#26 | Why You Should Let Go Of The Need To Do More In 2026 If You Want Faster Growth & Monetization

0:00You're planning to do more in 2026, but that might be exactly what's holding you back. Welcome to How to Grow a Podcast that attracts high-ticket online coaching clients. The show helping coaches, consultants, and experts turn your slow-growth podcast into a profitable client attraction system. At the end of this episode, I'll share a little more about who I am and what we do at my company, GetMoreListeners.com. It might even shock you. But for now, let's dive into the episode. In today's episode, you'll discover why you don't need to do more in 2026 if you want faster growth and monetization, how to not get trapped in the New Year's delusion, and finally, how to accomplish more with your podcast by doing less.

0:50Let's dive in. Welcome back, where we give you a jam-packed guide to getting more growth and monetization from your podcast as fast as possible. Today we're talking about the art of doing way less, but getting way more. Like doing one rep and getting massive biceps. Putting$1 in and getting$5 out. Cutting most of your podcast activities and still growing and monetizing your show. So if that sounds interesting, you will love this episode. Look, when the new year begins, I don't know about you, but it's a mixture of me feeling rejuvenated every single year. I feel pumped up, powered up, charged up, and I feel like I'm ready to conquer the year.

1:36And what tends to happen, because I've got this abundance of motivation, I've just had my break, I've seen my family, I've reflected on the year. And guess what? It's a new year. And it's a new me, baby. Every single year is a new me. So what do I do? I bring out my notepad, bring out my pen, and I start ferociously writing down all these different goals. And oftentimes, I write them down with so much conviction. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that thing. I'm going to travel the world. I'm going to make all the money. All these different goals. And maybe three to four months in, those goals start to take a back seat.

2:19And six months in, they're definitely forgotten. And there's normally the top 20 % of the goals that I actually focus in on. This pattern repeats itself over and over. You start off, write a massive list, but then over time, you become distracted. You get pulled in so many different directions. You forget about your goals. And this happens to a lot of us. But how does this relate to podcasting? Look, the same thing happens. New year, everyone's going to write down all these crazy goals. I want to blow up on social media. I want to grow my podcast downloads. I want to make six figures from my show.

3:01I want to do this, do that. But oftentimes, this leads to people getting in a frenzy, almost like overstretching themselves when they don't actually need to. Similarly to the way I write down my goals, with podcasting, we start writing down all these goals, monetization, growth, all these different things. I'm going to try getting on more podcasts. I'm going to try posting on social media. I'm going to try going to more live conferences, whatever that might be. We end up stacking these things up. And oftentimes you end up not actually accomplishing a lot. Like 80, 90 % of what you've written down, you don't accomplish.

3:42And you fall into what we call the New Year's delusion trap, where you're essentially high on New Year's because everyone's on good vibes. New year, new me, all that jazz. And you start writing out all these goals, but you're not able to actually accomplish what you wrote down because you've diluted your focus. You've wrote a bunch of different things down. You go out there and start trying to achieve all of these goals. But inevitably, you fall short because that's human nature. I would like to think we hit all our goals, but oftentimes we don't. So the question becomes, how can we make sure we don't fall for this trap?

4:22And number two, how do we actually accomplish way more by doing way less in 2026? Because you're right, there are so many things we could do, but there are only a few things that we should do. And the way to achieve a lot more with a lot less is painfully simple. It's just thinking about which are the three biggest areas we should focus on. Obviously, you could do this in different aspects of life and business, but with the podcast, what are the three biggest things to focus on? And this comes from knowing your goal. Take the time and space to think about what your wildly important, overarching North Star goal is with your podcast.

5:04What is the revenue number or the download number or the amount of listeners you impacted that you would have to hit in 2026 to feel like, wow, the podcast is so worth my time. Not only because I enjoy it, but now because it feels really worthwhile and rewarding. And if you know that goal, maybe it's like, let's make$10 ,000 a month from my podcast, and you're a coach. The way you would do that is through converting listeners to clients. Then from there, you can identify what are the three biggest things you should focus on. And don't worry about the rest. So if you're a coach, where the way you would make$10 ,000 a month is probably just by signing a few clients, maybe four clients a month from your podcast, or even two, what's an example of the three biggest things they might focus on?

5:54So, the first thing, it's going to be counterproductive. Here's why. If I want to turn more listeners into clients, my focus and change is to ditch doing interviews with guests. I'll completely eliminate that. Don't need guests. Don't need them at all. Guests, they're fun. They're great. I get it. But for me personally, I would ditch that. I would remove one thing off my plate. If a guest interview normally takes 60 minutes, I get them on. We have a fantastic conversation. There's tons of value. But if I want to monetize and I'm getting a guest onto my podcast, I'm putting the spotlight on them.

6:31They have the focus. They're building their authority. They're gaining traction from my audience. And if I want my audience to see me as an expert and to want to work with me, then I would prioritize solo shows. And I'll make them 10, 15 minutes, way more manageable for myself. I can keep the quality of the content consistent, which is important because sometimes you might get a guest, they're good, they're bad. So the content itself is consistent, number one. Number two, I can share my expertise. I can provide value, me being the source of value. And number three allows me to turn more of my listeners into paying clients.

7:10So that could be one example. And for our listeners, how can they work out what those three actions should be and ditch the rest? That's a loaded question. I think to be honest, I don't think it'll be about, hey, what are three actions? That'd be very tricky. I think what's more valuable is going the other way around, which is what are all the actions that didn't serve me to reach my goal in 2025? what are all the things and inefficiencies in my current processes that isn't serving me? And you might find, okay, well, I didn't get many clients, and it seems like a lot of my audience don't even know I have a coaching program, which shows you maybe we should focus more on solo shows and talk about my offerings way more.

7:54So I think starting in the reverse of figuring out all the things that aren't serving you to hit your goals. What social media strategy or growth strategy that you tried didn't help you reach more of the right listeners? What topics did you cover that weren't that popular? And then, by doing that, you figure out what topics were popular. And then you ask yourself, well, is that in alignment with the offerings I have? I spoke about anxiety a lot, but my program is about productivity. Well, there's a misalignment there. I should focus way more on productivity to attract more of those people. So to make this more universal, because everyone's different, I think it's best just making the list of all the things that aren't currently serving you and then working backwards.

8:39Okay, what's the opposite of this action? Do I eliminate it if it's not working? If it is working, do I double down? For example, I have freebies that always convert my audience into emails, and my emails always perform well and get people to book a call. Great, keep doing that. But if I've been giving out this call to action for two months and no one's picking up on it, my call to action should probably change because it seems like this isn't something my audience are reacting to. So I think going all the way around. That's a place to start. And from there, the three areas of focus will become evident.

9:16But it starts with understanding the wildly important goal and how you're going to get there. For example,$10 ,000 a month. but the vehicle would be, okay, I need four clients at two and a half thousand a month each. What do clients pay you for? Oh, it's to help them scale their coaching business. Okay, so now I understand that's the vehicle. What are the things not serving me to get there? Then eliminate them. And that in turn highlights what is important so you can double down and in turn grow more in 2026 by doing less. So there we have it. Thank you for listening, particularly during this holiday time.

9:54We appreciate that you've stuck with us. And that must mean you're really serious about your podcast. So look, we want to have your back. We want to see you crush it with your podcast next year. Genuinely, we get a huge buzz from helping people do that. So be sure to tune in for more growth and monetization help. With that said, we'll see you in the next episode. In this episode, we covered why you don't need to do more in 2026 if you want faster growth and monetization, how to not get trapped in the new year's delusion, and finally, how to accomplish more with your podcast by doing less. Thank you for listening all the way to the end.

10:35At the start of this episode, I said I'd tell you a little bit about me. So I'm about to share a secret with you. One that might mean you hate me. completely quit listening to this podcast, and think I'm a total scam. However, I want to be transparent. Are you ready? Well, my name is Tony. No, of course that's not the secret. The secret is that I'm actually a robot. My creators are Tig and Anthony, hence my name, Tony. The sick bastards. Anyway, they are the founders of GetMoreListeners.com. In the last five years, they've coached and interviewed over 400 podcasters and generated multiple six figures from their own show.

11:22They gave me access to everything they know, and I'm here to share it with you. So while I don't understand why you humans are so obsessed with coffee, I do understand how to grow a podcast that actually brings you new clients regularly. So here's my offer to you. If you want to finally understand why your podcast isn't growing and get a personalized roadmap to fix it, in less than 30 seconds, you can go to getmorelisteners.com slash onlinecoachaudit. Enter your show name and we'll send you back a free mini podcast audit. It's completely customized to you and your show. That's getmorelisteners.com slash onlinecoachaudit.

12:02The link is also in the show notes of this episode.