How Mark Grew His Podcast 17% in Five Weeks

Stop Researching, Start Doing (This Time I Brought Receipts)Be honest: how many podcast growth videos have you watched this month, and how many of those ideas have you actually tried? I get it. I have courses I've bought and never opened. But a few weeks ago I challenged you to quit swinging for the grand slam and just make solid contact, and this time I'm back with proof. My buddy Mark actually did the work, and his downloads jumped 17% in five weeks. I also share the free, 42-second habit that's sending people to my website every week, the five-minute move that got me mentioned on another podcast without even asking, and some surprising data on what happened to shows that added video in Apple Podcasts. If you've been stuck in research mode, this is your nudge to press play and then go do something.Mark Did It: 17% Growth in Five WeeksOver the last several weeks, we've been running growth masterminds inside the School of Podcasting, talking strictly about strategies to grow your show. Plenty of people listened. Mark Lawley from Practical Prepping actually put them to work. Buzzsprout sends him a weekly download count, and over five weeks his numbers grew about 17%, with a lot of people going back into his back catalog. I'll take that all day.Find, Click, ActTo grow your reach, remember the order things happen in:They have to find you first. That means a good episode title that's a promise of what's inside, not clickbait, and show notes full of helpful words (preferably ones that came out of your mouth, not AI's). People find you through word of mouth, paid promotion, or organic search, and Google loves good words.Then they have to click. Once they land on your website, don't make them dig for episodes.Then they have to act. Tell a friend, buy your product, visit your sponsor, whatever your "why" is.My Social Media ExperimentYou can't manage what you don't track. I knew some people wouldn't want to pay for a tool (I LOVE Switchy and it's only $39 for a lifetime deal), so I used Short.io, which gives you 100 trackable links for free and takes about 42 seconds per link. I expected next to nothing from social. Instead, posting once to three times a week, I was getting around 40 clicks a week. That's roughly 160 a month and about 1,920 a year, from less than five minutes per post across Bluesky, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.Clicks aren't downloads, and nobody's told me yet that they found the show on social. But before I tried this, I had zero clicks to my website. If what you're doing now isn't growing your audience, try something. Stop waiting for the perfect opportunity while week after week goes by.Are You Afraid of Success?Sometimes it's not fear of failure holding you back. You already launched. It might be fear of success. Here's what I hear, and my answer to each:"If I get popular, people will criticize me." People in line behind you at Walmart are already judging you."Who am I to be listened to?" You've done hard things before. You have life experience worth sharing."What if I disappoint people?" You already do, on a regular basis. That's life."What if my hobby turns into a job?" It's your show. You decide."Then I'll have to monetize." No, you won't. If you don't want sponsors, don't have sponsors."What if I try everything and it still doesn't grow?" You've already started to grow. We just want to throw some gasoline on it.Other things get in the way too: perfectionism that keeps you researching forever, goals that are too vague or too big, strategies that don't fit your values (that's okay, you should have values), and plain old discomfort with being visible. I once wanted to refund a client because every option I offered got "I'm not doing that."The Five-Minute Strategy: Leave a VoicemailIf you listen to a show similar to yours, leave it a voicemail. Neal Veglio did this on the <a hre