A few months ago, David (a coach who I hired to help me with some business stuff) sprang something on me during our call one Friday night:
"Marc, I need you to do something ... and you're not going to like
it!"
Oh oh.
My first thought was of my mom pressuring me to eat spinach as a kid. Or that he needed me to rob a bank. Or perhaps change
teams and start liking the New York Yankees (now THAT's scary!)
I braced myself for his request ...
"I need you to drop your podcast from 5x a week to just 2x a
week"
I hesitated for a few seconds.
It's not that I hadn't changed the frequency for Natural Born Coaches before (I went from 7x a week to 5x a
week last year after episode #200), but we humans are naturally resistant to change, so it was a big decision for me.
But I blurted out - in the words of Sir Richard Branson:
"Screw it, let's do it!"
I tend to jump quickly, I hate dithering ...
I paid him good money for his advice, and what's the sense of
ignoring it? That's kind of silly, to hire a coach and then ignore his expertise.
Here's the deal: for months I'd felt like a hamster on the proverbial hamster wheel. The Monday to Friday podcast frequency was really distracting me, and I knew (deep down) that
I could accomplish the same things even at twice a week.
So I pulled the trigger, and dropped to twice a week.
The new format has been going for almost a month now,
and the world didn't end.
The sun has come up every day (well, as much as it usually does in April in Canada), and our download numbers are still really good.
And I've
heard from a lot of my audience that they can finally listen to every episode, since it was hard keeping up with the daily thing.
The plus is the change has freed me up to get my new online program launched (check it out here: www.YourFirst5Clients.com), and get back to work on my book which has been collecting virtual dust ...
(By the way, I'm launching a few more programs that have been on my mind - I'll be sending details in the near future)
I'm telling you about my experiences here because there is something that you probably KNOW you should be changing, but you haven't. You've been holding off changing out of fear of something.
Don't ignore your gut. I'm thankful that I listened to my Spidey-Sense, and I'm grateful to David for pushing me to change.
We tend to blow things up in our minds, and that keeps up from taking action ...
For me, I stuck with a daily frequency for my podcast for silly reasons:
- some podcasting friends of mine and who have helped me in my journey, including John Lee Dumas, do a daily show - so I though that I have to model JLD and the
others ...
- Quantity trumps quality ... "bump those numbers up!"
- The more shows, the more clients - right???
Bullsh*t!
Those were all excuses to keep me from making a change that I should have made a long time ago.
What changes should you be making?
I'm here to help, especially for people who have put trust in me with their email addresses.
You guys are part of my community - if you need help, shoot me a message,
Marc
Marc Mawhinney
Coach, Host of "Natural Born Coaches"
Passionate About Helping Coaches GROW Their Businesses!