Good Enough | Designing a Concept for a Successful Coach Looking to Raise Her Profile

Speaker A: M

Speaker B: On a Sunday afternoon a few weeks ago, I was sitting at the window seat of a craft brewery down the street from my apartment when a couple sat down at one of the patio tables outside. They were probably mid-40s, definitely American. He looked like he probably worked in tech, and it was obvious they just arrived in Barcelona on vacation. From the balcony of the second floor apartment across the street, their kids kept waving and making faces, a oblivious to the fact that Mum and dad had stepped outside specifically to get some time away from them. After getting their beers, I watched the husband pull out his phone and begin a curious process search. Tap, scroll back, tap, zoom, tap, scroll. Then he'd pause and show his phone to his wife. She'd nod, somewhat disinterested, and he'd return to the phone and repeat. After a few cycles, it became clear to me what was happening. He, clearly an optimizer, was searching for the absolute perfect dinner for the first night of their vacation in Barcelona. She, on the other hand, was content simply to be there. Imagine for a minute that you're a life coach. Let's call you Sarah. You've been in business for a decade, and while it took you a while you over the past couple of years, things have really started to come together to create a very impressive business. At this point, you're regularly generating at least $400,000 in revenue per year. You get great results for your clients, and you've built up a really solid email list. In short, things are good, really good. But you also know you can do more, and so you find yourself at an inflection point. Though your business is very successful by all accounts, you you still feel like a bit of a well kept secret in your narrow niche of a space, and you're ready to aim bigger and expand your reach and impact in a serious way. Over the past few years, you've developed a specialized methodology for working with your clients to let go of the perfectionism and analysis paralysis that is keeping them from making progress towards their biggest goals and unlocking their best lives in the process. And as you're thinking about your next steps, let's you want to write a book on your method with the specific goal of getting picked up by a major publisher. If you're honest with yourself, you imagine yourself as something of the next Brene Brown, owning a specific topic in the public imagination and changing the discourse, uh, around it forever through books, speaking, and perhaps a podcast said differently, you're ready to step up into a bigger spotlight. And what's more, you've got the resources to do so. So with all that in mind, how do you best develop a podcast to achieve those goals? In this episode of Killer Concept, we're going to explore the exact process that Sarah, our hypothetical host, could take using a streamlined version of the concept development framework that I use to develop shows for both myself and my clients, albeit with a few tweaks and omissions. Strictly for the sake of time, we'll start by talking through the Big Idea the show concept will be formed around break down the show format and unpack some of the subtle inner mechanics of what exactly makes this show idea work, including the show's hooks, controlling idea tension and themes. Then we'll zoom into what I refer to as the episode engineering, where we'll walk through the exact structure or blocking of each episode and the role that each segment of the show plays in bringing the show to life, both for Sarah's business and for her listeners. Once m the show has been built, I'll then break down my strategies for both revenue generation and audience growth for this show in particular. Finally, we'll wrap things up with the Final Verdict, where I'll rate this concept on a series of criteria and invite you to do the same. Oh, and along the way, we'll also highlight some of the common mistakes hosts make when developing their own shows that can ultimately cap their potential for both growth and profit. So with that said, let's kick off the process, starting with an overview of the competitive landscape that Sarah will be creating this show within. Um, as we noted already, our host Sarah is looking to develop a show that positions her as the go to person for helping people move past their perfectionism, specifically when it comes to decision making to help them make progress towards a good, if not 100% perfect life. Her clients tend to be optimizers, overthinkers and overachievers, people who obsess over making the absolute right decision in pretty much every aspect of their lives, from their careers to relationships to their health, finances, kids, social lives, and so much more. Said differently, they happen to be in the same place. A lot of us are feeling stuck between the rock of being well and truly out of our depth in at least half a dozen aspects of our lives and the hard place of being conditioned to believe that we should be able to have anything and everything we want, which is constantly reinforced through curated social media, feeds, marketing, messaging, and our social, family and cultural expectations. Faced with this dilemma, it's no wonder that we regularly find ourselves seeking outside guidance and support on everything from how to manage the big decisions in our lives say who to marry, where to live, or what job to take down to the smaller stuff like what to cook for dinner on Wednesday night, or where to go on vacation this summer, and perhaps even which specific restaurant to eat at on our first night there. In short, we're all hungry for life advice, which is how we might define the broad category that Sarah's show will exist within. Now, when it comes to this category, there is some good news and some bad news. The good news is that there is clearly a ton of demand for the topic, which is fantastic for anyone wanting to start a show or business in this category. But as is always the case, wherever there is demand, supply soon follows and with it competition. And the greater the demand, the fiercer, not to mention better financed and staffed, the competition for attention becomes. When it comes to podcasting, this, uh, category of broad life advice is one of the most enduringly popular genres of shows, with many shows within it regularly dominating the top of the charts. This category encompasses everything from practical life advice shows like NPR's Life Kit, to more self help style shows like the Mel Robbins show, to shows with a specific niche lens like the health focused Huberman Labs. From a certain perspective, even the Joe Rogan show can be thought of as a show within this general broad category. Which begs the question, in a crowded category or niche filled with a list, shows with budgets, production teams, large distribution channels, brand recognition, and famous names to boot, is it even worth trying to compete? Or is any attempt to break in and capture some of that demand for yourself dead on arrival? In M my experience, a topic with a huge amount of existing audience demand is actually one of the most promising places to build a show, even if the topic is currently dominated by big, better known shows. But there is one catch, a catch that most hosts miss, which is this. In order to capture some of the demand in a crowded space, you need to craft a show that taps into the same core themes and ideas that draw the mass audiences in, but explores them through a totally unique and refreshing angle, one that immediately stands out from everything else that's already out there. In short, you need a killer hook to build your show around, which is exactly the process we're going to walk through right after one short but important disclaimer if there's one thing I want you to take away from killer concept, it's the fact that your show concept and the specific way you develop it is dictated by the specific business or marketing problem you're trying to solve. If you try to develop your show with the goal of quote unquote growing your business, for example, there's almost zero chance you'll actually hit that goal. If on the other hand, you develop your show with the goal of growing your business by building mindshare around a specific high value topic in a specific high value market, or growing your business by developing a bottom of funnel show to move people who already engage with your free and low ticket content towards your higher ticket offers. Specifically by demonstrating your proprietary process in every episode, thus reducing perceived risk, increasing transparency and helping your best future customers understand exactly what investing to work with you would look like and the results they could well, you have a much better chance of succeeding because now you have a specific, well defined objective to orient specific, well defined creative decisions around this M is why every episode of Killer Concept features a hypothetical but realistic host we're designing our episodes around because the exact right show concept for one person is the exact wrong show concept for another. It's important to keep this in mind as you're thinking about your show, because in my experience, the biggest problem most hosts face is not that they don't have the right strategy to market their show, it's that, uh, the show they have is not actually designed to solve the marketing problems their business needs them to solve. This is the reason that for at least half of the founders, business owners and creators I work with, we have to redesign the show concept from the ground up before even beginning to think seriously about growth and promotion. The good news is that when you get the concept right, it usually doesn't take long to start seeing the results that might have eluded you for many years. Alright, so with that said, uh, let's start developing our show, starting with the premise. So the hypothetical show we're going to be building out today for our hypothetical host is called Good Enough. Here's the pitch. Good Enough is a subversive life advice podcast where in every episode we explore a different area of life, from work to relationships to personal finance and more, and ask a seemingly blasphemous question, what and how much is good enough? Not the best, not the most highly optimized, just good enough. I first thought of this idea for a show while reading Oliver Berkman's wonderful book Meditations for Mortals, after previously reading his even more mind expanding book 4000 weeks, both of which left me reflecting a lot on how I choose to spend my finite time here on Earth. It doesn't take long following this philosophical thread to realize that we just can't optimize for everything we can't make every decision perfectly, and that the pursuit of, uh, perfection might actually be diametrically opposed to living the richest, fullest, happiest lives available to us. But that's not really what we're told. Which leads us into the core tension and big idea that makes the concept of Good Enough tick. We'll explore that tension and idea more in a minute, but before we do, I want to take a step back and talk about the format that I'm envisioning for this concept in particular, and break down some of the example episode topics so you get a clear idea of what the show will look like. When it comes to the format, we know we've got our host, Sarah, our show concept, Good Enough, and an overview of what Sarah's trying to achieve with the show. And this is important because any show idea can be interpreted and developed in infinite ways depending on the host and their goals. When it comes to Good Enough, a different business owner, or perhaps even Sarah at an earlier stage of her business, would develop the show very differently. For example, if Sarah was currently making just a hundred thousand dollars a year, established but not entirely stable, in other words, and was looking to use the show to drive client acquisition, we might develop the show as an interview show where in every episode Sarah would interview someone who has settled for Good Enough in some aspect of their life and unpack what they've learned. Ideally, the episodes would be chosen and structured in a way to create what I refer to as an Infinity Loop style show, where the show maps directly onto and demonstrates the host's core ip, likely a signature framework which would then do the job of selling listeners on her methodology and organically leading them down her funnel. There's a lot more to the Infinity Loop model than we'll get into here, but I've put a resource in the show notes if you'd like to learn more about how to create that style of show for yourself, which if you run an expertise based business, I would highly encourage you to consider. Because in my experience, in addition to being highly attractive to listeners, Infinity Loop style shows tend to convert clients much, much better than any other type of show. That said, while this type of Infinity Loop style show certainly could work wonderfully, it doesn't address the specific goals that Sarah has now. At this stage in her business where she doesn't need clients or income, at least not in the short term, she needs exposure, legitimacy and credibility as she's beginning to aim bigger. So with that in mind, the standard interview show is not the format that we're going to map out today. Instead, the version of Good Enough that we're going to develop is a prestige narrative style show with every episode featuring a mix of host narration and interviews from multiple people. The goal? Elevate Sarah's status, claim the topic of Good Enough as her own, and position her as the go to expert on the topic of opening up more opportunities for publishing deals, speaking engagements, and raising prices for the select number of clients she works with. Going forward, we'll dig much deeper into the specific episode structure in a little bit, but for now, here's an overview of how this narrative version of Good Enough will play out. In every episode, Sarah will explore how the concept of Good Enough applies to a different topic through three separate lenses. The first is what I'm referring to as the Science lens, where the show will draw on the fields of science, data, research, and other more empirical sources to explore the topic. The second lens is the Soul lens, which will delve into the philosophical, spiritual, and metaphorical aspects of the topic. Finally, the third lens is the Story lens, which will feature a real person's experience, relationship with and journey through grappling with the idea of Good Enough related to the topic at hand. Speaking of which, let's take a quick look at, uh, just a few of the potential topics Sarah could choose to explore through Goodenough to help paint a clearer picture of the show before we dig into the nerdier details of developing both the show itself and the marketing and monetization strategy around it. Now I'll be honest, when I was brainstorming potential topics for the show, it felt like there was an infinitely long list, which is, uh, always a good early sign that we're onto something with a new show. So many hosts start out by landing on a topic which might be interesting, but simply can't sustain an always on show. The result is what I think of as concept dilution, where the show sticks closely to its core concept and topics for maybe the first 15 or 20 episodes, and then begins grasping for topics and guests that diverge further and further away from the original concept, watering down the show's positioning hooks and topic density in the process. Chances are you've experienced this phenomenon for yourself in regards to a favorite sitcom or TV show that stayed on the air several seasons longer than it should have, ultimately leaving a bitter taste in your mouth as a viewer if you even kept watching. The same phenomenon applies to podcasts, and it's one we want to account for early on in the development stage. So if we're wanting to create an always on show. In other words, one that releases on a regular cadence in perpetuity. The holy Grail of what we're looking for is an infinitely repeatable format, one we can apply to almost any topic and produce an interesting episode each and every time out. Which, lucky for us, is exactly what we have with this version of Good. Enough. Here are just a few of the example topics I can see the show exploring organized into several categories. Our first category is the broad health category, where we could explore topics like what is a good enough diet? A uh, good enough exercise regimen, or what about good enough longevity? Within the relationships category, we could explore what is a good enough romantic partner? A, uh, good enough marriage or relationship? A, ah, good enough sex life? Within the work and career category, we could explore topics like what is a good enough salary? Good enough work life balance, A good enough level of ambition or drive. And then branching out more broadly, we could explore topics like what is a good enough retirement? A uh, good enough vacation, good enough fashion sense or personal style? A good enough house, neighborhood or city to live in. What's a good enough dinner party, Good enough friendships? A uh, good enough information diet, Good enough way to raise a child. As we can see, there's no shortage of topics that we can apply our lens of good enough to, which when you think about it, is not really surprising seeing as we're constantly inundated in messaging about what we should want, how we should live, all of it ripe to be examined and potentially challenged. From my perspective, each topic provides a lot to learn, not only by aspiring to answer the question what is good enough? For that specific topic? But also by providing a gateway to explore the deeper themes that underlie it. Speaking of themes, now that we have a good sense of the show at the high level, let's take a peek under the hood at what exactly makes this concept work. We'll start by examining some of the various surface level hooks that will attract new listeners and convince them to give the show a shot. And then we'll look closer at some of the various forms of tension that will keep listeners engaged within the episodes before digging into some of the themes that will provide the deeper emotional level hooks that keep listeners coming back again and again and again. So you ready to get nerdy? In order to grow, every show needs at least one strong central hook that allows the show to get people's attention and pull them in. For some shows, such as celebrity hosted shows, the hook is the host themselves. For non celebrity hosted shows, however, the primary hook will generally come in the form of the show concept. It's also worth noting that the most marketable shows, in other words those that are easiest to grow, actually have an extensive hook stack. That is a series of hooks designed to both attract and retain listeners at both the show level and the episode level. If you're interested in learning more about the various types of hooks and how to integrate them into your show, check out the free hook stacking guide and rubric that I've, uh, put together@podcastmarketingacademy.com hooks Again, that link is in the show notes as well. So, with that in mind, what are the hooks for this specific show? In other words, the things that will snag and win attention in this hyper competitive category. Let's start out with the big one. For me, the primary hook of Good Enough is the subversive nature of the controlling idea the show is built on, which is that perhaps we'd be better off if we aimed lower with our aspirations and embraced settling more than optimizing. We'll unpack what makes a great hook in a second, but first I want to dig further into the idea of a controlling idea as it's the backbone of all great shows. In the worlds of novel and screenwriting, the controlling idea is the main idea a story explores via its plot and characters. But the same concept applies to great podcasts, products, businesses and brands as a whole. In fact, when it comes to podcasts, all great concepts are built around a strong, well defined central controlling idea. In a business context, ideally, the controlling idea of the show is tied to the core point of view and positioning of the business as a whole is which provides the North Star that every episode is oriented around making the show as a whole cohesive, both within the podcast and within the brand. Now, there are two ways in which a controlling idea behind a show can be expressed, and those are either as an assertion or argument that a show is making, or a central, driving question that the show is asking. The difference between these two expressions of your controlling idea can be fairly subtle and either one can work, but it's important to be clear on which approach you are taking and to stick to it. In the case of Good Enough, I'm envisioning the controlling idea taking the form of a question. Specifically this what if the most effective path to a rich and fulfilling life is not by optimizing each and every aspect and decision of our lives, but actually by simply making a series of good enough decisions and moving on? So if that's our controlling idea, what exactly is it that makes it particularly hooky. Based on the reactions I've seen and heard while pitching the concept of good enough to several dozen people so far, the hook seems to lie in the subversive, almost heretical nature of the question. We're all immersed in a culture that encourages us to constantly be chasing, striving, and optimizing for more. But no matter how much we achieve, nothing ever feels like enough, a fact we're constantly reminded of through advertising, social media, and overbearing parents who are constantly asking, why, oh, uh, why couldn't we just be more like Lloyd Braun from down the street? And given the ubiquity of this messaging, any challenge to this orthodoxy grabs our attention immediately. Because as much as we might like to believe that the world is our oyster, the constant pressure to crack open and slurp up the entirety of that oyster in each and every aspect of our lives is, frankly, exhausting. In short, to some extent most of us are looking for a way out. And with its provocative, controlling idea, Good Enough suggests it might just have the answers we've been looking for. And thus we have the primary hook of our show. But when it comes to Goodenough's hook stack, that is just the tip of the iceberg. In addition to the show level hooks, including the narrative format, not to mention the name, the show is also primed for a series of episode level hooks. One of the things I look for in any killer concept is that the show concept creates a kind of frame that elevates every single one of the episodes within it by providing the listener context for how to view and interpret each each new topic that shows up in their feed. For example, in the case of Good Enough, once you're aware of the core concept, that is Questioning how much is actually enough across various aspects of life, you'll now automatically apply that lens to each of the episode topics within the feed as soon as you see them, which will have you forming your own ideas and questions about them before you ever even hit play. In a way, this creates a kind of anchor that we can use to create three specific types of episode level hooks. The first is by selecting topics that people are likely already looking for permission to care less about and give up on optimizing for maybe certain ideas around fitness or a level of ambition or their information diet. The second is by selecting topics that people hold as sacred cows, in other words, things that most people believe are always worth aspiring and optimizing towards. Perhaps your romantic partner or parenting approach or earning potential. The last topical hook comes by selecting topics that feel obscure, quirky, or otherwise weird to apply the lens of good enough to in the first place. Maybe what's a good enough Thanksgiving dinner or a, uh, good enough weekend? Or good enough relationships with your neighbors? In addition to the topics themselves, another potential episode hook is the guests we choose to feature. And while this show doesn't really rely on or even aspire towards having well known guests as either the layperson in each episode or the experts, I, there's certainly an opportunity to feature guests who are in and of themselves, a hook to some segment of the audience, especially when paired with the right topic. For example, imagine an episode on defining a good enough relationship that featured Michelle and Barack Obama sharing their story of navigating the question who wouldn't want to listen to that? Okay, so clearly we've got enough external hooks that will provide enough curiosity and intrigue and to get listeners to at the very least, sample the show. Next, let's look at how Goodenough uses tension and subtly taps into deep, resonant themes to keep those new listeners engaged. While we don't generally recognize it, that is, unless you're a storytelling and marketing nerd like me, tension is at the heart of everything we find captivating, from sports to movies and TV books to criminal trials to confrontations in the street, political debates, elections, and more. All of these are interesting because of their inherent tension. This is a topic we'll come back to and explore again and again on Killer concept, but for now, let's start with a simple primer. Tension can come in many forms, but the simplest and most common sources of tension can be reduced down to two specific flavors. The first is this versus that, either in the form of conflict, such as competing ideas or worldviews or mutually exclusive choices. And the second form of tension is not knowing what's going to happen next, whether that's over the next 10 minutes or the next 10 years. It's important to note that in most cases, both of these forms of tension are required in order to pull us through whatever content we are consuming. Which is why rewatching the games from The Edmonton Oilers 2006 or 2024 or 2025 Stanley cup runs where they beat the odds and made it to the finals only to come out just short, isn't really compelling, because despite the conflict playing out on screen, we already know how these series end in heartbreak anyways. One of the most common flaws in podcasts that struggle to attract attention, listeners and clients is a lack of tension, often on multiple levels from the show concept to the individual episodes. It's simply not clear what the show is attacking, defending, or calling into questions, and what it's proposing. Instead, the result is a show and episodes that simply feel flat, which, in a world with so much great content, is simply not going to cut it. So what exactly does tension in a podcast look like? And how can you apply it to your show and articulate it in a way that pulls listeners in? As we've already talked around, when it comes to Good Enough, the core tension of the show revolves around the idea of striving versus settling. In our optimization obsessed culture, there are few, if any, instances where settling is actually seen as a good thing. The core tension of this show then, is that we're proposing that this dominant ideology is flawed, that we can't achieve perfection in every aspect of our life, and what's more, that striving for perfection might actually be making us less happy, less fulfilled, less healthy, and less connected. Then it proposes an alternative approach and in the process creates our first layer of tension. Optimization versus settling. The best versus good enough, this versus that. Our second layer of tension, the unknown, plays out in several ways. The first is that with our controlling idea posed as a question, the show takes the form as a kind of quest where we, as the host and the audience together, are attempting to get to the heart of the question, how much is good enough? In each of these aspects of life? Each episode then takes the form of a miniquest, attempting to answer the question for that specific topic. Within each episode, we encounter another layer of tension, one that we've intentionally engineered directly into the show format. Namely, the three potentially competing views of what good enough looks like for this specific topic coming from three different perspectives. The science, the soul, and the layperson story. In other words, this show is layered with sources of tension from the show level down to the episode level, which provide an abundance of opportunities not only to grab attention, but also to hold listeners attention and pull them through the show. Okay, so to this point, we've explored what makes this concept sticky by unpacking the controlling idea and the tension baked into the show. Coming up, we're going to look at how we weave these elements into our episode planning and structure. But before we do, let's stay just a little bit longer at the show level and and touch on the idea of themes, specifically the deep, connective emotional themes that might not be apparent on the surface, but form the heart and soul of any beloved show. Now, I realize that we're getting into some seriously nerdy territory here, but Bear with me because themes are important for several reasons. Chief among them is this while listeners tend to seek out shows based on practical surface level needs or desires, they keep coming back to the shows that use those practical topics to tap into, explore and evoke the deeper human themes. In fact, this is one of the crucial differences between truly great shows that build cult like followings and fans, and solid, informative, but ultimately one dimensional shows that never really garner enough excitement or emotion to inspire audience engagement, let alone word of mouth growth. In the context of Good Enough and our host Sarah, awareness of these themes is particularly important given her goals of not only reaching a mass audience, but genuinely moving people and inspiring a larger movement in the process. With that in mind, let's explore some of the themes that Goodenough will likely tap into. Of course, the big theme here is one that we've already articulated, the idea of settling as a whole, but just a few of the other recurring themes that I expect we would explore through the show include themes related to social status, productivity, ideas related to aspirations, striving and achievement, specifically as those are attached to our identities, as well as themes of happiness, satisfaction, fulfillment, memetic desire, cultural programming, relationships, health, money, meaning and purpose. And perhaps the biggest and deepest theme at the heart of everything we're exploring with Good Enough is one of the most persistent questions we all spend our lives grappling with. In short, what does it mean to live a good life? We'll talk a lot more about the idea of themes in future episodes of Killer Concept, but for now, suffice it to say that when it comes to Good Enough, we're clearly working with some deep and rich themes. Themes that are inextricably woven throughout each and every one of our lives, and ideally are woven inextricably through each and every one of our episodes. We can take this as one more indication that we're certainly onto something with this show. So to this point, we've primarily focused on the show level aspects of this concept of Good Enough, including the concept pitch itself and the hooks, tension and themes that make this a compelling idea for the show in the first place. But while a compelling idea is absolutely necessary for building a marketable show, it's just the first step. Next, we need to take that idea and package it into a template or structure that we'll use to construct all of our episodes going forward. This is a process I refer to as episode engineering, and our goals for the process are threefold. First, to develop a structure that all but guarantees that every episode we ever Publish is going to be at, uh, the very least solid, with a strong chance of being truly exceptional. We can think of this structure as working to raise the floor of our average episode quality by ensuring that we're never starting out with a blank page and building each new episode from scratch. Shooting in the dark when it comes to trying to figure out our episode subtopics, questions, flow, pacing, tension, and more. Instead, we design a template that gets, uh, us 70% of the way there before we even start, and we simply fill in the blanks from there. The second goal of the episode engineering process is to subtly program in our core sales messages, calls to action, and reinforce our positioning in every episode. This ensures that every single episode is moving our listeners closer to buying from us without us having to remember to talk about or bring up our offers or services on an ad hoc basis. Our goal here is definitely not to hard sell, but to simply guarantee that anyone who listens to any random five episodes of our show knows exactly what we do, who we help, the unique way in which we get people results, and the specific one or two next steps to engage with us further from signing up to our newsletter to signing up to work with us, all subtly communicated not by ads or promotions, but by our show's structure itself. The third and final goal of the episode engineering process is to slash the time on the episode creation process, because again, we've already done 70% of the work of creating a great episode for both our listeners and our businesses up front. In short, well engineered episodes consistently provide a better listener experience that do a better job priming buyers and which are faster and easier to produce. Not bad, right? This is a far cry from how most podcasters produce their episodes, basing each episode structure more or less on the specific topic or guest and then building out from there. Not only does this make it harder to create each episode for the host, it creates an inconsistent listener experience with episodes that are all over the place in terms of topic, tone, length, emotion, vibe, structure, and, well, pretty much every other variable you can imagine. Which makes these shows hard for listeners to build a habit around because they don't quite know exactly what they're going to get from a given episode before listening, or how and where exactly the show fits into their lives. So suffice it to say, your episode engineering plays a huge role in both the growth and sustainability of your show. So how do we go about it? In the typical process I take my clients through when developing a new show, we explore and identify several core elements that we want to use to shape our episodes. These might include anything from consistent emotional notes, narrative arcs, key brand messages, calls to action, tensions, a variety of types of payoffs, and more. Then we take those elements and build them directly into the distinct segments that make up our show's structure or blocking. For some shows, this blocking is relatively loose, providing a general structure to operate within while still leaving the host room to explore, whereas other shows have tighter, more highly defined structures, perhaps even consisting of named, clearly delineated segments. Regardless of the specific blocking, the best shows tend to have consistent structures that they follow episode in, episode out, giving listeners a consistent experience to build a habit and expectation around. So with that in mind, let's explore the blocking for Good Enough. So, a quick recap before we dive into the blocking Our hypothetical show, Good Enough, is hosted by our hypothetical host, Sarah, a life coach with a successful business who's now looking to own the idea of Good Enough and in the process raise her profile, expand her reach and and increase her impact by taking her message and her work mainstream. This is important to keep in mind as we're thinking through the episode engineering, as it gives us at least three specific criteria to design into our structure. The first is that if the goal is for this to be a mainstream show, it has to be at or above the quality of other shows at that level. This means we want to be thinking now about the show's pacing, flow, narrative arcs and tension, and how we can create a standard structure that takes care of those creative decisions for us. The second criteria is that if Sarah wants to position herself as the go to person when it comes to helping people discover the joys of Good Enough, it's not enough for her to simply host and facilitate conversations on the topic. Instead, she needs to demonstrate her thinking process and point of view in every single episode, thus firmly positioning her, not her guests, as the authority. The third criteria is that given that Sarah is looking to grow her overall platform, we want to create a compelling conduit to move listeners from the show to her email list where they can be easily distributed to her other channels and offers offers. This is especially important given that she's working towards a book deal with a major publisher who will almost certainly expect her to have a sizable email list to which she can promote the future book. With these goals in mind, let's walk through the blocking for Good Enough. So I've designed the show structure around three large blocks, which I refer to as scenes, which are then broken down into a total of 11 smaller blocks, which I refer to as segments the three high level scenes we'll be building around are as follows. Scene 1 is the overview where we'll introduce the topic and set the scene for the rest of the episode. Scene two is the exploration, the meat of, uh, the episode where we'll hear from our guests and explore the topic in depth. And finally, scene three is the reflection where we'll wrap up our exploration and bring the episode to a close. So let's start by taking a closer look at scene one, the overview. The goals of the overview are pretty straightforward. Introduce the topic, provide relevant context, create tension that the rest of the episode will then work to resolve and establish the stakes of the episode. We'll achieve these goals using three specific blocks within this scene. The first is what I refer to as a narrative hook, which will be a scripted and recorded piece of audio by Sarah that will be the first thing that people hear when they click play on the episode. The goal here is to capture people's attention within the first 20 seconds by establishing relevance and intrigue, then lay out the context and tension to earn buy in for the rest of the episode. Following the narrative hook, we'll flesh out the intro scene with a pair of blocks I'm calling the optimal outcome and the unacceptable outcome, respectively, which work together to further establish the core tension that the episode will explore. Again, our goal with every episode is to identify what exactly good enough looks like for the topic at hand. And in these two blocks, the optimal outcome and the unacceptable outcome will define both the ceiling and the floor that our exploration will take place between. For m example, in an episode exploring the idea of a good enough relationship, the optimal outcome block would articulate what exactly a dream relationship looks like. In practice, then, the unacceptable outcome block would describe what most people would consider an unacceptable relationship to look like. Perhaps a relationship where you and your partner have little spark, little in common, and add little to each other's lives. By the end of these two blocks, we'll now know what the best possible, though perhaps difficult to achieve, scenario would look like. And we'll also have a clear view of what the lower limit of what is acceptable looks like. Perhaps a scenario we could realistically see ourselves falling into based on just a couple of bad decisions and a bit of bad luck. By the end of the intro scene, our anchor is now set and the rest of the episode is now primed to find out exactly where Goodenough falls between these limits. After moving on from the intro scene, we now move into scene two, the exploration, which is the meat of the episode within the exploration scene, I've mapped out five distinctive segments, each of which plays a specific role in unpacking and exploring the topic we're applying our lens of Good Enough to. As a reminder, we've chosen to employ a narrative format with every episode examining its topic through three distinct science, soul, and story, with a different guest supplying each perspective. And it's here, in scene two, that we meet our guides, starting in Block four, where we'll meet our layperson, whose personal story of confronting and grappling with the concept of good Enough in relation to this topic will form the backbone of the entire episode. We'll check in with our layperson twice more over the course of this scene, but in this block, we're just introducing them and their context, with the goal of establishing relevance with our listeners so that they can see themselves in this person's story. With our layperson and their situation established, our next segment will cut away to the first of our guest experts, where we'll explore what the science has to say about what Good Enough looks like for our topic. Next, in Block 6, we'll return to our layperson, where we'll dig into their decisions, thought process, progress, setbacks and fallout they've experienced while navigating their way toward Good Enough in relation to the topic at hand. Depending on the episode, their story arc might track them, moving from over optimized down to good enough, or from under optimized up to good enough. This block will probably be the longest of the entire episode, likely falling in the 7 to 10 minute range, providing ample space to both unpack the guest story while also creating space for Sarah, our host, to demonstrate her expertise, offer insightful, probing questions, and map the guest's experience, progress and pitfalls onto her IP in the form M of a framework or methodology. Once we've checked in with our guide, we'll now cut away to guest expert 2 in block 7, where we'll now explore what the softer, more amorphous but equally valuable soul perspective has to say about the topic. Once again, this block exists as a pair with Block 5 designed specifically to provide a counterpoint to the scientific perspective. Much like in the overview scene, the goal of this pair of blocks is to create tension by stretching our topic out in various directions and stretching our listeners along with it, creating a vacuum for us to deliver our payoff. With the culmination of this episode, which is exactly what our next block is designed to do. In block 8, the final block of our exploration scene, we return once more to our layperson for their arrival moment, officially wrapping up the arc of their story. Here, we'll resolve the tension in their story and offer some poignant takeaways for the audience to mull over after the episode ends. Alright, so moving into our final scene, the Reflection, we've now closed out the main arc of the story, but there are still three distinct segments left for us to close out our episode. The first block of the reflection scene is, well, the Reflection from our host, Sarah. The goal of this short segment is twofold. The first is to wrap up any loose ends from the episode and highlight some of the key takeaways. The second, subtler goal is to give Sarah an opportunity to connect on a more personal level with her audience through sharing some of her own stories and experience related to the topic at hand. In addition to sharing her own experience, this block also provides an organic and natural opportunity to reference stories of clients she'd worked with on themes similar to those covered in the episode. Moving on. Block 10, our penultimate block is the call to action. In the case of Good Enough. I really like the idea of Sarah inviting the audience to weigh in on how they think about Good Enough for the given topic, perhaps by voting on a poll that has been set up to capture listener responses. As the responses start rolling in, they could be used as a segment of future episodes, shared via Sarah's newsletter or social media, and repackaged into other standalone resources as additional marketing for both the show and her larger platform. Finally, we have our 11th and final block of the show, the Credits and Outro, which of course are, uh, the credits and outro of the show when it comes to outros. Personally, I'm a big fan of using music to create space for reflection as well as develop a positive emotional association with the show. And so here in this section, we'll include some type of music that is poignant and reflective that allows listeners to close out the show and transition back into the rest of their lives while mulling over a little bit of what they've just heard. Using music in this way to intentionally create some space for listeners to reflect and absorb what they've just listened to is a fantastic tactic that I wish more shows employed. So we've developed our show concept, we've identified a handful of example episodes, and we've mapped out our show blocking. And I would say we officially have a show on our hands. A pretty compelling one if I say so myself. And while creating a well designed show is 80% of the battle when it comes to both revenue generation and audience growth, we still need to have a strategy in place to capitalize on the assets we've now created. So with that said, let's talk strategy for both revenue generation and and audience growth. But before we do, I want to emphasize one very important note. At the start of the episode, we talked about how the concept, format and really all creative decisions related to a show stem from the goals of the host and the specific business and marketing challenges the show is being designed to solve. In the case of this version of Goodenough we've developed here, for example, we chose not to optimize for client acquisition, but for overall platform growth and positioning. That's not to say this version of the show isn't capable of generating revenue, as we'll see in a second. It most certainly is, but that's not what we've optimized for. This is worth keeping in mind both as we talk through the strategy for Good Enough as well as in your day to day life when you're observing, analyzing and taking inspiration from what other hosts, shows creators and business owners are doing. Again, your specific business goals should dictate your show concept, format and the marketing decisions you make around it. Which means copying another creator or business owner without understanding their specific motives is a recipe for a whole lot of wasted time. M okay, with that warning in place, let's talk revenue strategy for this version of Good Enough. As a show that's an extension of an established business and creative platform. There are multiple potential revenue streams for this show to tap into. The first and most obvious is as a client and customer attraction and acquisition tool. And again, while this isn't what we've optimized the show to do, it will almost certainly achieve that result in a couple of different ways. The first is by increasing the demand for Sarah's specific expertise, thus allowing her to charge more for her one on one clients as the show strengthens her positioning and reduces her perceived interchangeability with other similar coaches. The second is by increasing sales for her lower ticket offers as the show grows her audience as a whole. But keeping Sarah's pipeline full is just the tip of the iceberg because given the strength of this show concept, Goodenough also has the potential to generate a significant amount of income through advertising and sponsorships. Now, for most shows, the best way to make sponsorships work is by cultivating a high value audience that niche sponsors will pay a lot to reach think senior decision makers within a given industry. I know many podcasters with relatively small shows, maybe a few thousand plays an episode, or in some cases even a few hundred that make multiple six figures a year from this model, all from just a small number of sponsors who are often falling over themselves trying to book long term 12 to 18 month contracts to renew. And while this approach is perhaps the easier way to make sponsorships work in the case of Good Enough, with a strong hook, solid episode structure, and a massive potential audience, Sarah has a strong opportunity to take advantage of traditional CPM based advertising so long as she can attract an audience. The strategy for which we'll discuss in a second. Beyond client acquisition, product sales and advertising, other potential revenue streams include listener support via either Patreon, Supercast, Apple and Spotify. And then of course there's the book our, uh, host Sarah is working towards, which I have a feeling might just emerge directly from the show itself, perhaps with the title the Good Enough Life. On that note, it's worth underlining the fact that one of the clearest indicators of a truly killer concept is that it has legs. In other words, the same core concept behind the show can be repackaged and expanded across various other mediums. Given everything we've explored so far, I'd say that Good Enough is definitely a concept with both long and strong legs. Okay, so now that we've mapped out our revenue generation strategy, the next step is to map out our growth strategy. Before we jump into the tactics, however, let's pause for a quick primer on what it takes to grow a podcast we're going to, which is broken down into three specific functions. The first is getting the show in front of people, the second is getting them to sample the show, and the third is getting them to stick around and keep coming back after that initial sample. This is essential to understand because most people only focus on the first, thinking that their problem with marketing is simply a lack of visibility. And to be fair, a lack of visibility could be a part of the problem. But in my experience, visibility is actually the easiest of the three growth challenges to solve, and essentially becomes a non issue if you've created a killer show capable of commanding and holding attention. Which, as you might recognize, is exactly what we've spent the episode to this point doing so with the certifiable killer concept safely in hand. Let's talk about how to get it out in front of people to start growing. As we discussed in the intro, one of the key aspects that makes this concept work is that it applies a sharp, novel hook to a topic that is relevant and interesting to a huge swath of humanity. But I want to make it clear that unless you have a super Sharp Hook Designing a show for a hyper broad audience is almost never the right approach to take. And even if you do manage to nail that sharp hook plus broad audience combination, there's a distinction between creating a show that is relevant to everyone on earth and trying to actively market it to everyone on earth simultaneously. We'll talk more about that distinction and how it influences our marketing in a second, but I want to bring it up now. So when it comes to marketing Good enough, there are three tactics I'd pursue. The first is pitching future collaborations, the second is podcast guesting and pr, and the third is thinking strategically about our episode topic selection. Let's start with pitching future collaborations. Basically, how the strategy works is getting other shows to run a cross promotion for our show now, with us then promoting their show at a specified point in the future, perhaps six, nine, or twelve months from now. The idea is that their promo can help us rapidly develop our seed audience, which is the biggest hurdle to growth for most new shows, and then we'll reciprocate in the future when our cross promotion of their show will carry more weight given our presumably larger audience at the time. Of course, this type of arrangement represents a clear risk to our cross promotion partners, and so this type of bartering only really works when you have a really strong, unique, promising concept that other creators trust will become bigger than what the show is right now. Essentially, we want them to feel confident that while they might send us 5,000 impressions today, a year from now, our cross promotion of their show might get them 10,000 or maybe 100,000 impressions. Uh, in addition to future collaborations, the second growth strategy I'd employ is our host Sarah pitching herself hard as a podcast guest, speaking to the idea of good enough in relation to the various shows she's pitching. For example, she could pitch herself to relationship shows talking about what a good enough relationship is based on what she's learned researching and producing that episode of Good Enough. Or she could pitch herself to career shows, speaking to the idea of what a good enough career is and how to strategically settle for jobs that will actually make you happy, rather than aspiring to the very best possible job title or salary on offer. These are just two examples, but the opportunities here are endless. What's more, it turns out the exact same approach can also be applied to pitching PR opportunities, specifically guest posts in prominent publications. One of the beauties of this show is that every single episode opens up an entirely new angle to develop pitches around, meaning that as long as Sarah keeps producing episodes, she'll continue to open up more and more pitch angles to additional topic clusters of shows and publications. Add to that the fact that we're taking a subversive counter narrative angle to all of these topics and we end up with a series of pitches to these shows and publications that will stand out from all other submissions as contrarian and distinctive, which gives them a really solid chance of getting booked. Speaking of angles and hooks, let's take a look at our final growth lever. Specifically, how can we use topic selection strategically to attract new audiences? Now, we've already talked through a handful of example topics that could appear ungood enough, but there are a few behind the scenes calculations that will inform our topic selection strategy going forward. The first is that especially early on, we want to cover big, broad, high stakes topics that everyone can relate to. Things like career and relationships, parenting and health. The reason is that when we're first launching the show and making a bunch of noise around it, we want as many people as possible to find something relevant to them in their first impression. The second thing to consider is that we regularly want to ruffle some feathers with our topic selection by challenging people in some of the areas where they might be most inclined to optimize, say marriage and partnership or salary or diet. These are the episodes that get people clicking, talking about, and most importantly, sharing the episodes with others. Finally, there's a strong opportunity here to align our topic selection with holidays and cultural events, providing additional PR opportunities as well as giving us the opportunity to ride trends as they present themselves. Think holidays, elections, movies or music releases, and more. To be honest, we probably don't need all three of these growth strategies in order to build a significant audience for good enough, but given Sarah's goals of aiming big, I figure what the hell, let's go for it. Alright, to this point we've built out our show starting by laying out the high level concept and then breaking down the hooks, tension and themes that make it work. We then move down to the episode level, identifying potential topics and mapping out the episode engineering. Finally, we scoped out the strategy for both revenue generation and growth, and to this point everything is looking really good. But there's still one more step in the concept development process that we need to go through now before committing to this concept, which is identifying and considering the show's crux. In my experience, every great show concept also has one or more sticky core challenges that must be solved for the concept to truly work. Some show concepts are phenomenal ideas after all, but are entirely impossible to make based on the skills or resources of the creator, or perhaps even the practical realities of the market and the world. So before committing to any show concept, no matter how promising it seems on the surface, we want to identify what is the specific crux of this show and and then consider whether it's something we're capable of solving. In the best case scenario, the crux is something that is easy for us to solve given our skill set, network resources or experience, but would be exceedingly difficult or even impossible for anyone else to replicate, giving us a strong and defensible moat when it comes to good enough. It's no surprise that as with any narrative show, the crux is the work that goes into creating each episode. Even without extensive sound design and music cues, narrative shows are just always a ton of work. In m our case, simply the task of lining up three interesting people per episode already makes the show a lot harder than a single interview show. And that's before considering reviewing tape to find the bits of each interview that we want to include, scripting and recording narration, and then piecing it all together in a compelling way. In short, it's no wonder that most narrative shows are created by well funded teams. And while Sarah's business certainly has significant resources available to invest in the show, they still may not be sufficient to produce a full blown narrative show on a weekly basis. So with this crux in mind, Sarah has a few options for how to address it. First, she could take a, uh, seasonal approach, spending months producing her episodes up front before dripping them out, maybe eight to 12 episodes at a time. Alternatively, she could opt for a less frequent release schedule, maybe bi weekly or even monthly. The final option would be to pitch the show to a network or highly aligned brand partner with the hopes of building out a legitimate production team that would allow her to release the show more frequently. Now, any of these options could conceivably work, but with any show, it's worth knowing what we're signing up for, uh, up front, and then deciding if the crux is one we're willing and able to solve. So we've built out our show, established the strategy and explored the crux. Now it's time for the final verdict. I'll share my thoughts here on where I think good enough sits in terms of its potential for growth, revenue and ease of creation. Then I'll invite you to weigh in on this concept as well. More information on how to do that in a second, but first, here are, ah, my thoughts in regards to the growth potential of the show. I could realistically see a well executed version of Good enough, pulling in 100,000 plays per episode. Once again, the reason for that high potential is that it's both addressing a massive market, but is addressing it in a novel, refreshing and relevant way. In other words, it has a great hook on the monetization front. Things are a little harder to predict and attribute to the podcast given that in our hypothetical scenario, Sarah, our hypothetical host, already has a successful business with a full client roster, along with several other existing content marketing platforms, specifically email, that are already working well. But just for fun, let's take a stab at it. Given Sarah's existing business future goals and the show we've developed together in this episode, I don't find it unreasonable to expect that this show could conceivably double the revenue of her business from the $400,000 a year it is right now over the next two to three years. This revenue boost would break down into the several revenue streams we've already discussed, including first, increased demand for her one on one client work, allowing her to either take on more clients or or charge more to work with the same number. Second, advertising revenue, which if the show were able to build up to our estimated potential audience size of 100,000 plays an episode, could realistically become a six figure revenue stream in and of itself. And then of course, there are all the other opportunities that the larger audience, stronger positioning and increased credibility bring, from low ticket product sales to speaking engagements, book deals, and more, each of which could conceivably add six figures of revenue for a show this size paired with a business like Sarah's. So yes, given the albeit hypothetical assets Sarah already has, this show has the potential to really blow up her business over a several year time span. That said, it's worth noting that these revenue estimations are only possible because of Sarah's existing business traction. Without it, this show could still conceivably become a multi six figure show based on advertising alone, but it wouldn't immediately be able to tap into all the other potential sources of income. As the final aspect of our verdict, we have the ease of creation of the show. By my estimation, I'd expect this show to take somewhere between 30 to 40 or even more hours of production per episode, which again is definitely this concept's weak point, which would need to be seriously considered before moving forward with the show. Alright, so that's my verdict. Now it's your turn. You can find the full rubric I'm using to evaluate these concepts and leave your own boat at KillerConcept FM Vote that's KillerConcept FM Vote over the course of the show. I'll be posting the rankings of each show concept we develop here to a communal leaderboard based on your votes so you can keep track of them for yourself. But one last thing before you make up your mind and submit your vote, sit back and enjoy the trailer for our brand new show. Good enough. Over to you, Sarah.

Speaker A: In some sense, our lives are nothing more than the outcome of a series of decisions. Some of these decisions are mostly inconsequential, like which gym shorts make my butt look better or what should I cook for dinner tonight? Other decisions influence our lives in more significant ways, like where to go to university and what major to pick, who to date and maybe even marry, which job to take and when to leave and what city to put down roots in. And then there are the decisions whose impact reaches beyond ourselves. Who do you vote for? What causes do you support? And how do you raise children capable of thriving in an increasingly unpredictable world? This last category of decisions might be the ones that keep us up at night. But if we're honest with ourselves, we agonize over all kinds of decisions, big and small. And it's not our fault we feel this way. Our culture, from our friends and families to political leaders to marketing, messaging, and any number of other inputs, all exacerbate our existing anxieties, often framing the consequences of every decision we face as something approaching life or death. Over time, we internalize that these decisions and perhaps eventually, every decision needs to be the right one, the best one, the most highly optimized for success and, we hope, happiness. Which brings us to a radical question most of us never stop to consider. For all of our agonizing and optimizing Are our lives actually any happier, richer, and more fulfilling? And if not, what would it look like to take a step back, settle for good enough, and move on, move forward with our lives? In Goodenough, we'll take this question head on. I'm your host, Sarah, a life coach, psychology nerd, and recovering overachieving optimizer. Over the past 10 years, I've worked with hundreds of people to help them live richer, more successful, more meaningful and fulfilling lives by lowering your standards and letting go of the anxiety of choosing right in every decision they make. Now I'm on a quest to discover the sweet spot between too much and not enough in every aspect of of life. In short, this is a show about the subversive joys of settling. In every episode, we'll examine a different aspect of life and explore what good enough looks like from a good enough spouse to a good enough career, a good enough vacation to a good enough diet, good enough friends to good enough fashion sense. Along the way, we'll feature personal stories of those who've made the right and wrong and simply good enough decisions and learn how it impacted their lives lives along with expert insights from the worlds of science, philosophy, psychology, history, spirituality and more. My hope is that through this podcast, you, me and all of us will be able to let go of, uh, some of the angst we feel about optimizing our way into the very best possible versions of our lives and settle into more ease, flow and fulfillment, satisfied in the knowledge that while we might never make the single best decision in any one aspect aspect of our life, perhaps we don't need to. You can follow Goodenough on Apple, Spotify and wherever else you listen to podcasts. Happy Settling.

Speaker B: Killer Concept is agonizingly created, written and hosted by me, Jeremy Ends. The COVID art is designed by Francisca Correa and the show is a production production of Podcast Marketing Academy. If you like this show, you might also like my other shows, including Roast My Podcast, where in every episode we tear down a different show's packaging to help them improve their listener acquisition and podcast marketing trends. Explained where in every episode we break down a different piece of podcast marketing data and explain what it means for you as a podcast creator or marketer. Both of those shows I co host with my friend Justin Jackson, the co founder of Transistor. And you might also like my newsletter Scrappy Podcasting, where every day I send a short micro lesson on how to create a podcast that helps you earn more and grow faster in your business. In the next episode of Killer Concept, we'll be developing the concept for a show at the intersection of creativity and business, a category with no shortage of boring, generic expert interview based shows. Together we'll walk through how we might create something more interesting, starting with the core idea and ending with a show that might just have the potential to become a must listen for creative business owners looking to create enduring work that people come back to over time and which elevates them as a singular leader in their space. The concept name is Dog Eared. Back with that in the next episode. One last thing before we wrap up. If you've got a show that's underperforming in terms of growth, client conversions, or both, and you're looking for support in dialing in the concept and then building out the supporting marketing and sales systems around it, consider checking out my podcast Growth engine program. In the program, we'll start with a high level audit of your business marketing and show to understand what's working, what's broken and where the biggest opportunities are. For some people, that's immediately jumping in to redesigning their show around a new killer concept. For others, it's reconfiguring their core offer and sales process. For others still, it's running a ah, quick and dirty cash injection campaign to create some breathing space and allow them to focus on the bigger picture strategic issues and opportunities in their business. Regardless of where you're at, we'll build a roadmap starting with the most immediately impactful task or project and then meet up every six weeks to identify your next most important action, overcome, um, any obstacles and workshop solutions. Following each call, I'll put together a personalized growth plan to ensure you have a step by step map for moving forward and all the resources you'll need between calls. You'll also have daily access to me inside the Podcast Marketing Academy community and twice weekly live group calls with me as well. This program is not for the faint of heart, but if you're an expertise based business owner, maybe a coach, consultant, advisor or educator, and are serious about building a system around your show, product suite and email marketing that runs like clockwork to grow your podcast and your business, it might be just what you've been looking for. If you're interested in learning more, email me at uh, Jeremy, uh, @podcastmarketingacademy.com and I'll send over all the info.