Oct 10, 2024
Growth & Marketing
How to Grow an Audience if You Have 0 Followers
Summary
Long-Term Commitment
Building an audience requires years of consistent effort, as exemplified by Alex Hormozi's six-year journey to reach the top ten with his podcast.
Success comes from focusing on the process of content creation and audience engagement rather than fixating on short-term outcomes or follower counts.
Content Evolution
The first 150 episodes of a podcast may focus on a narrow topic, but creator's skills in voice, communication, teaching, and presentation evolve over time, expanding subject matter and delivery quality.
Value-Driven Approach
Success is measured by the value provided to the audience, not by follower numbers, emphasizing the importance of creating high-quality, resonant content for your target market.
Persistence and Skill Development
Consistency is crucial; continue performing the activities that initially brought success, even without immediate results, until skills improve to yield desired outcomes.
Timestamps
00:00 Consistent content creation is key to building an audience and finding your voice.
01:14 Podcast has become top 10 in entrepreneurship and highly ranked in business.
01:56 Posting consistently for 6 months resulted in a friend making $100k/month from their online brand.
02:53 Shifting focus to the process, he realized consistency was key to success.
03:22 Committing to activities leads to success and wealth.
04:33 Focus on the activities, not the outcome, to increase your chances of becoming a millionaire.
05:06 Surprised when vendor was taken aback by my 10-year podcast commitment.
05:39 Consistency and perspective-shifting can help you stay emotionally balanced and grow your business.
Transcript
00:00 People are making podcasts and thinking in 90 days they're somehow going to blow up in the beginning 150 episodes is just me talking about how to run a gym better. I got a dm the other day somebody who's like yeah. It's easy for you to build this brand because you already have this big audience. I was like dude just start. He was discouraged by the fact that he had no following. He had no audience etc. 99 of people who are watching this do more cool and then you'll have cool to talk about rather than regurgitating other people's stuff but for everyone who sees the overnight success right. What. I want you to do is go to my podcast and look at the time stamp of my first episode. This 2017. Five and a half six years ago it just now hit the top ten and in that six year period. I did not miss every week one to three podcasts for six years and so people are making podcasts and thinking in 90 days they're somehow going to blow up. When the reality is that you're finding your voice for the first year you're figuring out. What way you communicate you're learning how to teach how to entertain how to present you're learning how to speak and you're also learning about the stuff that you're learning meantime right like in that period of time. I might not have had as much stuff that was as cool in the beginning that applied to as many people because the first 150 episodes is just me talking about how to run a gym better right.
01:14 Around 150. I started talking about marketing in general because that's what I was into at the time and then. I started talking about sales and I started talking about business in general and m and things that as they've evolved over time and so the subject matter as well as my skill in delivering it both improved over that period of time and now the podcast is top 10 on entrepreneurship and very high ranked in business next to names that I i looked up to my whole career. I'm like holy cow. I'm like we're wait. We just went about this guy that I've been looking up to my whole life. It doesn't take 90 days. It takes years if you think in days the time's gonna pass no matter what. But if you can think in decades when you make your goals. When that decade does pass. It'll show that you were thinking that way right not the outcome. The goal make the action the goal if the action is did. I make the post did.
01:56 I make the reach outs every day. Then you're a success you check both boxes. I want to tell you a quick story so there was a guy who started at the first gym with me same day all right and we've been friends since then and I started my gym and then he started his gym and he started changing gym. So we went in parallel all right and he ended up selling those gyms and he wanted to go online. He was like dude. I need to build like a brand. I was like dude you just need to start posting. You know short form stuff making stuff that's valuable. He posted every day for six months and then one video took off and then the next video took off and the next video took off and then all of a sudden. Now he's making a hundred thousand dollars a month from the content that he was making he'd already been doing business for nine years and then all of a sudden it took off and he and he messaged me. He was like. I'm super grateful that that you told me to do that and so he did the post and he did the reach outs and what ended up happening is that earlier on he would he would have videos that would start taking off.
02:53 He would start doing reach and start making sales and then he'd make some money and then he would slow down and then all of a sudden you get in scarcity mode. Once he was like oh shoot. There's no money coming in there's no money coming in and then you start making content start doing reshots again and you make money again and he was like dude how do. I break the cycle and what we did was. We shifted what he was focusing on because he was focusing on the sales he was making. He's focusing all the money he was making rather than focusing on the process. You are not successful in my eyes because whenever you see some outcome you stop the activities which means you don't have the trait of consistency.
03:22 That's like the reason you aren't where you want to be is because you can't do things repeatedly and so most people can't do one thing over and over again you need to be able to do the doing without seeing the result of your doing and you have to keep doing it and if you can keep doing things independent and this is both ways. If it goes really well you keep doing the thing that got you there and if it's not going well comma yet you keep doing the thing so that you get good enough that one day it will and that's the shift that most people don't make and I think that's why most people just stay poor and the reality is that if you can commit to the actions and the behaviors and the traits that you will grow through doing then. At the end of this process a decade later you will be the type of person who can do something for a long period of time and wait and I promise you that if you have that trait money will never be a constraint in your life and this is from atomic habits. Every winner and every loser have the same goals so when you measure yourself by having this external thing and people like set goals. Everyone wants to be rich. Everyone wants to have a six-pack. Your goals don't make you unique. It's the activities that you do that make you unique. The goal of the winner is to commit to the activities. The goal of the loser is to commit to the goal 52 percent of 18 year olds. High school seniors think they're going to be millionaires by 25.
04:33 The world is going to be shook. Many of you will fail and that's because most of you have the same goal 52 percent. You think you're gonna be a millionaire right. It's just math but only a small percentage will because if you want to be a millionaire you're not going to focus on making a million dollars you're going to focus on the stuff that makes a million dollars and so when you can divorce the activities from the outcome. Then you can focus on the doing which whether your income does this over that period of time. Your self-esteem remains the same because you're committing to what you can control if you can make that shift it will change your life. So.
05:06 I started making podcasts six years ago. I committed to that process when I signed on with a youtube vendor a few years ago on the first call. I said I'd like to have this channel be something in five to ten years. I was like we'll look at it then and see if it was worth continuing to do. I was like but I'm in for a decade and he stopped me. Afterwards he was like. I've literally never had a client say that to me ever he's like they're all like how can. I get leads in the first 90 days from youtube and like blah blah blah. I was like if we're making progress. I'm good will commit to that.
05:39 I think that if you can think that way you will get what you want and then people will ask you a decade from now man. How did you have this overnight success and blah blah blah blah and aren't you like don't the followers and the fans like how does it not get to your head and you're like because it was never the goal and so I feel just as good at year one as I do at year eight because the activities that I committed to remain the same if you can think that way and you can shift your perspective. It will it'll decrease your emotional ups and downs and I think we all need ways to decrease our emotional ups and downs in the game of business because like we need to have second lives the third lives and fourth lives and the way to do that is to not put your life your game playing life in something that you can't control but putting all your game playing life in the things you can right. Now. We just crossed our 400th episode 400 episodes like if I did one a week. That's 52 four eight one a week for a year that would be eight years of doing that if I had 400 episodes. I'm at like year six. If you make 400 long-form pieces of content. I guarantee you that your following would be bigger than it is today well. How long is that going to take as long as it takes because the goal was never the outcome the goal was to do anything you.