Ear Brain Heart: Recent Episodes
Mark Steadman of Podcode
We buy from, work with, and take advice from people we trust. A podcast delivers your message to your listener’s ears, at a time and in an environment that suits them. Your knowledge and expertise helps that message find a space in your listener’s brain. By showing up with consistency and speaking authentically, your passion and their trust in you combine to drive that message home to your listener’s heart. That’s where trust lives.
Ear Brain Heart is a weekly discussion with creative, purpose-led entrepreneurs and change-makers using their powers of persuasion for good. Through weekly discussions, host Mark Steadman explores how we can combine creativity and compassion in our marketing.
We have a limited amount of self-discipline each day. So how you use what you have is crucial. Robbie Swale started writing a blog post every week on the train in-between stops.
What started as 12 minutes every week ended up as an 80,000-word book. Robbie is now three books into a four book series about how to start a project, keep it going, and create the conditions for great work.
Key takeaways
- Confidence comes from the actions you take, not the other way around.
- Similarly, the mindset to take action rarely just appears. We need to take small steps to build up that mindset.
- If you want to define yourself as “the type of person who does X”, you can’t ever be that person without taking the first step.
- Life will always get in the way. How can you leverage your practice so that it’s resilient in those times?
- Build the rep of recommitting when you lose your streak.
- Raise the activation energy for the tasks you don’t want to do, and lower the activation energy for the tasks you do.
Links
- Connect with Robbie on LinkedIn
- Check out Robbie’s books
- The 12-Minute Method Podcast
- The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles, by Steven Pressfield
- Big Magic: How to Live a Creative Life, and Let Go of Your Fear, by Elizabeth Gilbert
- You need 3 types of confidence – Rich Litvin
- Tim Ferris’s podcast gear
- Contours of Courageous Parenting: Tilting Towards Better Decisions, by Karena de Souza
- Lead. Learn. Change. by David Reynolds
- W Somerset Maugham
What separates podcasts that get 20,000 downloads per episode from the ones that get 20 downloads per episode? Well, it can’t be the goal, because if it was, we’d all be in Apple’s top 100. What if, instead, it was just about putting one episode in front of the other?
Progress isn’t linear
Change can take years before it happens all at once. We achieve change by setting an intention, then building a system around it.
We can’t fatten a chicken by constantly weighing it. So, try not to focus on goals and outcomes, and instead focus on outputs.
Identity beats consistency
Think about replacing “I need to put out a episode every week” with “I have a weekly podcast”. Once you begin to identify your podcast as having a weekly (or fortnightly) cadence, missing an episode becomes harder. This isn’t about piling pressure on ourselves, but changing our mindset from one where we’re trying to do something, to one where we already identify as doing that thing.
Goals don’t create success
The successful podcaster with 20k downloads per episode has the same goal as the podcaster who’s scrabbling for every download. If that’s true, the goal cannot be what denotes success. Instead it’s the systems we put in place – it’s doing the work: putting out each episode and asking ourselves “how much have we served our audience with this one?” And then “Can we do that 1% better next time?”
Links
- Atomic Habits, by James Clear
- PACTs vs SMART goals
- The Practice, by Seth Godein
- Ear Brain Heart
Running a small business, especially solo, can be isolating, stressful, and frankly triggering. Nick Pomeroy knows that all too well, which is why he’s vocal in encouraging more of us to talk about our mental health.
Nick took the solo path after heading up a design team. And although he felt supported and cared-for by his previous employer, he’d only begin to realise how stressed he’d become after working for himself.
Things to consider
- Letting someone know you’re struggling doesn’t mean you’re being a burden.
- Someone close to you may have seen the signs of stress or burnout before you’d acknowledged them.
- For Nick, if he’s working late, something’s gone wrong in planning.
- When you consider that being a solopreneur means being good at your job and also at running a small business, feeling like an imposter might not seem quite so outlandish.
- Find your own contentment point for work and life.
- We have to move past “hustle” culture and the idea that men need to “man up”.
Links
- Connect with Nick on LinkedIn
- Background – Nick’s design consultancy
- Caring for your mental health while running a business – Nick’s article for Mind Leeds
- A retrospective on depression – Nick’s company blog post
- A write-up on Muse’s Unsustainable
- Third law of thermodynamics
- Sisyphus
- Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
- Why Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is wrong
Humans have a hard time understanding that others don’t see the world the way we do. This naive realism causes us to make assumptions that create distance between us and the people we want to serve.
Tamsen Webster is a TEDx speaker, communications expert, and author of the book Find Your Red Thread, which helps people communicate big ideas through cognitive empathy.
Things to consider
- Communication has to be sent and received in order for it to be successful. We tend to spend too much time sending messages, and not focusing on how they’re received.
- Rather than fit our worldview into someone else’s, we need to understand how their worldview informs their decisions.
- As great as our ideas might be, our audiences don’t know that yet. And simply repeating how great it is over and over again isn’t going to convince them.
- Write more pitches in a TL;DR fashion. Make them skimmable.
- Our ideas are almost never for “everyone”, only for those that share the same worldview as us.
- Find the world beliefs that support your success at an endeavour, rather than focusing on the limiting beliefs that hold you back.
Questions to ask to help establish cognitive empathy
- How is our audience thinking about the problem we’re posing?
- How do they see the world?
- What are the beliefs that are leading them to the behaviour, feeling, or action that’s relevant to our message?
Links
- Connect with Tamsen on LinkedIn
- Find Your Red Thread – Tamsen’s book
- How to Bridge a Mental Gap, Tamsen’s talk from TEDx Wilmington Women
If what you’re making doesn’t light you up, it’s unlikely to do the same for others. That’s among the tenets that fuel Paul Macauley’s creativity along with his messaging.
Paul is a writer, performer, and creator. He also coaches people who need help in their own creative practices. In his discussion with Mark, he dives into the process behind his own creative output, which puts authenticity at the centre.
Links
- Paul’s website
- Connect with Paul on LinkedIn
- Explaining the Pandemic to My Past Self, Julie Nolke
- Paul’s video on imposter syndrome
- Paul’s video on productivity (the one that make Mark lol)
Check out my new newsletter, a love letter to your own creativity. Sign up at Steadman.land.
Stephen Dargan can remember being seven, riding his bike in the sun as the seasons changed from spring into summer, and knowing that he was happy. Since then, he’s tried to bottle that feeling and kept being nourished by it.
Stephen works with teams and organisations to help them build happier working environments. He’s the host of the Wow @ Work podcast, that explores the way the world of work is transforming. Stephen has a wealth of knowledge about how humans can be happier, merging joy and purpose to empower us to do our best work and live a fulfilling life.
Links
- Follow Stephen on LinkedIn (but only if you really want to)
- Flow
- Four Thousand Weeks, by Oliver Burkeman
- Humankind : A Hopeful History, by Rutger Bregman
- Psychological safety in teams, from We Not Me
- Implicit Association Test, Harvard University
- World Happiness Report
- 36 Questions – How to Fall in Love
- Learning Happiness with Dr Tal Ben-Shahar
- The 4 day week, with Elena Kerrigan
- Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing, by Bronnie Ware
- The 4 Day Week, by Andrew Barnes
- Default mode network
- Gapminder
- The Happiness Advantage, by Sean Achor
- WakeUp.ie
Check out my new newsletter, a love letter to your own creativity. Sign up at Steadman.land.
Brand isn’t about picking a font and a colour. It’s about articulating how your work meets the needs of the people it serves.
Anne Miltenburg pursued her life’s purpose by taking the skills she’d acquired in years working for design agencies, and desalinating that knowledge to people in the developing world. She founded Brand the Change to provide workshops, tools, and training materials to put world-class brand knowledge in the hands of impact entrepreneurs.
Some things to consider
- Knowledge – like a tool – is neutral. It’s how we choose to use it that matters.
- When entering an unfamiliar space, strike partnerships with people who know the space.
- The most interesting people in the world have trouble describing what they do, or why it matters.
- “If the whole world is your ocean, it’s really hard to go fishing, because the fish could be anywhere.”
- Take an interest in people and you’re more likely to have that interest returned.
- Originality is crucial when building a brand.
- You don’t own your social media followings.
Links
- Follow Anne on LinkedIn
- Brand the Change
- Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, by Nir Eyal
- Shujazz
- Find Your Red Thread, by Tamsen Webster
- We are Podcasters – Podiant’s video manifesto
Check out my new newsletter, a love letter to your own creativity. Sign up at Steadman.land.
The idea that you can be human at work is still not fully realised, and not reflected in the way we communicate online. Matthew Bellringer is someone who helps those who don’t feel like they fall into the mainstream – especially at a neurodiversity level – to do their best work.
Matthew understands the struggles that many people who experience the world differently go through. Whether it be masking, code-switching, or being asked to be a domain expert on your brain chemistry, Matthew helps turn many of the gifts labeled as deficiencies into strengths.
This episode talks about neurodiversity, disability, and access. Also there is some category 1 swearing. Also Mark says something rude about willies.
Some things to consider
- It’s great to be curious about people who are different. But we can’t expect everyone to be our tour guide at all times.
- We should normalise the idea of setting out what we need in order to do our best work.
- It’s OK not to make everything shareable and accessible if that is beyond your reach right now. If you know it’s not accessible and you don’t care, that’s a different story.
- Risk is an inherent part of being human, and there’s dignity in risk.
Links
- The Startup of You, by Reid Hoffman
- The Friends Phoebe and Joey “repeat after me” meme template
- Connect with Matthew on LinkedIn
- Matthew’s website
- Delightful Dissent
Check out my new newsletter, a love letter to your own creativity. Sign up at Steadman.land.
If you’re trying to sell a product that warrants consideration, jumping to the sale too quickly is more likely to result in failure than success. Frances Khalastchi, co-founder of Better Bolder Braver, explains in this episode how we can use the journey of consciousness to guide prospective clients and customers to a purchasing decision, using empathy.
Along with Simon Batchelar, Frances works with coaches to help them reframe their attitudes to marketing, and position themselves as the guide in customers’ stories, not the hero.
Some things to consider
- You don’t have to be in service of everyone all the time, at the expense of your own wellbeing.
- Business can benefit from more ethical and empathy-driven approaches to marketing, rather than relying on charm pricing or artificial deadlines.
- Prospective customers and clients go on a journey from problem-unaware to most-aware, and you can create empathetic content that meets them at different parts of that journey.
Links
- Find Frances on LinkedIn
- Better Bolder Braver
Check out my new newsletter, a love letter to your own creativity. Sign up at Steadman.land.
Marketing can feel opaque and magical – it either works or it doesn’t, and when it doesn’t work, it can be hard to learn from it. But as Mark’s first guest reveals, marketing is much more about doing the work and showing up consistently. But that doesn’t mean you don’t get to enjoy it.
Simon Batchelar is one half of Better Bolder Braver, a community and learning space for coaches who want to feel better about marketing. Simon and Frances of Better Bolder Braver have helped Mark get to grips with his own marketing, and enjoy the process of content creation.
Some things to consider
- There are a million videos and blog posts about your topic, but none of them have your viewpoint and your personality. That matters.
- You need to create the Netflix of You – make your stuff bingeworthy.
- Create content for people to watch, read, listen, and do.
Links
- Connect with Simon on LinkedIn
- Better Bolder Braver
- Nick Himowicz (Nick Himo)
- The Happy Startup School
- @PodcodeTV on TikTok
- Tom Scott doesn’t like coffee
- Simon and Frances’ Marketing Masterclass Crowdcasts
Check out my new newsletter, a love letter to your own creativity. Sign up at Steadman.land.
You're listening to a trailer for Ear Brain Heart, the podcast that explores the way we show up for audiences, build trust and effect change.
My name's Mark Steadman. And I'd run a school for creative, purposeful people who want to use their voice to create impact, but who were also trying to keep on top of life. On this podcast, I'll be speaking with entrepreneurs, thinkers, and change makers who are working towards a better future.
The show will launch on May 1st, 2022.