“Who am I to talk about this?” It is a common question that plagues content creators. We often assume that our audience is filled with experts and skeptics waiting to expose us as frauds.
In solo podcasting, we cannot see our audience, so our brains naturally fill the gap with a “worst-case scenario” listener. We imagine our bosses or industry leaders scrutinizing every word. In reality, these people are likely not listening at all. The actual person who clicked play did so because they have a problem and hope you can solve it. They are looking for value, not reasons to judge you.
In this micro-episode:
- Why the lack of visual feedback in podcasting triggers imposter syndrome
- The reality check: Experts are too busy to “hate-listen” to your show
- How to shift your focus from the imagined critic to the hopeful learner
Resources: Find more episodes and subscribe at stereoforest.com/minute.
Transcript
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::A lot of us have this voice in our head when we're about to click record and it goes something like this. Who am
I to talk about this? Someone knows a lot more than me. Someone's going to listen to this and think I'm a
fraud. All those real experts out there are definitely going to judge me. But that voice is assuming
something about the audience that's usually not true. Those people, those experts that are going to judge
you,
::usually aren't part of your audience anyways. If you're the type of performer that's getting up on a stage,
you are working for the people that are there in the room. You have a gist about what's going on in there, like
if there's dead silence or if they're laughing at the things that you say or you can notice the general
energy in the room and we're going to adjust to that energy accordingly. When I was a fitness instructor,
that was a big part of my job and it was
::a really important thing to notice and do to keep everything safe. Now, doing these solo podcast episodes
is a lot different than that. We're performing to an audience that we can't see. They are not there. They're
there, but we can't see them, right? So we need to make our brain try to fill in a lot of gaps. Like our brain is
naturally going there, trying to fill in those gaps with something.
::with kind of your worst case scenario, right? The worst version of a listener. So your brain might be
imagining that skeptic, right? That expert who knows more than you or a person who's going to find all the
holes in your argument or the person who's wanting you to fail so they can feel better about themselves. And
I definitely felt that when I was starting my show about improv.
::and I knew he knew that I had that show. Now I didn't assume that he heard the show but I sure worried that he did
anyways and it turns out he never listened to the show anyway so I didn't need to worry about that and that's
the point. So your brain could very well be telling you that your audience is a bunch of like your bosses who
aren't pressing play anyways. The person who does click on your episode however that person searched for
your topic because
::They wanted help. They wanted to listen to it. Time is so valuable. People aren't wasting their time. The
listener is probably not going to hate listen your show or at least they're not going to keep doing that for a
very long time. They found it because something you said in the title or the show notes, those things made
them think, hey, maybe this will be useful to me. Or if it's comedy, hey, this might make me laugh. That's a
hopeful audience. So lead with that.
::I'm Jen DeHaan and this is the Credibility Minute. Find more episodes or get in touch with me at
stereoforest.com slash minute.