So I’m sitting on my deck drinking some coffee and reading Tom Webster’s The Audience is Listening, a little guide to building a big podcast and chapter 2 which he calls episode 2 starts with I can tell you this from all my years speaking to audiences there’s no more powerful thing to know about your listeners than what they then why they do or do not listen to your show it’s the grail truth and it’s generally one simple thing about your show your challenge is to figure out what that thing is which is not a straightforward task which I think a lot of podcasters are kind of scared to delve into it’s a bit of like personal introspection because you might find out that people are listening to your show for reasons that aren’t why you’re doing the show and then you have to decide whether you want to keep doing the show for the audience’s reasons or stick to the reasons you’re doing your show and sometimes those are aligned and sometimes they’re not and that can be a bit of a struggle for podcasters