Jeremy Enns Just Keep Learning Summary

If you want to keep it simple and own a business that could scale, Jeremy’s story is great. He also shares a bunch of secrets from his expertise in marketing a podcast.

Episode Notes

Jeremy shares how he took a meandering path in his professional life. This included being a musician, college for audio engineering, the nine to five, followed by an interest in travel, entrepreneurship and podcasting. 

He brings up his appreciation for extreme ownership that he borrows from Jocko Willink. We talk about the idea that getting into creative work mostly requires taking this extreme ownership, and a leap of faith. But, the important thing is to get started. Get into those early versions of your work and just keep going.

Jeremy hosts a Podcast Marketing Academy where he coaches people through the process of building their audience. He also creates content that helps people develop their own creative confidence. Much of this comes through his newsletter creation. A surprise in the episode was how much writing Jeremy does to fuel his creativity and business success.

We talk about the concepts that underlie a lot of creative success. We discussed curiosity, intuition and confidence. We also shared some insight as to how little the actual work we pursue at any given moment matters. What truly matters is the transferable skills and mindset we develop. 

Speaking of mindset, a lot of the conversation provided a glimpse into the mindset of the creative entrepreneur. If this is a goal of yours there will be a transformation from needing people to tell you what to do, all the way to feeling like you can figure things out on your own.

Of course collaboration is still super important, something else that also came up. We talked about how growing on social media, or podcasting is similar to the hip hop industry in that you can put other people on to help them out. Sharing fan bases and audiences can really help each other grow in kind of a mutually beneficial, symbiotic relationship.

This is one of the longest episodes to date, and it is great! Jeremy shares a lot of great marketing tips that are not scammy, or spammy. Jeremy Enns is the type of leader we need in entrepreneurship. No doubt, this is one of the most informative episodes when it comes to common sense marketing.

15 Things To Remember When Starting A Business

1. Understand podcasts are long-term projects. If the goal is to grow an audience that leads to monetizable success, realize this won’t happen right away.
2. Do some quick research. Study your own ten favorite shows. Listen to and ask yourself, why are these effective? Why do these shows do well? What can I borrow from their style?
3. Over time, develop your own unique brand characteristics and show style. 
4. Create the first episodes. The most important thing is to create and publish as soon as possible. You could do this by creating pilot episodes that are private to test with your audience at first, but either way you have to create the first shows.
5. The version that becomes successful will not be your first version, or it will be drastically different from the first versions, so just get started and keep learning. Don’t attempt to plan out everything from beginning to end. Take action, learn and pivot.
6. Be sure you learn, or hire someone to ensure that you are creating audio that sounds reasonably good. It’s not difficult, but takes some learning and is important.
7. Create compelling content. This happens by getting the first 100 reps in as soon as possible because. If you pay attention to your audience, your skills will develop.
8. If it’s an interview show, learn and practice what questions to ask and how to carry on a conversation that makes the episode emotional, entertaining and educational.
9. The strategy to growth is to get audiences to see something about your show that makes them want to click play on the first episode. Always work on the show so that it is more than worth the audience’s time.
10. Gone are the days of creating any show and growing an audience. It can still be done, but requires differentiation. What makes your show different for the listener? There may be a few successful shows in your niche that are similar, which you can use as an advantage if you find ways to stand out from the crowd.
11. Once you have a differentiated show that is consistent, with good audio and a bit of a community, then you can have fun with marketing by getting in front of similar people and sharing your messages with them.
12. Find similar audiences to the community you are building. Find new listeners in social media groups, newsletters, and similar podcasts. Share your work and process, for free because you are a good person and good things will happen.
13. You want new audience and community. When you post on social media, the people who see it, typically, are people who already follow you. So, posting is important but should be no more than a quarter, twenty-five percent of the way that you build your brand on social. Really focus on engaging, commenting, replying and participating in conversations, as opposed to simply sharing your content.
14. Collaborate more. Focus on organic engagement with similar accounts on social media. Find other hosts, or brands you vibe with and just be completely generous by supporting their work, commenting, replying and not worrying about making any asks. You will get in front of their audience by collaborating with people on a similar level to you. Keep leveling up these collaborations over time. 
15. Feel free to switch up your style every so often. Quarterly bonus episodes, testimonial shows, or interviews if you typically record solo, vice versa do solo if you typically interview. It can spice things up, but remember to over-communicate the plan with your audience and be sure it doesn’t take away from the thing people already appreciate.

Memorable Quotes

“It is right to believe that you will be successful, but remember the version that ends up being successful will be drastically different than all of the versions that come first.”

“I’ve always wanted to create more stuff myself. I think it’s worth just getting that first, the first business, the first gig, whatever it is, it’s not the be-all, end-all. It’s just something to get you started because you’re going to learn a lot about yourself and what you like and what you don’t like.”

“A lot of times when we don’t have confidence because we aim too high too fast. To build confidence, what’s the smallest little viable thing I can do that I can succeed at? And maybe it won’t be the first time, but that I can start seeing like, okay, I can bet on myself and I can make that bet. I can succeed.”

Guest Bio

Jeremy Enns is an entrepreneur, writer, & marketing teacher. He is the founder and CEO of Counterweight Creative, and agency that focuses on helping creative brands succeed. They create helpful products and offer services to support creative entrepreneurs. Their main focus is audio engineering and podcast marketing. But they also have courses you can take and content like the Scrappy Podcasting Newsletter.

Jeremy and his team have worked with hundreds of brands, entrepreneurs and creators, helping them generate tons of podcast downloads and millions of dollars in revenue. He and his company really understand the recurring patterns that separate shows that grow and convert casual listeners into raving fans, clients, and customers.

FOLLOW Jeremy

Website – Counterweight Creative
LinkedIn – Jeremy Enns
Twitter – @iamjeremyenns
Instagram- @iamjeremyenns