You need to define what your success metrics are because, for example, if
you are podcasting to get new clients, then the number of downloads that your
show gets doesn't matter as much as a number of client inquiries that you get
from the show. So you need to define that success and you need to
define what those success metrics are for you so that you can track the metrics
that actually matter, rather than the ones that you think should matter, the
vanity metrics like download numbers. Welcome to Imperfect Action. I'm Steph Taylor.
For years, I read all the books, downloaded all the freebies, and
did all the courses, but it wasn't until I started taking imperfect action that
my business had its first million dollar year. Imperfect Action is about doing things
before you're ready, prioritizing consistent action over perfect action, and moving forward even
when you're not sure you're doing it right. On this show, you can
expect mindset advice, actionable marketing tips, and strategies to build a business that
brings you more profit, more freedom, and even more joy. Are you
on the list to get my daily busin Boss? Every day, I'll send
you a bite size prompt designed to help you grow your business in a more
intentional way, sign up at Steph taylor dot com, forward slash DBB,
or at the link in the show notes. Hey, welcome back to Imperfect
Action. This is episode six hundred and ninety seven. Today I'm talking to
any wannabe podcasters out there. If you are thinking of starting a podcast,
Today's episode is for you. I've been doing this whole podcasting thing for a
little while now, coming up on five and a half years, and I
also accidentally helped to launch hundreds of new shows when I created my A to
Z podcast launch plan. Now I've watched all of these other new podcasters come
out, I've been through all of the ups and the downs of podcasting,
and I've realized there are a couple of key things that you need to know
before you jump in and start your own podcast. I've come up with nine
key things. There might be a few more than that, but there's nine
that I think are really the most important key things to think about and to
know before you just buy a microphone and hit the record button. Okay.
Number one, the first thing you need to know before you start a podcast
is no, there aren't already too many podcasts out there. This is something
that people have been saying for the last like four years, five years,
and yet that number of podcasts has still kept on growing and there have still
been so many new shows that have been incredibly successful. Now, depending on
where you look and who you ask, there is anywhere between two million and
over four million podcasts out there now, not episodes shows, right, not
individual swords from each podcast, but actual podcasts between two million and over four
million. But here's the thing is, most of those shows have not released
more than ten episodes. Most of them fizzle out in the first couple of
episodes. I don't have the exact stats with me, but I was recently
at podcast Movement in Denver and Rob Walsh was talking about Rob Walsh works for
Libson, which is one of the big podcast hosts, and he was talking
about how in reality, you're not competing against four million other shows. You're
competing against like three hundred thousand because those are the only ones that are actually
active. Now, don't quote me on that number. I can't remember exactly
what number he said, but it was around that number. Now here's the
thing, though, You're not going to stand out just because you have a
podcast. It's not like, oh, I've started a podcast, and now
because I have a podcast, people should come and listen to it. Instead,
you need to still be asking should this be a podcast? Right?
Is this topic that I'm going to talk about? Should this be a podcast?
And I'll get to that in a second, But first number two,
the second thing you need to know before you start a podcast is you don't
need to have figured out every single topic that you are going to talk about
before you start your shot. It's really easy to think like, oh,
how am I gonna keep new ideas coming up? How am I gonna come
up with more ideas beyond the first ten that I have right now? And
here's the thing. Your show and your content and your topics are going to
evolve organically over time, just like how this show has. What I spoke
about in the first one hundred episodes is so completely different to what I talk
about right now at nearly seven hundred episodes. Okay, I used to talk
about Instagram and social media tips and all of those little things, and now
I talk on a much deeper level about business strategy mindset. Because I have
evolved, I've learned a lot. And as I learned new things and have
new ideas. I come up with new ideas for episodes. I have more
knowledge that I can teach, So you will not know all of the things
that you can possibly talk about in the future right now, and that's okay.
You will have new ideas that pop up. You don't need to have
every single one figured out. Okay. Number three, now, this one
relates to what I talked about earlier. Right should this be a podcast?
So number three, you do need to be able to articulate why someone should
listen to your show instead of somebody else's show. Yes, a podcast is
free to listen to, but you still have to sell somebody on it because
they have a finite amount of time that they can spend and they can choose
to listen to your show on their commute in the morning, or they can
choose to listen to somebody else's So why should they care about yours? And
a huge mistake that I see happening all the time is not being able to
articulate exactly who your show is for and why they should choose to tune into
yours. And another big mistake is somebody will go and start a podcast and
they'll be like, oh, I've been listening to this show for years,
this other show, and I really like the format, I really like the
guests, and they've grown to be really big. So if I emulate that
format and I bring on some similar guests, then my show will be successful
as well. But if you are emulating that similar show, then why should
somebody chose to tune into yours when they could tune into the one that they
are already familiar with, with the hosts that they already like. Okay,
so make sure you know exactly what is making yours different. Also, please
don't start a podcast just for the sake of starting a podcast. You need
to have a really clear idea of why you are doing it, who it's
for, and why they should listen. Otherwise you're not going to stick with
it. If you don't know why you're doing it, if you can't connect
back to that, why you're not going to stick with it Because guess what,
just like every other fun, shiny thing that you do, at some
stage, it's gonna get boring. It's going to become just another task on
your to do list, And if you can't remember why you're doing it in
the first place, then you're not going to keep with it. If you
can't articulate who it's for, then the right people aren't going to know if
it's for them, and they're not going to listen. And if you can't
articulate why they should listen, then they're going to choose to listen to somebody
else's show instead of yours with that limited amount of time that they have.
Okay, Number four, you probably won't see massive growth really quickly, and
that is very very normal. You need to be willing to commit to it
for three to six months without seeing much traction, just like anything new in
your business, it's going to be at least three months minimum investment before you
start to see some kind of traction from it. You also need to know
what success means to you. Okay, you need to define what your success
metrics are because, for example, if you are podcasting to get new clients,
then the number of downloads that your show gets doesn't matter as much as
a number of client inquiries that you get from the show, So to define
that success, and you need to define what those success metrics are for you
so that you can track the metrics that actually matter rather than the ones that
you think should matter. The vanity metrics like download numbers, and then you
can see, am I getting a true return on my investment, a true
return on my time that I'm putting into this from doing this podcast. Because
if you only have one hundred downloads but you're getting five client inquiries, then
who cares that your download numbers are really low because your client inquiries are really
high. And that's the number that really defines success to you. So you
need to know what that is. And I can't tell you what those success
metrics are going to be. It's going to be unique to you. It's
going to be unique to your business goals to why you are starting this podcast
in the first place. Number five, you need to make it as easy
as possible for yourself, otherwise it's going to be really hard to stay consistent.
Now I see a lot of people jumping in and from day one they're
like, cool, this is going to be a podcast. I also going
to do the video. It's going to go to YouTube. I'm going to
slice it up. It's going to become short form, which is going to
go to YouTube, shorts, TikTok and Instagram reels, and then it becomes
this huge mammoth process that's really difficult and really time consuming. So rather than
trying to do video from day one, if that's really difficult for you and
you don't have a team to support you like I do, then maybe just
keep it simple and start with audio only until you have that process figured out,
and then you can add a little bit more, and you can add
a little bit more, you can plug in all the different pieces rather than
trying to do everything from day one. It also keeping it easy also means
repurposing. So can you turn each podcast episode into a blog post? Or
can you take little snippets from your podcast episodes and turn those into Instagram captions.
You need to make it really easy to come up with content ideas,
So maybe you need to sit down once a month and brainstorm all of those
topics. Maybe you sit down once a month and you record all of those
episodes for the months. Whatever works for you to make it easy for you
to be consistent, That is going to be the right way to do it,
rather than looking at what everyone else is doing. And if somebody's telling
you to batch, but your brain just does not work in batches, like
I kind of struggle with batching. The only time I will do it is
if I'm going away, if I'm going to be offline for a while,
or if I'm traveling for a while, then I will batch record a bunch
of episodes before I go. But otherwise I actually find it really challenging to
sit down and record more than one episode in a day, or more than
two episodes in one go. So you need to find what works for you.
Otherwise, if you are consistently having to work against yourself, you're going
to find it really hard to be consistent with your content. Okay, number
six. The novelty will wear off, and that is not a sign that
you should stop doing it. If you're feeling a little bit bored, if
you're not enjoying it as much as you were at the start, that's not
a sign that you need to stop doing it. Just like anything, it
is going to be fun. It's going to be shiny at first, but
after a while it is going to to feel like just any other task on
your to do list. There are going to be times when you are like,
oh, I really just don't feel like doing this. You know,
I have that as well, Like nearly seven hundred episodes in, I have
times when I absolutely love it and I have so much to say, and
I have more than enough ideas for new episodes, and then I have times
when I'm in a bit of a creative rut and I just have no inspiration,
no ideas, and I just don't feel like hitting the record button.
It's okay, there's gonna be those ebbs, it's going to be those flows.
But when you commit to it, then you do it consistently. I'm
committed to showing up three times a week with these episodes, so I force
myself to do it even when I don't feel like it, and I know
that those times when I'm not feeling inspired, those are going to pass.
It's not a sign that I need to stop the podcast. It's not a
sign that I should skip some episodes. It's just a normal creative energy thing.
You can't always feel inspired, you can't always feel excited. It's gonna
you're gonna have those days where you feel great, and you're gonna have all
weeks or months we feel so inspired and so great and so creative, and
then you're going to have days, weeks or months where you don't want to
do it, and you've got to force yourself to do it. Okay,
Number seven, Your microphone doesn't matter as much as you think it does.
And that goes for any of your equipment, your mixer, any of the
bits and pieces. I have a really great microphone now, but for like
the first hundred or so episodes, I used a really cheap, terrible microphone.
And it was only when I was at Podfest conference in Orlando back in
twenty nineteen and I won a spot prize. I won my wonderful roadcast to
pro and rode pod mic simply by being it seated in the audience at the
right session and answering a question that somebody asked. I won this microphone that
is a pretty expensive microphone and mixer, But until then I was just using
a really cheap microphone. Because the content of your show matters so much more.
I think, yes, once you get to a certain point and you've
got a certain number of episodes there and you're really starting to grow, then
sure production quality becomes a bit more important. But I think at the start,
and I know so many podcasting experts are going to be like, no,
staff, you're wrong, But I think at the start, the content
matters so much more. And I proved that with my own show like the
sound quality was pretty average at the start, average a terrible. Actually it
wasn't great. But because the content I was consistently putting out was consistently good,
that is how the show started to grow. So don't go and buy
the best microphone until you know that you actually enjoy podcasting and that it's something
you are going to stick with in the long term. Okay, try just
getting started. Try putting content out there, try and figure out what works,
what you like, what you don't like, and then once you know
this is something you want to do longer term, then go and invest in
something a little bit more expensive. Number eight, don't get too caught up
in the things that can be changed, things like your cover art, your
show name, your description, all of those things they can be changed pretty
easily. Right at the end of twenty twenty two, we've rebranded this show.
It used to be called Social Lette. If you scroll back far enough,
you'll notice that all of the episodes when I'm introducing them, I'm welcoming
you back to Social Lette podcast. But after four years of podcasting, I
decided, actually, you know what, the name doesn't suit the content of
this show anymore. I want a new name. I want a new cover
art, so we rebranded it and it was actually relatively pretty easy. So
don't get too hung up on the things that can be changed, Like as
James Clear, I think it's James Clear who said this. If a decision
can be reversed, make it quickly. If a decision can't be reversed,
make it slowly. Most of the decisions that you're going to be making when
it comes to starting a podcast can be reversed really easily. I actually can't
think of any that can't be first, So don't get too caught up in
all of those things. Don't let them stop you from getting your show out
there, because the thing that's gonna help you to succeed with it faster is
getting content out there, seeing what lands, seeing what sticks, seeing what
you enjoy, and then tweaking based on your feedback that you get from that.
Okay, and then number nine lucky last, It's probably going to feel
a little uncomfortable, and that is really normal. When I first started out,
I wasn't a confident speaker. I hated my voice. I didn't think
there was any way I could be a successful podcaster. But I just did
it and Podcasting taught me to like my voice. It taught me to become
more confident speaking. It has taken seven hundred episodes of practice to get to
this particular episode. And I know, when you're starting out with something,
it's really easy, really tempting to compare your episode one to somebody else's episode
one hundred or five hundred or one, and forgetting that you are a beginner
and they have been doing this for a long time, and it takes practice.
It takes those repetitions to build that mastery. And the sooner that you
start, the sooner you can get practicing, the sooner you can start to
put those reps in, and it's going to have that great ripple effect onto
your confidence, onto your speaking, onto your business. It's going to make
you feel a lot more comfortable showing up because now you feel a little bit
more comfortable expressing yourself and articulating yourself. So there you have it. Nine
things that you need to know before you start a podcast. Number one,
there aren't already too many shows out there. Number two, you don't have
to have figured out every single topic that you are going to talk about before
you start your show. Number Three, you do need to be able to
articulate why someone should listen to your show instead of somebody else's. Number four,
you probably won't see massive growth really quickly, and that is normal.
Number five. You need to make it as easy as possible for yourself,
otherwise it's going to be really hard to stay consistent. Number six. The
novelty will wear off, and that is not a sign that you should stop
doing it. Number seven, your microphone doesn't matter as much as you think
it does. Number eight, don't get too caught up in things like the
cover art, the name, or the description, any of those things that
can be changed really easily. And then number nine, it's going to feel
uncomfortable, and that is normal. Now, if you have learned anything from
this show so far, whether it's this episode or previous episode, I really
would appreciate it if you could take thirty seconds to leave a quick rating and
a review. I've read all of them. They get delivered to my inbox
every Tuesday morning, and I read them and they bring a smile to my
face. So if you haven't left one yet, please do. It reminds
me that there are actual humans listening to the show, and it's not just
me talking into a microphone. Believe me, when you start your podcast you'll
understand just how important ratings and reviews are, so please do take the time
to do that. That is it for today's episode. Thank you so much
for listening. Catch you next time.