Why does one small business’s feed earn trust while another, posting just as often, earns a scroll? Dr. John A. King has a short answer. On the Unscripted Small Business Podcast, the author, speaker and media company owner put it this way: “Social media is one inch thick and five miles wide. We all know that. And we’re in that game.”
John runs his own speaking and coaching business and spends a lot of time on other people’s podcasts, so he lives in that inch-thick channel too. If you’re weighing whether to do the same, here are the benefits of podcasting for small business owners, in the words of other guests on the show. Here’s what his conversation with Jeremy Rivera means for how you market a small business.
Outside-in content all sounds the same
John’s point about social media wasn’t that it’s useless. It’s that the people who stand out are the ones who are authentic in their feeds, “not, not the, the influences who are catering to a particular audience.” He described two ways to live, and they map neatly onto two ways to market:
“And when you live from the outside in, you’re told what to do, what to dress, where to go, what to believe, how to act.”
Outside-in marketing is the post you write because a competitor wrote it, the trend you jump on because everyone else did, the voice you borrow from whoever is getting engagement this month. Well, the truth is that it produces content that could belong to anyone. And content that could belong to anyone doesn’t give a customer, or a search engine, any reason to pick you.
Inside-out marketing starts with what you actually believe and actually do. It’s harder, because you have to make the decisions yourself. It’s also the only kind nobody else can copy.
Purpose is the strategy, motivation is the schedule
Most small business marketing dies in month three. The plan was fine; the motivation ran out. John drew the line clearly:
“Motivation fades under any conflict or load. Purpose literally sets the thermostat for your behavior.”
If your content calendar runs on motivation, it’ll stop the first busy season. If it runs on a reason you can say out loud, like “we explain this so customers stop getting ripped off” or “we show the work so people know what good looks like,” you’ll keep publishing when it’s inconvenient. That consistency is what actually compounds, in search and in a feed.
Write about the thing that makes time disappear
John helps people find their purpose with one question: “what did you do as a child when time disappeared?” His answer was writing, and he turned it into a working description of himself: “I’m a writer and I enjoy taking complex things and making them accessible.”
You can use that sentence as a content brief. What does your business know that’s complicated for your customers? Pricing, permits, timelines, why one option costs twice as much as another? Making that accessible is the most useful thing you can publish, and you’ll be better at it if it’s the part of the work you’d do for free.
Follow-through is marketing too
Jeremy brought up a study from his friend Matt Brooks of SEO Tech. As Jeremy remembered it, something like 90% of the forms submitted on service-business sites never got answered at all. You can spend a year earning those leads and lose them in a week of not calling back.
John’s framing fits here as well. A business running on survival chases leads; a business running on purpose calls them back, sends the quote on time and does the job well. If you run an agency, the same follow-through applies to your own clients, and clients rarely leave over price alone.
Do three small things every day
John’s daily rule is three things, five minutes each. “Anybody can do anything for five minutes a day.” His are breath work, mindfulness and an integrity check, but the format works for marketing too. Five minutes answering a review. Five minutes writing down a question a customer asked. Five minutes checking that the leads from yesterday got a reply.
So which of your posts this month came from the inside? Which ones would you have written if no competitor existed? And who called back the last form that came in?
Listen to the full conversation, including how John rebuilt his businesses after losing almost everything at 45, in the Unscripted Small Business recap.
This conversation is about running a small business. It is not medical or mental health advice.