When you’re really focused – clear on what you want to do – you have a chance to be great.  When you’re not quite sure, or just “winging it” this break, your odds diminish.

The best programmers make it where you know the objective, which should be first, to keep the listener with you.  (When someone tunes out, that’s a misfire.)  And then, hopefully, make the listener want to come back tomorrow for more.

Like a great song.  You want to hear it again.

You lose your ego, and you gain confidence, when you do the right things right.

So don’t even think about your voice, forget trying to “sell” things, and just share.  What you and I have in common today is the real subject matter.  The rest is maintenance and branding.  (But do those well, too.)

Topics are just springboards to reveal emotions.  (Please read that sentence again.)

These thoughts will help you:

1. If you’re just talking about a subject, but I’m not in that picture, it won’t work well.
2. If it is about the Subject and about me (the listener) but not about YOU, too, you’re still missing an ingredient.
3. And anything that doesn’t have a clear emotion at the center of it is just fodder.

This is why all great Content comes from what’s around you that you and your listener have in common or can identify with, and feel something about.  Otherwise, it’s just a “topic” – which I consider to be basically the same as drain cleaner.