7 Milestone Episode Mistakes That Break Listener Trust

Milestone episodes are where a lot of podcasters accidentally lose the plot. You hit 100, 200, or in my case, 700 episodes, and suddenly the episode becomes about proving how big the accomplishment is instead of delivering the kind of value your listener actually came for.

That does not mean you should ignore the milestone or pretend it is not a big deal. It is a big deal. But the celebration still has to belong inside the relationship you have been building with your audience. If the episode becomes a monologue, a recycled greatest hit with no context, or a sentimental wrap-up that sounds like you are quietly backing away from the mic, you are creating distance instead of trust.

In this episode of The More Profitable Podcast, I’m walking through seven milestone episode mistakes that break listener trust and how to celebrate a big podcast moment without making the episode feel disconnected from the reason people listen in the first place.

1:08 - Celebrating 700 episodes of The More Profitable Podcast

2:04 - Why milestone episodes can fall flat when they become too self-focused

4:27 - Mistake 1: Making your milestone episode all about you

9:34 - Mistake 2: Re-releasing an old episode without giving it fresh context

12:52 - Mistake 3: Bringing too many voices into one milestone episode

15:04 - Mistake 4: Teaching podcast lessons your audience did not ask for

17:11 - Mistake 5: Turning your milestone episode into a pitch fest

18:50 - Mistake 6: Making the celebration feel more like a eulogy than a birthday

20:24 - Mistake 7: Overhyping the milestone instead of staying focused on the relationship you have built

Mentioned In 7 Milestone Episode Mistakes That Break Listener Trust

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Transcript

Landmark episodes like your 100th or your 200th or like what we're celebrating here today, your 700th, are exciting and huge accomplishments in a world where most podcasts don't even make it out of double digits. But it's imperative that we hold these episodes to the same standard we would hold any other episode to as far as being for our audience and not just about celebrating our big accomplishment. I want to dig in today on seven milestone episode mistakes I see way too often.

Welcome to the more profitable podcast with Stacey Harris. I'm Stacey, and this is the spot to learn more about the strategies, tactics, and tools you need to build your more profitable podcast. My team and I work every day with podcasters like you to shift shows from frustrating time sucks to productive members of your sales team because your show should be built to generate and convert leads.

So let's get into it. That's right. We are celebrating 700 episodes of this podcast.

If you've been around for a while, you know that the more profitable podcast has not always been the name of the show. For a long time, it was hit the mic for a long, long time. It was hit the mic.

I want to say the first 500 episodes of the show where and then we transitioned when we opened the agency into Uncommonly More and then as we really settled into podcast production and really sitting down with business owners who are using their podcast as the sort of engine of their marketing machine, we settled into the more profitable podcast. But the episode numbers kept accumulating and today we celebrate 700. I could not be more excited about this.

I've been thinking about it maybe more than any landmark episode before this. But what's interesting is as I approached this episode, I went into the same thing that clients always ask me. It was like, well, what can we do? What can I do to use this episode as a way to teach people? Because the fact of the matter is, is landmark episodes do tend to do well.

It's exciting. People want to celebrate with us. But the fastest way to sort of untangle that excitement around celebration and just sort of leave us all feeling a bit flat is to make it all about us instead of all about the people who make this episode happen, which is the people who listen.

Because if nobody's listening to you, it's going to be really hard to sit down every week and record. And so I want to talk through seven mistakes I see podcasters make with their landmark episodes, their milestone episodes that ended up making it a bit too much about the podcast and not enough about the listener and the relationship that the host has with the listener and meeting the expectation the listener has for what they get on this show. Before we dig into this, I do want to let you know we have spots open for podcast production starting with us late summer, early fall.

If you would like to join us, if you would like to step up your show, if you would like to be celebrating your next milestone with a bit more support and a bit fewer podcast dues on your list, now is a really great time to talk to the team and I about joining production with us. You can go to uncommonlymore.com slash podcast production to learn more about what podcast production actually looks like. You'll see some quotes from a couple of clients who work with us.

There's some links to some episodes where we sat down with clients who work with us. And most importantly, there is a form to fill out to book a call with me so that you and I can sit down and make sure this is a good fit for you. All right, uncommonlymore.com slash podcast production.

Word of warning, we will probably only be bringing in one or two more production clients this calendar year. I know it's June, but we're already having to make that decision. So, if you are, if this is something that's on your to-do list for 2026, let's get into it.

Let's sit down and chat. Even if now is not the right time, we can get you calendared for when you'd want to step in. Cool? I'm super excited.

All right, let's get into this. Let's get into these seven mistakes because I think we've kind of already talked about one, but I want to really plant the thought here. So, first mistake and maybe the most frequent mistake I see is we're making it all about us.

You are turning your milestones into a monologue instead of a back and forth a conversation. I say this a lot on this show. I've said it a lot over the years.

I really approach this podcast as like it's just my turn to talk. You then talk back. So, like I get replies to emails.

I get folks showing up in my threads or in my Instagram or on my LinkedIn. That one's, I'm going to be honest here, the least common. But there's another part of this conversation that comes from you.

I hear from people all of the time because I approach the show that way. For most of the people who I work with, that's kind of naturally how they sit in too. Every once in a while, I'll talk with somebody who sort of has a speaker approach as in they sort of build their episodes to feel like they're talking to a group of people.

I try to build my episodes so that it feels like I'm talking to you because I am. I like a one-on-one conversation between you and I. But in every instance of sitting down with the podcaster who wants to work with us or who is working with us, it's very clear that this is something they want to be doing for their listeners, for their audience, for their community. Yet somehow when we get to these landmark episodes it becomes the all about me show.

It becomes about all I have accomplished and all I have done and the impact I have had. That is not like a death moment for your brand or your podcast. It's not the end of it.

But it's a ding in the relationship you're building because it no longer becomes about you talking with someone, be it whether that someone is a one or a group depending on sort of how you position yourself in your show. But when you make it all about you and what you've accomplished, I don't have anything to say. Congratulations, I guess.

And generally speaking, in my experience, your listeners, your community, your audience, your prospective clients, they're excited because this tool really does build a relationship. I am always a little surprised when somebody reaches out. I got one not too long ago from a podcast episode and they were somebody who's been listening to the podcast since the beginning.

Like the actual beginning when I was doing social media management and selling services on that side of things. And we're talking 2013 and we go way back kind of episodes. And they sent me the loveliest email.

And one of the things they said that stuck out, and I saved this in my love folder, which is a place I keep all of the emails that people send me that say lovely things for days when I think I can do nothing and I'm dumb. It's helpful to have this folder. I suggest everyone have one.

But they sent me this lovely note. And one of the things they said to me was how proud they were of me. This is not somebody I talk to a lot.

It's somebody who I have a businessy relationship with. They send emails. I send emails.

I've sent some referrals their way. They've sent referrals my way. We've not been friends for years.

I don't know particularly a ton about their personal life, nor do they know a ton about mine. But it was so lovely to hear. And it was interesting because in the email they said, I hope this isn't weird, but I wanted you to know how proud I am of you.

It wasn't weird at all. It was, again, it was lovely. But what was interesting is it brought up to me all of the things I consume, be it shows or, you know, to put it in sort of like more mainstream traditional terms.

I think about it a lot. I'm a sports fan. I like baseball.

And there are guys, I'm a Dodger fan, there are guys in our minor league system that when they get called up, I'm like, I'm so happy they're here. Because I've been watching these guys since they got drafted in some cases, right? There's guys on our team right now. Andy Pa has a great example of this, not to get crazy baseball girl, but I've been watching him for a long time grow and develop in this organization.

And now in this team, he's bouncing back from a season where he didn't perform the way he wanted to. And I'm so incredibly proud of this man I have never met, nor will I ever meet. But I'm proud of him because we have developed a relationship because we have a common goal, the Dodgers three-peating, right? And so they've been on board with your show for a while, they want to celebrate with you.

But you've got to make it about celebrating together and not just celebrating you. All right. The second thing I see that is a big mistake is we'll see a re-release here.

And I want to say, I love re-releases. I think we repurposing the show, especially for these landmark episodes, can be a really great way to make it about the content and the listener. And if you have guests, the guests that have been on the show, we have done these kinds of episodes for a ton of clients where for their 100, 150th, 200th, we did, we featured clips of past shows.

That can be a great way to do this. But just dropping your most popular episode in the last hundred or your most popular episode ever with no context is not celebrating anything. If you want to use old clips or you want to release sort of a greatest hit kind of episode, give it a fresh intro.

Give us a reason why we're re-listening to it. Give us a reason for why you're sharing it now. Because that's how we shift it from this has been done before to this is something brand new.

It could be that this is maybe you had a guest that was really big in your space, like a sort of a celebrity in your industry. I've seen this a couple of times with podcasters where they'll bring on somebody who's just like top of their field in their industry, really well respected in their industry. And they have a conversation and it's great.

And then when we got to the landmark episode, they just re-released it. And I was like, cool, but why? If you want to just re-release it, awesome. But just sending me an email saying, hey, we're pulling this out of the vault.

Go to that's not celebrating a milestone. That's sort of just letting it pass by, which is cool. If that's what you want to do, if that's strategically the decision you've made, but oftentimes they think this greatest hit episode is the celebration, but you're not bringing in any energy to that old episode.

And you're not giving your listeners any reason to be engaged with it. Give them something to celebrate, use old clips and talk around them. Explain why you're sharing them, react to things you've done on the show before, or feature an episode that was like a sleeper hit.

Like was something you thought was going to not do well and then did really well. We've had a couple of clients where we re-released what I call, hold your hair episodes, which was episodes they were really nervous to release in the first place because they had like a really strong take or they like really said the thing or whatever it is. And then like we re-released it and it was, hey, I was so afraid to release this episode.

And now as we celebrate 200 or 700 or whatever, I want to share this episode again, because it was the one I got the most emails about. I got the most feedback from you. I want you to pay attention where so-and-so says X, Y, Z, or where I get into ABC, whatever it is, but react, explain, evolve, engage with it, celebrate with it.

Don't just let it exist. The next one is similar-ish. Oftentimes you'll bring back guests that have done well on the show or people who you have featured on the podcast before as a way to sort of get them excited, get you excited, get the listeners excited.

Sometimes we end up with too many voices in the room. This is one of the reasons I really like the Clip Show is it allows us to feature more voices, but really explain between each chunk who you're going to hear from. And so the listener always knows who's talking.

It can be really difficult when you bring in really more than three voices. So when we started getting in four or five, six people that we're going to hear from in a show, that's a lot for me to track when I can't see you. And I know what you're thinking.

Well, Stace, I do video. That's fine. Am I as a consumer of your podcast sitting here locked in watching the video? Probably not.

Even our TV shows know this, right? Like there are mandates from studios like Netflix that shows need to be able to be second screen followable. Meaning if I'm screwing around on my phone, I can still follow what's happening in the show I'm watching. This is why we're seeing things explained to us multiple times or things like that in some of these shows, right? Where it feels like they're treating the audience like they're dumb.

It's because they are building shows to be passively consumed. When we're talking about six people on a panel, even if it's a video, unless I am locked in watching them, or they have really distinct voices I'm already familiar with, it's going to be hard for me to track the show. And so it becomes about me trying to track who's talking and not what they're saying.

And so instead, if you want to feature a lot of guests, do it in clips. Do it in smaller groups, maybe do it over time. But you're better served by bringing on one or two guests and having just two or three of you total than you are by bringing on a whole panel of folks, all right? Number four, they decide to teach podcast lessons.

Now I am doing this right now, but it is not a mistake for me because that is what you came here for. You come here expecting to hear about and learn about podcasting and using it in your business. What I am saying when I see this as a mistake is, let's say you are a graphic designer, and you have a guest-driven show.

And then all of a sudden, you get to episode 100, and you've spent the last 99 episodes talking about branding and graphic design and featuring conversations with other graphic designers, branding experts, website folks. And then you decide to do a podcast Q&A episode for your hundredth. And you only answer questions about podcasting.

That's not what your audience came here for. And I think when we start talking about in the business space, there starts to be a gray area where you can maybe more get away with this, because it can be helpful for your audience who might also be interested in podcasting to hear your perspective. Then it's going to be really important that you're saying, this is what I did.

It's not necessarily what you should do, but here's been my experience. But this gets really sticky when we talk to more B2C style shows. A show I recently, probably six months ago now, saw make this mistake was a show geared around a specific content type.

They were talking about history of a local area. And when they hit a milestone episode, they said, okay, yeah, we're going to talk about the podcast now. No one who's listening to that show cares.

I care about podcasting and I did not care because it is not what I come here for. And that's where we'll see these landmark episodes actually take huge dives as far as numbers, because you are delivering content they did not ask for. On the flip side, our fifth option for like mistakes, you turn it into a pitch fest and you make it all about what you usually talk about, but just in a sales way.

So you use the milestone to sort of scaffolding style, hold up some sort of credibility, like just staying in the game is enough to get you there. And it becomes just a straight promo. It's like, well, I have done this many episodes.

You owe me money now. I'm not saying like an audio sales page or something like that can't end up being your episode 200. But what I am saying is that you can't position it as a celebratory episode and then use it exclusively to sell your service.

Like I've been doing this for so long. We've talked about this, this and this, and now it's time to buy. It makes it feel too much like a transaction.

Like I've put X amount of money in this machine and I expect X amount of money back out of this machine. It feels a little tit for tat. And so what I want you to do is not avoid selling, heck, I've already sold to you in this episode.

But what I want you to make sure you're doing is that you're still delivering value in the way you would in any other sales focused episode. It still has to be about delivering the content that you would normally be delivering them. Delivering on the promise that you make in your intro, in your show, each and every episode.

Those rules apply here too. Number six mistake I see is that your celebration episode reads a little more eulogy than celebration. A little more eulogy than birthday.

How about we put it that way, right? It ends up feeling overly sentimental and giving it a wrap up feel instead of jumping into what's next and what's possible. And you can do this even in a B2C where they don't care about podcasting stuff, where you maybe talk about lessons learned, but it can't all be reflection. It has to also move them forward.

It has to move them into your offers. It has to move them into your next episode. It has to move them into if you're running seasonally your next season.

It still has to feel like this is a living breathing thing. Again, I come back to this idea of less eulogy, more birthday. We're celebrating where we are and we're looking forward to what's next.

We may be reflective in this time, but we're not exclusively reflective in this time. And I love you, but sometimes these episodes where we're like, I reached 50 episodes and been podcasting for a year and that's really exciting. They're reading real like I survived it and I'm done.

I'm out. I can't push her any further, captain. That's the energy it's giving.

And so I want you to make sure that as much reflection and appreciation and gratitude as you have for what's been, you also have excitement and momentum and hope for what's next in the episode. All right. Number three or number seven, where we're going to wrap up over hyping these milestone episodes.

I understand you're excited. I'm so stoked to be celebrating episode 700, but hitting it doesn't mean anything. It means I outlasted somebody, but it's not like I was invited here.

I mean, I guess I was invited into your ears. I needed your consent for that, but this is just something I do. And I hope I do it well enough that you want to hang out with me week after week for 700 episodes plus re-releases in there.

Cause I don't count those towards the episode count. But in the grand scheme of things, when you opened up your podcast player and you saw that I had a new episode, you were excited maybe to find out it was episode 700, but you would have expected to see it there, whether it was episode 700 or episode nine or 42 or any other episode, because this is just another episode. I want you to focus on how this exemplifies and ties to the relationship you've been building.

Focus on that consistency, on that growth, on that ongoing credibility that you establish when you show up again and again for your listener. Cause that is worth celebrating. That is incredible.

Again, most shows fade out somewhere under 15, right? A lot of episodes don't make it two double digits, but you did. And that's absolutely worth celebrating, but it's just another episode. As exciting as 700 is, I'll tell you right now, even as I'm recording 700, I'm already thinking about 701 and 705 and 710, because that's where my mind is.

Not just on what's been, but what's to come. What's next? What happens between this and 800? That's what I'm thinking about. And when we spend too much time and put too much weight on the milestones, we make it about the show and not about the listener.

And we also put an outsized amount of pressure on ourselves to be worthy of that landmark. When all it really is, is evidence that we kept doing this. I joke a lot when people are like, oh my god, that's amazing.

You've done up until now almost 700 episodes. I always make the same joke. Yeah, it is evidence that I really like talking to myself because largely that's what happens on the show is I sit in a room by myself and I talk to you and I hope you'll talk back.

That's kind of what this show and any other solo driven podcast is. It's me delivering the first half of this conversation and hoping you deliver on the second. Hitting 700 is just evidence that I've done this 700 times.

It doesn't make me any better or any worse than anybody else with any amount of milestone history. And so don't put this pressure on yourself that you have to do something magical for this landmark episode, for this milestone episode. Continue delivering in the same way you always do.

Yes, celebrate. And I'll be honest, I will likely be celebrating outside of this podcast with my family because this does feel like a huge accomplishment to me. 700 episodes is a lot.

I've been doing this show for 13 years. That's a lot. So yeah, I will take a beat.

I will celebrate and then I'll move on to 701 and 702 and 703, etc, etc. And I will keep doing what I always do, which is ending this show the same way I'm going to right now by telling you listening only gets you so far. Listening to an episode about milestone mistakes doesn't get your milestone episode recorded.

So if you need to do that, go do that. And if you'd like some help planning it, that's exactly what we do with our production clients. So head on over to uncommonlymore.com slash podcast production to learn more about working with me and our team here at Uncommonly More.

All right. Thanks for hanging out with me for 700 episodes and a few extra because again, we don't count re-releases and I re-release somewhere between 8 and 12 episodes a year. So we've done a lot of this, you and me.

So thanks for being here. I honestly wouldn't keep doing this if you weren't here. I'm going to be real with you.

And so I thank you for being a part of this. And I hope that you too are celebrating this milestone and know that I am and I can't wait to see you right back here to talk more about profitable podcasting in 701. I'll see you next week.

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