Use These 3 Communication Patterns to Help Listeners Trust You Faster

If your podcast needs to deliver measurable reach and revenue for your business or brand, then the fastest way to do that isn't publishing more episodes. It's learning how to communicate in a way that helps listeners trust you enough to act.

I'm handing you three Podcast Psychology frameworks you can use inside your next episode so your listeners don't just agree with you. They act because of you.

If you want to stop publishing episodes that lead nowhere and start creating content people act on, hit play and let's dive in.

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0:04 – Why Human Behavior Drives Podcast Performance

4:44 – Why Listeners Agree With You But Never Take the Next Step

9:19 – The Fastest Way to Get Listeners to Trust What You Say

13:40 – How to Change Someone's Mind Without Arguing With Them

15:49 – Make People Want What You Offer Without Pitching

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Other Episodes You’ll Love: 

How to Speak the Language of Your Ideal Listener

3 Ways to Hook Your Listener Before They Ever Hit Play

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Too many podcast hosts think that podcast performance comes down to publishing consistently or putting out more valuable content. But neither of those things explain why two podcasts who publish every week covering the exact same topic with experts for hosts can get completely different results. And after launching more than 70 top 100 podcasts and helping hundreds of serious podcasters optimize their show's performance, I found that podcast performance isn't driven by better tactics or more effective strategies. It's driven by one thing: better decisions. And better decisions start with understanding your listener psychology. So in this episode, we are going deeper than tactics or strategy to look at the psychology behind how humans process information. And by the time you finish listening, you're going to walk away with three communication patterns that you can use inside your episodes to make it easier than ever for listeners to say yes to taking whatever step it is that you want them to take next. Welcome to Insider Secrets to a Top 100 podcast. I'm your host, Courtney Elmer. Let's make your podcast binge-worthy. One of the things that I love most about podcasting is that at the end of the day, it's just humans interacting with humans. And when you understand how humans are wired to think, then you can communicate more effectively and more persuasively. And when you're able to communicate more effectively and more persuasively, you can increase the demand for whatever it is that you offer by positioning yourself as the expert who's going to be that natural fit to solve the problems that your ideal listener is looking to solve. Now, the language patterns that I'm going to teach you in this episode are going to work best when you first have a clear understanding of the specific problems that you solve for your listener. I've got a lot of episodes about how to find what those problems are if you're not totally clear on it. Because most hosts think that they know the problems that they solve, but the reality is they're not specific enough. They're not being specific enough. So I'm going to link to some episodes in the show notes on how to make something more specific and how to identify the exact problems that you are here to solve and that your podcast solves. And I recommend that if you haven't listened to those episodes and implemented what I taught you there already, then what I want you to do is listen to this episode, take in what I'm about to teach you, and then jump to those episodes and do the work to get clear on the specific problems you solve. Because then when you have that information, you'll be able to practice communicating with the language patterns that I'm about to teach you. So there's 16 patterns in all. I'm not going to teach you all of them. I don't want to overwhelm you, but I literally have a set of flashcards that I created when I was learning these. I keep these in my desk. In fact, I'm holding them right now and I use them all the time here on the podcast because they have been proven to be hyper-effective when it comes to communicating and shifting beliefs, when it comes to overcoming objections that your potential listener or your potential client may have, particularly when that person is sitting down with you on a sales call, or when they're watching a webinar training that you're doing, or when they're listening to an episode that you're putting out there on your podcast. And what these patterns will allow you to do is break through the barriers that our mind sometimes puts up to protect us, these unconscious, quote unquote limiting beliefs, so that you can communicate more effectively with the unconscious mind of your listener. Now, this is not woo-woo and freaky deaky stuff like, you know, I don't know, hypnosis or anything like that. These are just simple language patterns based in psychology that will help you get past any objections or any unconscious walls that your listener might be putting up that might be keeping them from trusting you fully. And what you'll see when you apply these is it's gonna allow you to increase conversions from your podcast and from anywhere else that you use these throughout your podcast and throughout your business. All right, so listen closely. The first one that we are gonna work through is called chunking up. Write this down if you're in a place where you can write this down. If not, come back to it. You can remember this one almost like an exaggeration. Gary V uses this a lot in his content. You've heard me use this one when I say something like, Look, if all it took to have a top 100 podcast was to have high quality audio and to release an episode every week, then everyone would have a top 100 podcast. And we both know that's not the case. So what we're doing here is that we first are gonna identify a belief that our listeners have. So in this example that I just gave you, the belief is that high quality audio and consistency are the keys to a successful podcast. But that's not actually true. That's a belief, and I'm here to discredit that belief. And I want to do it in a way that causes listeners to question their own, sometimes unconscious belief that they're unaware of and go, wait a minute, that actually makes a lot of sense. I do have high-quality audio. I do release episodes consistently, so it must be something else that I need to have a successful top 100 podcast. So again, I am very clear on what problems I'm here to help you solve, which helps me be able to do a better job of understanding where you're coming from, as well as the beliefs that you might be picking up on unconsciously simply because of who you're following out there in the podcasting industry and these industry norms that are perpetuating these beliefs, but that aren't necessarily true. I mean, how many times have you heard consistency is the key to podcasting success and gone, oh my gosh, if I hear that one more time, I'm gonna scream because I am the most consistent person I know. And still, my podcast is sitting here getting 50 downloads an episode, and I've been doing this for two years. You can tell I get fired up about this stuff. This stuff I love because this is all about understanding human behavior and how to communicate. Because at the end of the day, you're a human communicating with a human. That's all that podcasting is. So if you want to be persuasive, if you want to convert more listeners to leads, you have to know first the problems you solve. Second, the beliefs or industry norms that your listeners might be buying into. Because in order for a belief to be true, it's gotta be true 100% of the time. You and I both know there are a lot of podcasts out there with great audio who publish every week and have been doing so for months or years and still aren't in the top 100. So therefore, it can't be true that all it takes to be successful with a podcast is to have high quality audio and consistent content. So basically, what we're doing here is we're identifying this belief and then we're discrediting the belief by showing why it isn't true 100% of the time. So, what this allows you to do in the mind of your listener is shift perspective. This is some of the most powerful content that you can create, is the kind of content that shifts someone's perspective and gets them to see something differently than the way that they've been seeing it. And removing that belief is gonna help someone make progress because having that belief is what's been keeping them from making progress. So when you can do this effectively, guess what? Listeners are gonna lean into what you have to say because now that old belief is out of the way and they're they're wanting to know what you're gonna tell them because now you can show them a new way or a better way to go about getting the results they want, and they're gonna be primed to listen and pay attention. So again, this is chunking up, and I'm gonna give you a prompt. So basically, you are identifying the belief first, and this is true for all of these patterns. You gotta know what the problem is you're solving, and you gotta know what the belief is that your person is believing. But basically, here what we're doing is that we're saying if X belief were true, then it's gotta be true for every person. Or if that were true, then you would always be getting this result. We're gonna exaggerate it. It's gotta be true for everyone. Well, that result would have to happen 100% of the time if that were true. So we're gonna identify the belief, you're gonna plug it into the framework and make it specific based on the problems you solve. So the prompt, the framework is simply if X belief were true, then it would be true for every person. So here's how it sounds when you plug this in. If all it took to have a top 100 podcast was high quality audio and to release an episode every week without fail, well, then everyone who did that would have a top 100 podcast. And that isn't true. Okay, so that one's called chunking up. And this is one way to show why a belief that you know your listeners have isn't true 100% of the time. Now, another really effective language pattern to discredit beliefs or industry norms is called redefine. This one is a personal favorite of mine. Me and Redefine, we're like besties. I use this one all the time. And here, what we're doing is we're discrediting the belief by showing what else the belief could mean or what else could cause the belief. So, to do this, you need to know how beliefs are structured. Again, if you're in a place where you can write this down, I recommend take some notes, jot this down. If not, come back to it. Because beliefs are structured one of two ways. And so either A equals B, or if this, then that. We're gonna look at some examples here. An A equals B belief would be valuable content is the key to keeping listeners engaged. Where valuable content is A, equals it is B, the key to keeping listeners engaged. So this is a belief that I know many of our listeners have, that I know many podcast hosts struggle with because they think, well, valuable content, that that's what I need to keep listeners engaged. The problem with this belief is that it assumes that valuable content is the only thing that keeps listeners engaged. Now, we could discredit this belief with any one of these patterns. If we use chunk up, it would sound like this. If valuable content were the key to keeping listeners engaged, then everyone with valuable content would have dozens and dozens of rave reviews on their show and consumption rates over 90%. And that's just not the case. But in this instance, what I want to do with this belief is I want to show you something else that maybe you've never considered. So I'm gonna use a different pattern to do this. So in this case, redefine would be more effective because it is literally a pattern that's going to change the meaning of a belief. So the prompt is this: it's not a matter of X, it's a matter of Y. It sounds like this. It's not just about how valuable your content is inside your episodes that drives engagement. It's about how good you are as the host at selling the content inside your episodes to get a listener to click play in the first place. Now, if this is a belief that you had that okay, all it takes is valuable content, and I have valuable content and my listeners still aren't engaging, you're gonna go, wait a minute, I never thought about that. So, again, what these language patterns allow us to do is get the belief that's keeping someone from making progress out of the way so that we can show them a new perspective. And then what I would do is if that was the focus of the episode, I would spend the rest of that episode talking about what to do to get listeners to click play in the first place. But when we can remove the belief first to help them understand why this is important, they're really gonna lean in. They're really gonna see you as an expert. All right, are you having fun with this? I am having so much fun. I love this psychology stuff. I we could talk about this all day. But we're gonna do one more. I've got one more language pattern for you. And this one's called a counterexample. So you remember there's two types of beliefs: A equals B, and if this, then that. In the A equals B belief structure, we're saying that A is B. But what happens if we invert that? And we say, well, wouldn't this also have to mean that B is A? And if B is not A 100% of the time, then that belief can't be true. So basically, with this pattern, we're gonna dismantle the belief by saying, wait a minute, here you are thinking that A equals B. But has there ever been a time when B equals A? And we can invert the belief and give an example to discredit it. So the prompt for this is identifying the belief, stating the belief, and then saying, has there ever been a time when B equals A? Or has there ever been someone else who inverting the belief? B equals A. So I'm gonna give you a non-podcast example for this one. All right, I know I love the podcast examples and I use them all the time. But let's look at this one. You've heard this before, and maybe you have bought into this belief, knowingly or unknowingly. This idea that you have to work hard to be successful. What this belief is saying is that hard work equals success, A equals B. So with this one, we could crack open this belief by saying something like, Well, how many people are there in this world who are more successful than you but work less than you? So you see what we did? We inverted the belief. We put success before hard work. And we pointed to someone else, a counterexample, to say, well, wait a minute, aren't there also people in the world who are more successful than you, but who actually work less than you? Or with the other prompt, has there ever been a time when it might sound something like this. You know, a lot of people think that hard work is what it takes to be successful. Hard work equals success. But has there ever been a time when you didn't have to work hard and you were still successful? And then we can provide an example. Maybe you didn't study for a test and you still got an A. So what we're doing is we're showing a listener that this belief can't be true 100% of the time. Here's one that I tackle all the time with this particular language pattern. This idea that I need a big audience to have a successful podcast, where a big audience equals success. And I can point to someone else out there and I can go, well, let's see. Alex Hormozy started his podcast six years before he had his following online. And I know for a fact he started with zero downloads. So it's not about how big your audience is when you start. It's about how well you position your podcast to attract the right audience so that you can grow. And if you're paying really close attention right now, then you will notice I just stacked two patterns with this example. And when you get proficient with using these patterns, this is where it gets really fun because you can start stacking them. And you can just, oh, you can go on and on. Don't get me started. I will never wrap up this episode. We could literally be here all day talking about this. But if this is valuable for you and you were loving this and you were like, holy cow, I don't quite know if I fully grasp what you're saying, Courtney, but I want to, I want to understand this. This is pillar one of our whole pod launch methodology called binge-worthy messaging. Bingeworthy messaging and learning how to create that for your podcast and the formulas for doing that. Because if you want to be able to convert more leads, it starts with your effectiveness as a host, how effectively you communicate, how effectively you shift beliefs, how effectively you can create demand for what you offer without selling. And this is why a lot of what I teach is all designed to help you learn and apply strategies like this one to help you use psychology and the science of human behavior to make you a more effective host. And then when you couple that with the podcast messaging and the positioning and the growth strategies we give you, you will never need to worry about your podcast not growing again. So, again, with this, I encourage you to come back to this episode again and again. This is something that you're not gonna learn overnight. You know, using it one time is not gonna be effective. This is something that has to become second nature to what you do. But the beauty is the more you understand how to communicate in a way that breaks through these walls that your listener has, it's gonna get your listener to trust you. They're gonna believe in what you have to say. They're gonna believe that you have the solution to help them solve their problem, which is ultimately gonna increase conversions for your podcast over time. And more importantly, it's gonna make you stand out from other podcast hosts who might be talking about the exact same topic as you, but doing it in a way that just feels regurgitated, doing it in a way that feels like the same thing everybody else is saying. And hopefully, if you listen to this podcast, and if you have for any length of time, you can see that messaging at work here on this show. And you know that this show is totally different than a lot of the other podcasts about podcasting that are talking about things more at a surface level. So again, knowing which patterns are going to be most effective to help you dismantle the beliefs, and we've only covered three of 16 patterns today, starts with knowing what specific problems you solve. And then, second to that, what specific beliefs or industry norms might be influencing someone to think the way they're thinking or to cause these problems for them in the first place. And then as the expert, you can do the work to dismantle them and help keep your people moving forward and in motion and experiencing transformation, which is going to skyrocket their trust in you as the expert. And then stay right where you are, because while this might not come as a surprise to you, podcast discovery has changed so much over the last few years. People are still discovering shows through podcast apps, but there are certain platforms that play a much bigger role now than they ever did. And I've got a very special guest joining me in the next episode to explain what's changed and why, and what changes you should consider making to your show because of it so that you can get discovered by more new listeners and viewers. All that's coming up next to help you make your podcast bingeworthy.