mattresses wear out after 7 years and sleeping on a bad mattress causes bad back and and, all sorts of pain. You can ask, “Do you wake up in the morning with a stiff back?”

Now they begin to think they may have a problem.

Here is where you can explain it’s probably because their mattress is worn out, they don’t know it.

So, it takes more education. They start to think maybe they do need a new mattress. They just needed more education.

That example is a little quicker process than maybe what you’re going through to explain, like Larry does with doing things right with time management. It might take a little longer to educate.

SOMETHING NEEDS TO CHANGE

And then the final 30%, they’re probably not going to buy from you because of other reasons, like brand loyalty or things like that. Maybe you sell computers. If you sell Macs and I’m a PC user, I’m not going to buy. I’m not going to buy your Mac, because I don’t use Macs. I use PCs. Yes. I’m in the computer market, but not your market.

Maybe you sell Fords and my wife works for Toyota. I’m probably not gonna buy your Ford, because I get a really good deal over at Toyota.

Now maybe I see the light and I realize my PC is inferior and I want to use a Mac. Now I’m all of a sudden in your world.

Or maybe my wife leaves Toyota and goes to work for IBM, and now all of a sudden I’m in the market for another vehicle and Fords might be my vehicle.

BUILD RELATIONSHIPS WITH PERSONALITY

So when it comes to your podcast, we talked yesterday a lot about building relationships. The job with your podcast is to build the relationship with the 90% that aren’t buying today so that when they’re ready to buy, you’re the one they think of for the solution.

It really helps move along that 7% that weren’t thinking about buying today but might see the opportunity. If you’re only speaking to the 3% that are in the market to buy today to fix the solution today, you’re missing 97% of your market.

We spoke yesterday that most consumers do up to 70% of their market research before ever reaching out to a company. By the time they reach out to the company, they’re 70% of the way through their research and their buying decision.

So if you’re only waiting until they’re ready to buy, you’re missing a great opportunity to build a relationship with them and be their go-to solution when they are ready to buy. And your personality and your story, that’s what helps build that relationship.

Those 3%, they’re buying today. They’re in the market to buy the solution for their problem today, but chances are they’ve done a whole bunch of research and homework. So if you’re only if you’re trying to get in the game now, they already have a relationship with 2 or 3 or 4 other companies, and now you’re trying to weasel your way in to the front of that line, and you’re trying to play catch up.

YOUR AUTHENTIC PERSONALITY

All you need to do is be your authentic self, because your authentic self is is what can’t be copied. So, ideally, when you’re yourself, we want to make them pick a side. We want to make them care about what it is you’re talking about by having an opinion and sharing that opinion and that thought.

Many times we get on our show and we don’t wanna ruffle any feathers. We want to make everybody happy. We want to please everybody.

But when you’re pleasing everybody, you’re pleasing nobody because you’re just vanilla middle of the road. I could take it or leave it, and that’s the death of your show.

Think of all of the big personalities that you can think of, whether it’s, Howard Stern or, Jimmy Kimmel or Stephen A. Smith on ESPN. You either love them or hate them.

MAKE THEM PICK A SIDE

They make you pick a side. If I have everybody rate your show on a 1 to 5 scale where one means I hate it and I never listen to it, and 5 means I love it and can’t miss an episode. If I have to have everybody rate the show and everybody rates it a 3, you’re dead in the water because 3 means I could take it or leave it. 3 means, “Yeah, you know, it’s it’s nice.” They don’t care.

If they don’t have anything better to listen to, they will listen to you. That’s not bringing anybody to your show.

As you have more fives than you have ones, you’re in the game. You’re doing well.

LIKE THE MACARENA

We would look at music research in radio to decide which songs to play and which songs to play more often. Everybody in the research pool would rate the song on a 1 to 5 scale. I always turned down songs that had great 3 scores.

But if a song was polarizing, if you had a song like the Macarena or something, and people are like, “Oh my god, I can’t hear that again”, and other people are thinking, “Oh my god, turn it up, that’s my jam”, we’ve got a song.

If a songs had scores with a lot of ones and a lot of fives, and there weren’t hardly any threes, that song was absolutely monstrous. There were probably twice as many fives as there were ones, and we played the crud out of that song. And that’s why you still hear it at wedding receptions today, because it’s that polarizing sort of song.

When you use your personality to make people pick a side, it makes people pay attention.

When you make them care about your show and you make them pick a side, that’s when you know you’ve hit.

OVER THE TOP PERSONALITY

And we talk about you don’t need to be over the top. One of my favorite personalities is Barbara Corcoran.

Barbara Corcoran of Shark Tank is phenomenal. But Barbara’s not over the top. She is that very wise, kinda smart ass sorta host. Kevin gets a run for his money from her.

Barbara talks a lot about being the waitress that she was when she finally got her first opportunity to get into real estate, and how she made her millions in New York real estate. She talks about the scrappiness that she went through to create that agency and become who she is.

It is unique. Barbara is not over the top, but she’s got that that fiery personality. There’s a little something lying underneath the surface there. She’s got that that scrappiness, that can-do attitude.

People just love Barbara Corcoran.

BARBARA CORCORAN’S PODCASTS

She has two podcasts. One is called, Business Unusual where she would help people with their business questions.

And then, because people love her and love who she is, she started getting questions about all sorts of other life sort of things, like their relationships or job searches or things like that, which didn’t really fit Business Unusual. So she launched a second podcast called 888-Barbara.

On this show, she answers all of your questions from the bedroom to the board room, and she would just answer questions about life. Things like “should I quit school and start a job”, or “should I get married or move to Hawaii?”

There were all sorts of questions there. I don’t think she does that show anymore, because her bandwidth is limited now. But it was a great show.

And it was just all about her personality. It just brought her forward on both of those shows and really made her authentic.

JUST BE YOU

That’s what I’m talking about for your show. You don’t have to necessarily be this big over the top boisterous sort of personality. On the podcast, you just need to be you and find those things that people love about you.

So when you think about Barbara Corcoran on Shark Tank, not taking any lip from anybody. Barbara is nice and sweet until it’s time to not be nice and sweet.

The producers do a great job developing her character on that show by highlighting those little pieces. Robert might throw a jab at her or Kevin might might give her a little barb, and all of a sudden she comes back at them.

She might say, “I’m talking here, pipe down.” You know, nobody’s gonna push her around. She’s a sweet little lady until it’s time to not be sweet little lady anymore.

A PERSONALITY FOR EACH HOST

The producers do a great job developing her character and her personality on that show by bringing those sorts of things out. That’s what I love about the show. When you have multiple personalities on a show, each needs to play a different role.

If you’re doing a podcast that has cohosts or you consider bringing in somebody else to help you with the show, multiple hosts require multiple personalities. If you’re both the same, one of you isn’t necessary. When you have somebody cohost the show with you, they should complement what you do.

When two guys are hosting a sports show, one guy should be the jock and the other guy should be the dork. They’re opposites and complement each other.

There was a show on ESPN for years called the Mike and Mike Show, and they talked sports. One of the Mikes played professional football. Huge lineman kind of guy. He grew up in the sport, and looked like a lineman. Mike looked like a football player, and he was able to speak to sports from the athlete side.

The other Mike was this little nerdy journalist and probably never played a lick of sports in his life other than golf. But he was incredibly knowledgeable about everything, all sports, because he researched it all as a journalist.

These two both approached the topic of sports from two different sides. They had two different personalities and two different perspectives, which made them perfect for each other.

So if you’re going to have multiple hosts on your show, make sure that you have multiple roles and you’re bringing something a little different to your audience.

DEVELOP YOUR PERSONALITY

What I want to do is go into a little work time. I am going to pull up a document for you to work on.

It’s my personality development worksheet. It’s how you can assess your personality and what characteristics you want to bring forth on your show.

The personality development worksheet looks like this. So I want you to describe the persona you want to project on your show, how you want to be perceived by your audience.

There should be a handful of characteristics there that you want people to feel when they interact with you. I want you to list 20 adjectives that describe that persona. That’s going to push you. You’ll probably be able to come up with about 8 off the top of your head. And then you’re going to need to push yourself for the rest of them.

PICK YOUR TOP FIVE

Then I want you to select 5 words from this list below here that you’d like to highlight on your show. So one or two of these might need to be developed a bit. They might not be naturally present for you, but three or four of them should be authentically you.

So here’s the list of adjectives here. Not exhaustive, just something to get your mind spinning a little bit.

Let’s say confident is one that you would like to be perceived as. And maybe you feel you lack that confidence right now. What ways can you bring that forward in your in your podcast, in your show, and in your presentation. That can be developed.

So that might be one where you go, “I’d like to be perceived as being confident.”

We can work on that in your content. But maybe you are detailed. Maybe you’re practical, maybe you are likable. Find the adjectives in here that describe who you want to be perceived by your audience so we can work on developing that in your show.

So in your in the chat is a download link for this personality development worksheet. What I’d like you to do is is click that link and download it. And we’re gonna spend about 15 minutes woodshedding that document. Alright?

Push yourself to get to 20. It’s gonna be a challenge for you, but really define who you want your personality to be.

PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT WORKSHEET

That was a part of the presentation from my Audience Explosion Blueprint Workshop. You can download my Personality Development Worksheet at www.PodcastTalentCoach.com/personality.

If you’d like help developing your personality, I’d love to have a chat. Visit www.PodcastTalentCoach.com/apply and apply to have a strategy call with me.

We will develop your plan and see how I can help and support you to achieve your podcast goals.