How To Move From A Passion Podcast To A Business with Sherry Harrod
Today I get to do something I love doing: live coaching!
Each month I invite a member from the Content Creator’s Studio to work 1:1 on some aspect of content, marketing, business, or mindset that’s driving them bonkers.
Today I’m talking with Sherry Harrod, a podcast host. Sherry has been struggling with her audience, and she wants to take her passion project & turn it into a business.
Before she can do that, she needs to find extreme clarity around WHO is in her audience - then she can build around that!
Today we unpack what Sherry needs to get the right words to attract her audience…
And also, in the process, we help her gain focus on her content pillars - which will make creating content even SIMPLER for her!
Then we get to the other side, I'm hoping Sherry has more clarity and focus and just feels really good about the direction that she's going in. Sherry, I just want to say welcome. I'm so glad that you took me up on the offer to come onto the podcast.
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Full Transcript
Sherry Harrod
Thank you, Jen. I'm so excited. It's such a privilege.
Jen Liddy
So glad you're here. Why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are and what brought you to podcasting?
Sherry Harrod
I'm a raised bed gardener. What brought me to podcasting is that I have a one year old grandson. He gardens with me, and I wanted to share some of our experiences and the benefits of him actually being in the garden with me to other parents of young children to start them out earlier than later.
Jen Liddy
How long have you been gardening in your own life?
Sherry Harrod
I've been gardening for more than ten years. I started out as a wildflower grower. I just planted wildflower seeds and let them grow. My goal was to have the most beautiful yard in my neighborhood where I grew up. Every year, I just maintain the yard, planted more and more. Even now, people say you have the most beautiful yard in the neighborhood. How does it make you a house?
Jen Liddy
This is the house you grew up in, not the house you live in, right?
Sherry Harrod
Yes.
Jen Liddy
That's so interesting. When you get that feedback from people, how does it make you feel that you've created this out of nothing, literally dirt and seeds out of nothing?
Sherry Harrod
It makes me feel beautiful and it makes me feel like people in the community know me for a specific reason. They also share what I do with other people in the community. I've had maybe like four or five yard tours just from people coming up and saying: “We heard about your yard. Do you mind giving us a tour?”, because they can't see the back from the street. I give them tours, and it's just amazing.
Jen Liddy
You give them tours of this house that nobody lives in, right?
Sherry Harrod
Nobody lives in. My sister and I own the house. It just happens to be vacant because my son and daughter in law used to live there. Even though it's vacant, I go over and make sure everything in the yard is beautiful
Jen Liddy
Tell me a little bit about what's the motivation for you. What I'm trying to extract here is what is it about gardening that fills you up so much that you'll go to a house that you don't live in anymore and not only just do the front yard that everybody can see, but clearly there's a garden in the backyard that people want to get their eyes on.
I'm just curious, what is the feeling that this generates in you to have had this hand, your hands in the dirt, and then the great ripple effects that you're creating with it?
Sherry Harrod
First of all, it's like a legacy. I will garden in that yard forever because I want to remember my mom and dad. I also want other people to see what they can do with actually initially, no one watching. It's just the beauty of it and also the experimentation. I just planted the seeds initially. I didn't have a design.
I did have people say, “You don't know what you're doing”, but they weren't doing it in a bad way.
They were just saying, “Come on now, come on, do this in this way.”
I did it my way.
Now people in my family come back and say, this is beautiful.
What it makes me feel like is that there's a place in this world that is, if I have to say so, myself and others say it's absolutely beautiful. It's also peaceful. It's quiet there. It gives other people something to strive for if they want to put in the work, because it's a lot of work, but it's good work. I spend a lot of time doing it, but it's a good time.
Jen Liddy
You are personally fulfilled by it and also it has ripple effects in the community, it has ripple effects in your family, it has ripple effects in other families.
I want to talk a little bit about what your motivation is. You're very intrinsically and extrinsically motivated to make this garden and to share your knowledge with other people. Is that why you started the podcast?
Sherry Harrod
I started the podcast because after the wildflower garden had begun to thrive, my grandson was born recently, and I wanted to do something in front of him. I started the raised bed garden at his house. The reason I started it was because his mom is very intentional on making sure that he eats healthy. I wanted to provide real healthy food.
Instead of just saying he eats fruits and vegetables, I wanted to be able to say he eats homegrown fruits and vegetables, and he loves them, but he doesn't just love them because it's home grown. He loves them because he's involved in it. He sees his grandmother doing it, and his mother is very, very excited about what she gets to give him to eat.
Jen Liddy
You're at this point with the podcast where you don't yet have a business from it really the podcast is like a passion project for you, right?
I'm going to ask you to kind of think about you're at a point where you are feeling like there's something more clarifying is needed.
What you told me is that you don't know exactly who your audience is. When we don't know who our audience is, it makes it really hard to create content that resonates with the right people or even plan content because we're not really sure who we're speaking to.
Is that where you are? Tell me a little bit about what brought up this for you to clarify the audience. Why now? What's changed for you?
Sherry Harrod
My family, my two sons, my daughters, my twin sister, they're also involved in what I do because it's so different from what they do. They're all in offices or working from home and they always say you can stay outside all day long. My son said they listened to all the podcasts and he said, “Mom, yes, it's beautiful, it's peaceful. But we want to know the process”.
I started the podcast initially just talking about my feelings about the garden and the benefits to others. I started to change somewhat too. This is what you can do also, but there are some steps to it and there's some skill to it that you can develop for yourself. It's fine for me to have it, but you can have it also and here's how.
Jen Liddy
When he brought that up to you and said, people want to learn your process, that kind of turns you into a teacher versus a hobbyist or like a passion instead of a passion focus. It's more like, if I have to talk about process, then I'm going to be teaching people.
Let's just extrapolate this a little bit more. When you think about using the podcast as a way to teach people. We're not even sure who those people are yet. Are they grandparents? Are they parents with little kids, or is it anybody who wants to learn gardening in general? When you think about that, where do you get tripped up?
Sherry Harrod
I have been a teacher. I homeschooled my two youngest children. I was a fourth grade Special Ed teacher. I know the process of teaching. But when it comes to what I love to do, I always start to think everybody knows who can't plant a seed and wait for it to grow.
To me, I just get stuck right there.
What do people need to learn from me that they can't do on their own?
Jen Liddy
This is so true for everybody though. I'm a content expert, and I sometimes think we're all native English speakers. We're just talking about the things that we're good at. What the hell will people think is so hard about this?
As you know, being part of the Content Creators, it's not easy. There's all these nuances.
I think that sometimes when we're mired down and being an expert in something, we forget that there are people who are still at step zero or step negative one. Maybe they haven't even come to understand that gardening is a way to achieve some peace and harmony and have ripple effects in their own life.
I think that you were at a very normal place where you're like, what could I possibly teach people that they either couldn't find on YouTube or couldn't read in a book? Is that what you're stuck with?
Sherry Harrod
Yes. There's so much to gardening that I'm thinking, where do I start? There's no real set starting point.
Jen Liddy
Right.
Sherry Harrod
I can't bring myself to just start in a place where I believe maybe the middle.
Jen Liddy
Something that might help you with that is and that's the teacher in you, because we as teachers are trained. You have a unit plan. You break it down into lesson plans, you break it down into days. It's all very linear. When people find us on their journeys, it's very zigzaggy. They might find us.
For example, somebody might not find you until episode 56. They're just going to meet you right where you are, and you're going to meet them right where they are on that day. We don't have to worry so much about presenting our content in any particular kind of order because first of all, the people who see it or when they consume it, we don't have control over that.
It's different from a classroom in that way. That might be something you could let go of a feeling stressed out that if I decide to teach people how to do this, where do I start?
Sherry Harrod
I agree with that.
Jen Liddy
Let's talk about, you're comfortable with the idea of being a teacher. What are your goals for the podcast?
Is it to remain a passion project, or do you want to turn it into a group coaching program or teaching program or a membership or something? Is there something else you want to do with it?
Sherry Harrod
I want to start a membership.
Jen Liddy
Great.
Sherry Harrod
I've actually started on that, but I'm at the beginning of that. I'm also starting to wonder if the podcast is the right platform for me, or should I add another platform where I can go ahead and give those little tips without a long, drawn out story on the podcast?
Jen Liddy
How long are your podcasts right now?
Sherry Harrod
They're generally between 10 to 14 minutes. I have to figure out how to focus on one.
I do talk about one topic. I think it's way too much because I want to focus on beginners.
Jen Liddy
I've heard you say so far is just to back up for a second. You can't have your membership, you can't have your business, until we decide who your audience is.
You're in the right space. You know that you need to figure out who this audience member is.
I've heard you say so far that this audience member is a beginner. They have a desire to garden. They're already interested in gardening. You're not at the point where you don't want to convince people that gardening is the way you want to meet people who are curious about gardening already.
Sherry Harrod
I want to meet people who have young children who have this idea in their mind of a life that they want to give their children outside of academics. They want to enrich their children's lives. I'm not necessarily sure they said “I want a garden in order to do that”. Maybe they have because some have and then some haven't. That's why I'm not sure which one I really want to target.
Jen Liddy
These people, in addition to their parents or grandparents, and they want to connect with their child outside of the classroom.
Sherry Harrod
Yes, and take them outside of the TV, the laptop, the phone.
Jen Liddy
These are parents who are really interested in getting their kids off of a screen and out into the world and hands in the dirt.
Sherry Harrod
And get rid of some of the stress.They know that but they haven't said and I know that a garden is the place necessarily.
Jen Liddy
They don't know that a garden is the place, necessarily.
Sherry Harrod
Okay.
Jen Liddy
You could be targeting parents and grandparents who are looking to connect with their child home, grow their food, reduce their stress.
These are the qualities of the person that you're looking for and the tool that you're using to help them destress and connect and get their kid out in nature. The tool that you're using is the garden.
Sherry Harrod
Yes.
Jen Liddy
I'm already starting to see that you've got a thread of an audience. These are parents or grandparents who are looking to connect outside in nature.
Sherry Harrod
Right.
Jen Liddy
They are also looking to de-stress.
Sherry Harrod
I don't think I have that audience.
Jen Liddy
Not yet. But that's what you're saying is that the audience that you're looking to cultivate.
Sherry Harrod
Yes.
Jen Liddy
They really don't know how to do that.
Sherry Harrod
They don't know how to.
Jen Liddy
When you think about these people and we're just kind of in the very beginning stages, like you're at an interesting point because you're at a point where you could really launch and develop this audience. There are some very clear things here. They have kids.
Sherry Harrod
Yes.
Jen Liddy
Are the kids toddlers or elementary school age or both?
Sherry Harrod
I'd say starting at the toddler range through I'm going to say elementary.
Jen Liddy
There are people who are in it with little kids.
Sherry Harrod
Yes.
Jen Liddy
What do they want the experience for their kids to be?
Sherry Harrod
The first experience they want is for their children to eat healthy.
The second experience they want is for their child to be outside more.
The third thing that they've noticed is that the child seems somewhat anxious, but they don't know why. They want to show the child calmness, maybe peace, maybe fun and play. Those three experiences.
Jen Liddy
Those are big, clear outcomes. I help parents, basically, you're saying I want to work with parents who – you keep coming back to the primary thing being eat healthy food.
Sherry Harrod
Right.
Jen Liddy
Homegrown healthy food. Then the other outcome that they're looking for is to get their kids off screens and into nature, like being outside.
Then the third thing, which is, I think more of a byproduct, but it is something parents are looking for, is this stress reduction or anxiety reduction in their kids.
Sherry Harrod
Right.
Jen Liddy
That seems pretty clear. How does it feel to you to have those three things named as results that people can get?
Sherry Harrod
Seems clear now.
Jen Liddy
Okay, good.
Sherry Harrod
Before we started to speak, it wasn't clear. I didn't have those three things that were outcomes.
Jen Liddy
If you were thinking now about these three outcomes, one of the things I know you were noodling around with is it parents? Is it grandparents? Is a general gardeners? Who are you feeling like it might be?
Now, if we take this even up like 10,000ft, who's the general person you think?
Sherry Harrod
I still am not sure that it's one person. I think it might be a person who cares for a young child, or a person who's a caretaker of a young child.
Jen Liddy
I love this because then we move away from the idea of demographics, like parents 30 to 45 who have a toddler through a school age child. That's a demographic. What you're doing is much more descriptive.
If you're a caretaker of a young child and you're looking for a way to get your child to eat healthier, reduce their anxiety and connect more with nature than my podcast is for you.
Sherry Harrod
Yes.
Jen Liddy
How does that feel as an audience?
Sherry Harrod
I think we might add and connect more with their caretaker or family because a lot of people feel like they may be disconnected or they may become disconnected. The garden is always a place to connect.
Jen Liddy
The other thing that we just kind of talked about in those four things that you're talking about, those are kind of content pillars, too.
I can talk about the garden as a place to connect.
I can talk about the garden as a place to home, grow healthy food.
As a place to reduce your anxiety and as a place to get away from screens and connect with nature.
Those could be four things that you just kind of circle back to all the time in podcasts.
I know you're on Instagram, too, and in your posts, you don't have to nail all four of those things in every podcast or every post. There are certainly things that you can kind of cycle through.
Sherry Harrod
Okay.
Jen Liddy
How does that feel?
Sherry Harrod
It feels good. I just was going around in circles about who is my audience, who's my audience. It was just too many options. Those options would actually be too narrow.
Jen Liddy
What was tripping you up before and where you're clear now?
Sherry Harrod
What was tripping me up before is that I've been all of those people, like mother, grandmother, gardener. I wanted to say, “This is you.”
I also knew that the child had to come in somewhere. That's two different things. So why don't I just say it's about the child? It's about who cares for a child!
Jen Liddy
Really it is about who cares for a child and wants these particular outcomes
Sherry Harrod
Yes.
Jen Liddy
That's the game changer for you, that you feel like that's what's making it clearer for you.
Sherry Harrod
I think what really is making it clear for me is to make a decision.
Jen Liddy
What decision have you come to or have you come to a decision?
Sherry Harrod
I've come to the decision.
As we have just said, it's a caretaker of a child who wants these outcomes and that I can do it in four pillars using those outcomes and stop trying to figure out how to organize the vast material that I have.
I was thinking about growing seeds. Talk about seedlings. That's really not the outcome. That's the tool.
Jen Liddy
Yeah. That's the process.
Sherry Harrod
Yes.
Jen Liddy
You can think about how to weave in your process with a lesson, for example. You wanted to talk about seedlings, and of course, you know, I'm not a gardener, so I'm just making this up a little bit.
You wanted to talk about indoor seeds that you plant, probably what February do you your indoor seeds get started in March?
You could talk about this thing that we're going to do in February. Here are some tools that you need to get started, and here's how this will help get your kid away from screens. You could kind of weave your process in, but always link it to one of your content pillars.
Sherry Harrod
Okay.
Jen Liddy
You could tell stories about your own grandson. Your own experiences or your personal experiences or even experiences of things that people tell you, like your friends who are dealing with the same thing. You can always tell the story that leads into your outcome, and it's never going to be the same.
In fact, you could talk about seedlings all month. You could talk about them in a way that they reduce anxiety. One week, maybe another week. You're talking about it as they helped me connect with my one year old grandson as I'm watching him go through this exploration process, or another week might be the satisfaction that he had, and I could see his anxiety reduced.
You could really talk about one of the parts of the process for quite a while. Since you've got four different content pillars to kind of lean on, how does that feel?
Sherry Harrod
That feels good.
I was wondering if framing it more, instead of me saying what I said that their children feel stressed to say, this is what you will see in your child.
Patience, calmness. More of those positive aspects from planting a seed, you have to wait.
This is what I did with my grandson. We wanted to plan something on Sunday, and I thought, we're going to plant a seed, but he's 15 months old. Then I said, he doesn't really care about planting a seed. What if I take a flower and a seed? You'll get some concept of this is what it will become.
Jen Liddy
You're modeling the intentionality behind what you want other parents and grandparents and caretakers to do when they're using gardening as a way to teach and connect with their children.
There's a lot of words that we're coming up with today, like intentionality and purpose and connection and reduction of stress and anxiety, calmness, patience.
There's a lot of themes that are coming up that you can just talk about in your podcast. One of the things you mentioned at the beginning of our chat was you weren't sure if podcasting was quite the way. After getting some clarity at this point, how are you feeling about moving forward with the podcast?
Sherry Harrod
I think it may be the way in addition to something else. I think I feel more comfortable giving little tips on a platform like Instagram. I think I'll try both since I'm pretty comfortable with actually producing the podcast now. I just want to change the content to be more cohesive.
Jen Liddy
Yeah.
Sherry Harrod
I'm talking about something different every single week, but having some so people can understand what I'm really trying to bring out.
Jen Liddy
One of the things, if you are looking to make it more cohesive, your expertise really lends itself to a seasonal kind of theme.
Sherry Harrod
Right.
Jen Liddy
If we were talking all in February, it might be all about seedlings and what you need to do to create seedlings and some of the outcomes you might be looking for with seedlings and talking about.
Now that we're in May and June, what is something that could be a little topic or a bigger topic that you could break down into some little pieces that might get you three, four or five weeks of content.
What's going on right now in the gardening world?
Sherry Harrod
The weather is changing. Most people have been holding back because of the weather.
We could talk about letting go of controlling.
We can also see what happens when we are not able to do that because a lot of people already planted their warm weather seeds and seedlings, and we had a frost and a cold period of about one or two days.
People were so stressed and overwhelmed that all their stuff is gone.
We have the information. We just want to do it our way.
So for children, I think it's a good thing to show them you can do it your way, because I don't tell my grandson you have to do it this way. The consequences, the outcome are going to be something that you may have been able to avoid if you have certain qualities or characteristics.
Jen Liddy
You as a teacher, this is your teacherness coming out. This is you being able to see a thing that's happening and make a lesson out of it.
The more I think that you lean into that because you have experience and training in that, and it might be dormant because I don't know the last time that you stepped foot in a classroom, but it's part of who you are. It's even coming out in this conversation.
Sherry Harrod
Okay.
Jen Liddy
I hope you're starting to see it.
Sherry Harrod
I'm starting to see it. I have a question.
Jen Liddy
Sure.
Sherry Harrod
Does anyone else really want to hear all that? That's always my question I ask myself
Jen Liddy
My dad always says this horrible thing, which is true. He says, “There's an ass for every seat.”
It is true that there is somebody there's a butt for every seat.
There is somebody to sit in every seat.
We might not know who your audience is or where they are, but the more clear you can get, like we talked about at the beginning of our conversation, this is who this is for.
I'm always speaking to this person, and I'm always naming this person, and I'm always talking about the outcomes.
Then you ask people to share it and you use the hashtags on Instagram and you name the descriptions in your podcast are things that those people are searching for are going to be really helpful.
There are people who you take for granted that your knowledge is like a given.
Honestly, there's people who haven't even thought about this connection of gardening being a tool to connect with our kids as young as age one. That is going to be a new idea for a lot of people. Don't take that for granted. I guess I would say.
Sherry Harrod
I'll do that. I won't take it for granted.
Jen Liddy
What do you think your big takeaways are so far?
Sherry Harrod
I think my biggest takeaway is to focus more on who I want to help rather than what I think I know about what I do.
Meaning if I want to help people, I have to see it from their perspective. I have to understand that just as much as I would have wanted to grow into this, there are other people who do also.
Like you always say, Jen, the messaging has to be such that those people are attracted to what I'm trying to say.
Jen Liddy
One of the things I would have and I don't know if you've done this yet inside the Studio is there's a training on how to get inside your audience's mind to figure out the exact words that they're using and the phrases.
Have you done that training yet?
Sherry Harrod
I don't think I've done that.
Jen Liddy
I would look under that. It's under the audience attraction module.
Sherry Harrod
Okay.
Jen Liddy
You're going to find there are step by step tools to get you to do. Basically, it's talking to people who you think are the right people. There's ten questions in there.
I tell you what they are and you tweak them to yourself. It's a way to talk with people who are in your audience or would be in your audience and find out, like, what words are they using? What problems do they have? What solutions are they looking for? How is this problem that they have affecting their whole life?
When you do that, they're basically like validation calls; it's a total game changer for your content. I would spend some time now that you know, and you can imagine who that person is. I bet you can think of five or six people just in your immediate circle who you could chat with about that, probably your daughter or your daughter in law being one of them. I would do that as the next action step.
Sherry Harrod
Okay. I'll do that.
Jen Liddy
Can I talk to you a little bit about how your experience inside the membership has been and how has it affected you?
Sherry Harrod
The first time I met you was when I heard your podcast where you spoke with someone else who's in the membership. I was just captivated by the way you carried her through her thinking. Then I joined the membership, and then I found that the way that you do that to me seems like magic.
Jen Liddy
Yeah.
Sherry Harrod
You can do it for everyone. It's not just oh, this is a subject that I'm familiar with, so I can do it for one person. Inside the membership, when I'm there and I hear you speak to people and just get them onto that messaging, it's captivating to me. I always said to myself, I wish Jen would do that for me during a period of time. You've helped me inside the membership. I was just saying I want more of this. thank you for today.
Jen Liddy
You're welcome. I'm really glad you took me up from the offer.
Sherry Harrod
I jumped at the offer. The other thing is I love going into the rooms with people in the membership because I find that they've always immediately changed my perspective.
When I say I have to just make a decision, it just comes down to making a decision. I have everything I need. I received that from a membership, and I just have to now decide it's not about not knowing what to do. It's just about putting it together and doing it. The other thing I like is the 55 minutes.
Jen Liddy
We get implementation hours. Those are great.
Sherry Harrod
It's great. To me, it seems like you're 55 minutes allows me to do way more than my own 55 minutes.
I love that I can just get it done because I know you're going to come back and we're going to be here saying it holds me accountable. I said to myself, “Sherry, did you really get it done? Are we just going through the motions of reading more and learning more?” Because I'm a learner, I need to get stuff done.
Jen Liddy
I love that. Thank you for that.
Sherry Harrod
I also love your sense of humor. Some people may not catch it, but I do. I love it.
Jen Liddy
The reason I wanted to have you on was because I love to ask the people who show up in the membership super regularly and I see they are putting it in. There's just one little switch that we need to flip, and that is you. This month, I was going to invite you because you show up to the calls, you are doing the things.
I know that this was just this murky place that I feel like once you have clarity, you're going to be able to take so much action on what's next. I'm so excited for you, Sherry!
I'm really glad that you got some clarity, that you feel good about this and that you have some action steps to take and move forward. Then once we get your audience ready to go and clear, then the membership will start to feel so much easier to you.
Sherry Harrod
Thank you, Jen.
Jen Liddy
My pleasure. I always want to encourage people who are struggling with their message or their content to actually get some support because it's so hard to do it on your own because you're just in the silo of your mind. In a half an hour, Sherry got this all clarified.
I just want to say bravo to you for showing up and being coached because it's kind of vulnerable to do this work publicly. I just want to give you some claps for that oh.
Sherry Harrod
I loved it. Thank you so much.
Jen Liddy
You're so welcome. Thank you for showing up. I hope that Sherry's work helps you get some clarity, too. And I will see you on next week's podcast. Bye, everyone.
Sherry Harrod
Bye, Jen. Thank you.
