Deep Dive Dialogues with Dan Woerheide

Unleash Your Potential: The Personal Growth Formula for Success

• Dan Woerheide • Episode 18

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In this episode I dive deep into the idea that real success—whether you're a podcaster, coach, or entrepreneur—starts with personal growth. I share my five key areas for success:

  1. Developing Yourself First: I discuss how refining your communication, mindset, and authenticity sets the stage for everything else.
  2. Creating a Simple Content Strategy: I show you why keeping your content plan straightforward helps you avoid burnout and stay consistent.
  3. Getting Crystal Clear on Your Goals: Whether it's building authority or generating leads, clarity is key.
  4. Publishing & Improving Incrementally: I explain how embracing a “done over perfect” mindset lets you learn and grow with each episode or client session.
  5. When to Explore Advanced Tactics: Finally, I talk about why advanced strategies only work once you have a rock-solid foundation.

I’m also launching a new segment called Mindset Minute—today, I share a quick tip on how to redefine professionalism. Instead of fitting into a cookie-cutter mold, I encourage you to jot down three qualities that truly represent you (think empathy, reliability, or honest communication) and let them guide how you show up every day. Authenticity isn’t about oversharing; it’s about blending your expertise with who you really are.

If you're ready to shift your mindset and build a foundation for true success, this episode is for you. Check out the show notes for extra resources, and if you want even more support, email me to apply for my mastermind program. Let’s unleash your potential together!

Email Dan@danw.us

Speaker 1:

Welcome back to Deep Dive Dialogues. I'm your host, dan Warheide, and, as always, I'm super excited to be back here with you this week and I'm excited that you're here with me. So thank you for being here Today. I want to start with a little something different. I want to introduce a new segment which I'm going to call, at the moment, mindset Minute. So welcome to this first installment of the Mindset Minute.

Speaker 1:

I want to talk a little bit about showing up authentically as a professional. This has come up in several client conversations over the past couple of weeks and I thought it would be a great idea to share some helpful or thought-provoking ideas around this topic. So most of us have been taught that being a professional has a certain look right. It means being stiff, polished or maybe even robotic for some people, but really professionalism is about being the best, most genuine version of ourselves. When you can let your real self shine through, show up even in the midst of struggles and triumphs. If you're just showing up as your best self in the moment, that helps to build credibility. It helps to build trust and deeper connections with your audience, with your clients or even with your friends. Your friends expect you to show up as who you are. That's why they're your friends, and here's the truth. If it doesn't resonate with them or it doesn't create stronger bonds with certain people, then it's likely that the people that aren't connecting at that level are not your ideal or your best clients. To begin with, it's a great filter for who you may actually want to be spending the majority of your time with, whether that's in your personal life or your professional life. So here's a practical tip Redefine professionalism on your own terms. What does professionalism look like to you in the work that you're doing today?

Speaker 1:

Instead of trying to fit into some cookie cutter or predefined mold, if you will take a moment and jot down three simple qualities that truly not simple. They're not simple qualities, but it's simply writing down three qualities that truly represent who you are as a professional. Maybe they're qualities like empathy or reliability, maybe even honest communication. Honesty and integrity are at the top of my list as an example. So use those as your benchmark and then each day, remind yourself of these traits and let them guide how you interact with others throughout the day and through your social media even, for example, you can share brief personal stories that show how you're able to handle challenges using those values that you hold dearly, those top three, if you will, and don't forget to embrace a little bit of vulnerability. You know it doesn't weaken your authority, it makes you relatable and it makes you trustworthy when you're able to share at that level with some confidence. And I do want to say you know, being authentic does not mean oversharing. It's the ability to blend your expertise with your true personality. Let your true self shine through. With your true personality, let your true self shine through.

Speaker 1:

Shifting this mindset can really transform how you connect with your audience and set you apart from everyone else in your field. When I started practicing this, not only did I feel better, but I started recognizing where the genuine connections were showing up, and it was a game changer, right? I changed my own definition of what professionalism was. Now, mind you, if you've not heard me talk about it before, I spent a career in the military. They absolutely defined what professionalism looked like for each and every one of us. It was written in our regulations, it was practiced, it was preached, it was driven into us day in and day out, and simple things like hands in pockets were not allowed. And if you were caught with your hands in your pockets. You were reminded that that's not allowed, so taking time to redefine that for myself was huge. Anyway, that's it for today's mindset minute. Okay, maybe a little longer than a minute, but you get the idea. So go out there and be unapologetically. You Now on to the rest of the story.

Speaker 1:

As you might have heard once upon a time on the radio, the rest of the content here for today. So I want to jump into this idea that people so really this is going to come from reflections again on my experience around PodFest and some other conversations in the podcasting world. However, I'm going to do my best to relate this to the coaching and entrepreneurship as well, not specific to podcasts, but you'll see some nuances as I try, not as I try as I start talking through some of these ideas. I want to do some, I guess, contrasting, just to give you some insights specific to coaching versus podcasting in general. But these are the main ideas, right? So let's start here.

Speaker 1:

People I've talked to, people I've observed, seem to have this tendency to jump straight to the fancy strategies, the what's hot today and how can I rapidly improve this thing, whether it's growing your podcast audience, whether it's growing your coaching client or your booking list, however you want to label that. You know, growing your list of clients or whatever it may be. But you know, should I go to a video first, podcast on YouTube, or should I stick with audio only? And you know, jumping into these strategies is what I've been seeing a lot of in my experience. Maybe not the same for you if you attended some of these events, but my experience was that the sessions facilitated at Podfest, as an example, were really enabling this idea right.

Speaker 1:

Most of them were advanced strategies for content, for audience growth, for monetization, for you name it and none of them focused on what I think is most important, and that is this idea that success starts with you. That's, your personal growth, your own clarity and the ability to take consistent action. This is the foundation for your podcast, it's the foundation for your business and it really comes back to personal growth, your communication style, your clarity in your vision for where it is that you truly want to go. I believe that there are five key areas which are critical to your success that I want to briefly cover or explore with you throughout this episode today. These five key areas critical to your success are developing yourself first, creating a simple content strategy, getting crystal clear on your goals, releasing content and improving incrementally and finally, when to explore those advanced tactics which I've just talked about in the opening. So the first key area critical to your success developing yourself first. Personal growth, I said, is the foundation, the bedrock, if you will. For podcasters.

Speaker 1:

This looks like honing your voice. You're honing your style, choosing your style and enhancing your confidence on the microphone. I can remember when I first started doing a daily live on Facebook and I think I was streaming to actually Facebook, instagram and LinkedIn. At the time I might have also been streaming yeah, streaming to YouTube at the same time, and those videos are still out there. I think I've managed to take them down for the most part, but they're still up there. I could share them today if I chose to. I personally keep them there so that I can go back and look at the improvements that I've made incrementally along the way. But the confidence on the mic I remember when I first started showing up. It was like fumbling through the first steps If I were an infant an infant's not going to take first steps, a toddler taking my first steps that's sort of what it felt like on the first few days and first few times that I was showing up, but I challenged myself to 30 days consistently showing up on live streams because, well, honestly, I wanted to create some engagement number one at the time this was several years ago but I also wanted to get more comfortable on the camera and on the microphone and let me tell you, it was scary at first, but so much fun in the end and created some great connections as a result, heard some outstanding stories along the way and it was really a good time in the end.

Speaker 1:

Now for coaches and entrepreneurs, this looks a lot like sharpening your mindset. We opened today's segment, or today's show, with a mindset minute, the new segment that I've included in this show leadership development and your communication skills. There are some tips that I want to offer through each of these key areas, and this is the first one about you know the developing yourself, recording things like short audio clips and sharing them with a trusted peer or peers for their feedback, their critiques In your coaching practice. Doing recorded role play sessions to build your confidence and give you the opportunity to go back and review and see what key areas you can improve on For podcast audiences and coaching clients. You can more easily resonate with your audience when you're truly you. This is how we started and I'm going to continue to say this, rather than imitating or pretending to be someone else Now the pretending word. I've talked previously about my feelings on the imposter syndrome. If you're pretending, then you are intentionally attempting to deceive someone, maybe even unintentionally. But if you're pretending to be someone or something other than who you are and what you are, then you're imitating someone else and that's not your true self. And that goes back to my conversation. I think Dan's personal world here. But I think that goes back to the conversation about imposter syndrome.

Speaker 1:

The second key area critical to your success is to create a simple content strategy. We've all done it. If you have created content or worked on creating a content plan or strategy, you've definitely. Well, I'm not going to say definitely because maybe some of you that comes extremely naturally. For me it doesn't. I tend to overcomplicate creating a content plan, whether it's for my podcast, for my business etc. And that can quickly lead you to some kind of burnout. So I always suggest simplicity first. Start with a basic blueprint. So I always suggest simplicity first. Start with a basic blueprint. You can actually stick to Using your theme or niche in coaching, maybe that's your core specialty, whether it's focusing on career transitions or mindset coaching, personal development. For your podcast, you want to align the same sort of themes so that your potential clients can see consistency in what you're publishing, whether it's your podcast or your content elsewhere. For your podcast, you want to do things like decide if you're going to do solo shows, whether you're going to do interviews or maybe a mix of both. In coaching, you might want to consider how you're going to deliver your content, whether it's through webinars, short training videos. Either way, you want to do your best to ensure it parallels with your approach to your podcast.

Speaker 1:

Now, if you look at my content, it's sort of all over the place. I share a lot more of my personal life. In fact, I share a lot more sunrises. Here in Florida, we get some really beautiful sunrises. I live about a five-minute walk from the beach, so that's my reset time. I enjoy going out there and grounding and enjoying a beautiful sunrise, but I also take those photos and I share them. That's part of my personal life and journey that I'm sharing with people and you know whether that resonates with people that may or may not become my coaching client in the future is not in the forefront of my thinking. I'm just focused on the sharing of something that I'm enjoying in those moments. That's sort of where it's at right now. Does that align with my podcast In a way?

Speaker 1:

Because if you've heard me talk about this podcast, this podcast is for me. It's for me to consistently be in touch with the creative process and publishing that content, content that I would like to be happy with, content that I am happy with. But if it benefits you or benefits someone you know even, wow, what a golden opportunity, what a bonus it is for me to realize that something I'm doing to help me improve is also helping someone else improve. So the feedback that you have sent me has been extremely well received and I'm grateful to each and every one of you who reaches out to me to share something. You've gained something, you've gleaned an insight or a similarity, or you know even your own stories in your journey that you've shared with me. So I'm super grateful for that. But I digress. I'm going to go back to where I was.

Speaker 1:

Frequency is the next piece. So, theme we talked about your format. We talked about your frequency is next, whether you post weekly, bi-weekly, daily, once a month, pick something that's going to be sustainable for you. Now I have an action step here for you, and that's to outline your next three to five podcast episodes or your next three to five social posts that are going to support your offers, your business and your entrepreneurial goals. But here's you know, you've probably heard all the people talking about how you can leverage AI for your business, how you can leverage AI for your podcast, how you can leverage AI for content development. Here's a simple one for you Go to your AI platform of choice whether that's chat, gpt or another and ask it to be your marketing rock star, your marketing superstar, your marketing expert, whatever you want to call it, and then give some definitions, give it your niche, give it your chosen format and the frequency with which you want to publish your content, or post your content, and ask it to create you a downloadable format content calendar based on that input and their ability to be your marketing expert as you create this content plan, and make sure you go back and look at the results, of course, but I think you might be. If you've not tried this, you might be impressed with what it actually does for you. I've just done one recently and I was thoroughly impressed with how it turned out, made a few tweaks and we'll probably add in some additional stuff, like my sunrises and some other personal things that come up, but really it did a great job of helping me plan out a month's worth of content in advance and I intend to start implementing at least some of that, maybe all of it. We shall see what that looks like.

Speaker 1:

So the next key critical area, key area critical to your success getting crystal clear on your goals. You want to define success for both your podcast and your coaching business, or your content creation. Whatever it looks like your business, you need to think about things like are you podcasting to build your authority? Are you podcasting to generate leads, or maybe it's to nurture an existing audience in a different format In coaching? Let me pause the podcasting for a second because this leads to another connected thought.

Speaker 1:

Right, a lot of people going back to jumping in to advanced strategies. A lot of people want to start a podcast because they see it as a business opportunity period. Maybe they're working a full-time job and their life isn't as exciting or quite where you'd like it to be or where they would like it to be. And you see all these people talking about the side hustles and gig nations and all the different people talking about all the different ways to earn an income in addition to your full-time employment, and that's wonderful. But looking at using a podcast as a business tool to grow a side income, I think is leaning very heavily into the side of advanced strategies, because it's not something that you can just jump into for 99.999% of people and start creating an income from it. Now there are some people who would argue with that and I'm completely fine with having a difference in opinion and I'm happy to hear those arguments. If you're one of them, love to have a conversation with you. That's my view on it and I don't think it's an overnight thing. I don't think anyone you talk to will tell you it was an overnight thing and I talk with a lot of podcasters on a regular basis. So just some food for thought.

Speaker 1:

In your coaching business, you know, is your primary focus going to be your one-on-one clients? Is it going to be group programs? Maybe you're going to do masterminds or maybe there's a combination therein? What is the path to success look like for your business? Aligning your goals is next, with the content. So, if you wanted to create a new coaching client, as an example, you want to create podcast episodes around topics that your ideal clients may be searching for. You want to be able to show social proof or success stories that naturally segue into your service offerings. And then you want to plan how you're going to measure progress. Now I'm going to give you some advice around measuring metrics for podcasts here, but it goes back to defining your goal clearly. First, get crystal clear on the goal for your podcast and then choosing the metrics that are going to help you measure whether you're working towards achieving that or not. So, for podcast metrics, you can look at things like number of downloads or listens and any feedback that you receive, alongside any business metrics that you may have. Are you gaining new client applications? Are you getting more email signups? Are you getting email signups at all? And these things will help you to see if your show is driving the results that you'd most like to see for your podcast. All right, the fourth key area critical to your success publish and improve incrementally.

Speaker 1:

This goes back to a conversation about perfectionism. Maybe I've not really talked about that on the show, but that's what we're talking about perfectionism. So, whether you're launching a podcast or you're launching a new coaching program, waiting for everything to be flawless usually means that you're not actually ever launching your product, your service or your content. So I encourage you to embrace the done is better than perfect mindset. Perfectionism equals procrastination, because it's never quite where you want it to be. There's always something new to learn, something else. You want to do some other way to get it just right before you put it out there, and if you wait until it's just right, you'll find in most cases that you continue to wait. So embrace done being better than perfect. Then focus on steady iterations of improvement. Each episode is a chance to refine how you deliver your content, how you tweak your format for your show.

Speaker 1:

I just added a new segment at the beginning of this show. I'm just playing with it. It's something I thought about, something I wanted to try and so far it resonated with me. And if it resonated with you, I'd love to hear that feedback. But on to today's content. Maybe consider I just said it trying new segments.

Speaker 1:

Each client session for coaching or business is also teaching you something new, even if you don't have the experience of coaching. By starting to coach someone now, you're able to continually develop and learn something new from each time you sit down with another person and have a coaching conversation. You apply feedback, whether it's your own feedback or feedback from clients or even peers. If you do, you know the peer review type recordings where you can sit down with another coach maybe another coach who's more experienced than you and get direct feedback on your own coaching. This is how you improve what you're offering and how you're coaching your clients. Then make practical changes. Looking at your podcast analytics, like I mentioned, you know. Looking at the episode length, where the people are dropping off, you know if you have a 30-minute podcast but people are dropping off at 15 minutes, then maybe considering shortening the episode length for your podcast. Look at your coaching feedback forms what did the clients enjoy most through your coaching? Incorporate more of that. Adjust accordingly each step of the way. That's how you can make incremental changes and continue to work towards improving.

Speaker 1:

All right, the fifth key area critical to your success. Let's talk about when to explore advanced tactics. What are advanced tactics? I briefly covered these at the beginning of the episode, but things like monetization. I briefly covered these at the beginning of the episode. But things like monetization, sponsorships, funnel building for your coaching programs or your brand partnerships, referral partners, etc. I believe that, again, a strong foundation comes first. Your ability to communicate, the ability to have clear messaging, the ability to be consistently present these things all amplify the advanced tactics that you can implement or learn If your show or coaching business isn't resonating. Yet bigger, more advanced strategies aren't going to fix that gap. I may dive deeper into advanced monetization or marketing funnels and things along those lines in upcoming episodes, but not until after you've done the work to lay the foundation for your success.

Speaker 1:

That's it, folks.

Speaker 1:

That's what I have for you today. Thank you again for being here and for bearing with me. I do want to invite you to a couple of things really quickly. I have talked about it once or twice now, but I am launching a new mastermind and if you want to gain additional information, I'm going to encourage you to go back to the previous episode and hear what I might have to say around that, or you can email me if you're interested in applying. I'm going to ask you to email me, dan at danwus. Simply put mastermind in the subject line and I will reply to you with the application. It's a brief application, after which we will, you know, schedule a time to get together and talk not just about the mastermind, but I'll walk you through a full coaching session with me. No obligations, no expectations that you'll ever become a paying client, just my gift to you and how I create in the world of coaching. So again, if you want to learn more about the mastermind, send me your questions or if you want to apply, just put mastermind in the subject. Either way, put your questions in the email and or request the application. I look forward to hearing from you on that. However, I also want to ask you for any of your feedback, your questions or your comments.

Speaker 1:

You can go to podcastdanwus and you can. They've got a cool feature there. You can send me a voicemail, share your thoughts in a recorded version and maybe, if you would like, I can share your comments specifically on an upcoming episode. I'd love to be able to do that. You can also look at your show my show wherever you're listening to it, and there should be a link at the top of the episode notes that says shoot Dan a text. Send Dan a text. You can share your thoughts with me that way, and either way, I'd love to hear from you.

Speaker 1:

So, really quickly recap, we covered the five key areas which I believe are critical to your success as a coach, as a podcaster, content creator or entrepreneur. Those were your personal growth and communication styles. Creating a simple content strategy, gaining clarity on your podcast and your business goals. Publishing and improving incrementally, moving then to advanced tactics after building that solid foundation. Thank you so much again for joining me and I look forward to joining you again next week. Until then, remember to show up authentically, go out there and be bold, be your most beautiful, your best self, take care.