Welcome to Digital Podcaster. My name is Dylan Schmidt and you are listening to a series that I'm doing for the month of May called an episode a day a podcast episode a day, for the month of May to keep the imposter syndrome at bay. Real quick, I gotta say, I don't really suffer at the moment, maybe this will change in the future, I'm not really suffering from impostor syndrome, that's not the point of doing this 30 Day Challenge. It is simply just because I love challenges. I just love them, because I think they helped me as a creator grow. As a marketer, as a business person, as someone who just wants to create content online, it helps me grow when I just publish a ton and focus on serving high quality content. And it's up to you if the quality is high quality, if the quality is if the content is high quality. So I can't necessarily be the judge of that. But I can make my intentions do serve and give value. And yeah, so I guess I have impostor syndrome kind of in that title. But it's, it's more so just to kind of mention that, it helps me it has helped me in the past, to bust through imposter syndrome when I publish, like a high quantity of content as well. So today, I want to talk about something that has been on my mind for a while, and I'm happy to finally get this out in an episode on a recording. And what are some things that you may not know about self promotion and marketing in 2022? And if that title attracted you, or maybe repelled you, that's good. And I will tell you why. But I find it really interesting, how many people struggle with promoting themselves, there's even just the simple act of not promoting themselves just the simple publishing of a piece of content, people feel like they're promoting themselves. It's like, oh, my gosh, no, don't look at me, I'm, you know, I want to publish this content. And I don't want anyone to look. And I feel really uncomfortable. This is like, this might not be you. But this is what most people is if they publish something, it's like eyes on me, this feels uncomfortable. And I get that 100% up in there, it's like you don't want to take up space for one. And you feel like, you know, you might be taking up too much room or taking away from the conversation, all of which, fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it or not true, you're not taking up space by posting or creating content or anything like that, despite what you're thinking, it's all in your head, I will save that. And if your intentions are good. The fact is that you know, publishing regularly is you're actually adding to the conversation. And if you're actually promoting of something of value, if you're spreading some type of good intentions, I would say you are putting something good into the world, right? Because I'm not sure the current number on how much posts are going up on social media or podcasts every single day. I don't have those numbers in front of me, but I know that it's really high. And if you have your good intentions and you publishing then you're adding to the conversation in a beneficial way. So there's my argument for you producing more there. But when it comes to self promotion, I just find it funny how I listened to about I would say, I don't know, 50% or more of the music I listened to is hip hop or rap. And I think one of the things that a lot of rappers do really well is they talk so highly of themselves, because maybe they pulled themselves out of a bad environment or like harsh living growing up. So they always talk about the struggle and come up, and how great they're doing now and you don't got it. Like they got it. And I just find that great and so many levels. For one. It's inspiring for overcoming some adversity, some trauma, something that happened early on in their lives, and that they're talking about it in a way that people will say is like boasting, but rappers will be like you didn't see where I came from. You don't know what the struggle was like, in the very fact that I'm able to make this recording is proof that I did it. So they're like congratulatory for themselves. And you know, that makes some people uncomfortable. And that makes other people inspired, makes me inspired most of the time. And I just like that and they have no shortage. If you've listened to any music like that there is no shortage of talking about how great they are. Like if you listen to any Jay Z's music, he talks about how he's the greatest. Basically, it's all about like, you know, I mean, I'm using it in kind of marketing talk, but like it's almost like all self promotion and marketing to relate it to the title. You know, it's all about him where it came from how great he is. And then we have on the other side, people that may III have a great message it could I've worked with doctors, I've worked with people that have gone to that have worked, you know, like, some of the top educators, practitioners, there's people in the world. And even they have the struggle of like, I don't want to promote myself in this weird way online. And it's, I, if you're following I hope you're following. It's so interesting that even people that have proven track records of helping someone will find it uncomfortable to promote themselves online, because they don't want to be perceived as a certain way. But the truth is promotion, marketing, you know, self promoting something like that is how you're discovered. It's how you grow an audience. There's no shortcut to that stuff, people will be like, Can you do it for me? For one, because they know that someone else could talk about themselves in a better way than they could? Maybe. But that's, that's not exactly true. And then also, they're just like, what is the way I can promote myself without promoting myself? That's kind of what it comes down to. And what I think happens is, when someone publishes something, and we're talking content wise, is there's like an uncomfortable aspect of looking at the past, looking at what they published, and how it affects like what's going on today. Like maybe they might think, well, something has changed. I don't want to say anything that's going to change in the future. I don't want to put something on record. And then one day that those things aren't the same. And so yeah, if you're a doctor or something like that, you of course, want to be careful of what you say on recordings that, you know, you don't want to be talking so specific, or diagnosis or something like that. You don't want to step out of your scope of practice, or you want to talk about stuff you don't know, or something that yeah, I could potentially change or make that apparent. Like, if you identify with this, you need to talk to a professional, something like that, obviously. But for the most part, it's just this uncomfortable, uncomfortableness, looking at the past, because we'll post we'll publish, we'll do all this stuff, we'll promote ourselves, and then we'll go, how did that land? Did it land in the way I wanted it to land? Did anyone like it? If it wasn't different, if someone didn't like it, you're like, we almost become looking for that self fulfilling prophecy of someone didn't like it, I just know someone didn't like it. So maybe I should take this down or something like that. And I just want you to know it is a muscle that gets stronger, the more you do it. And just because you get better at it doesn't mean that you're a narcissist, or you're full of yourself, or you're better than everyone. Maybe you actually are better than everyone. But it doesn't mean that you're doing something wrong, even though it's uncomfortable, uncomfortable. And that's, I guess what it boils down to is when you're promoting yourself, you have to be on you're going to be uncomfortable at first, there's no way around that. And I just want you to know uncomfortableness isn't a sign that you shouldn't do it. It doesn't mean just because you feel uncomfortable. We all feel uncomfortable at first, if you didn't feel uncomfortable, when it comes to promoting yourself, or marketing, or making a podcast, or publishing on social media, if you didn't feel uncomfortable at first, I would be I guess I'd say I would feel a little concerned. Because I would be like, Well, why but I I rarely meet somebody and I'm just saying rarely because I know I have but if they're not coming to mind, like no faces are popping up in my head. I rarely meet somebody that doesn't feel uncomfortable. And I rarely meet someone that is talking so far out of what they know about that they're at risk for hurting somebody or something could go terribly wrong. Like I would tell them if that was the case. And I don't see that. And all that to say fight through the uncomfortableness fight through that feeling of I shouldn't be doing this, there are certain things, you should probably not be doing skydiving without a parachute. You know, driving without a seat belt, at least in this day and age. Those things you should be doing. When it comes to knowing you want to promote yourself and you see other people doing anything. Like if I could just do this app, even you know there's there's a fight or flight that happens or freeze that happens in the body, you know, with natural reaction to stuff. And I just want you to know like, if you take nothing else from this episode, you have not that you need it. I'm just trying to hand you an invitation. And just in your back pocket. Hold on to this this note, you have permission to promote the heck out of yourself and market yourself and know that you are doing the right thing. And it is how you are going to grow your audience. It's how you're going to become more discovered amongst new people. And there's no shortcut to it, and you're not doing anything wrong. Alright, I've given enough disclaimers in this episode to tell you what is right and wrong. And at this point, I just want you to know You're not doing anything wrong. And I want you to promote yourself, and I want you to promote your project that you're working on, I want you to promote your content, I want you to promote your business, I want you to promote something today, whatever it is promote one thing today, don't promote everything, because that gets confusing. I mean, whatever, do whatever you want. But start with just one thing. And you don't have to promote something every day. And, you know, I say promote, but really, it's it's about publishing, because people look at even like publishing a piece of content, like promotion, oh, you're talking about yourself again. And I get it, like, Let's just cut to the chase, I get it that I am a white male in his who's 32 years old of this recording, turn 33 in a month, who's 32 and on a podcast, and there is a you know, for stereotyping. There's a lot of I see a lot on Twitter, especially about white men in the 30s starting a podcast and be like, okay, whatever I've been audio production marketing for years, whatever. But I get I get a little bit of irony on that and permission all that I have to become I have to just strike as awareness of that because I get it. The fact is even seems silly to me, that a white male in his 30s on a podcast is saying you have permission, of course, you know, you have permission, all that stuff. But I just, I just want you to, like, we need more we need more is what it's coming down to. And I feel desperate, I guess in a way of what I see the lack of comfortableness happening when it comes to people that have really good intentions, being uncomfortable and afraid to share. And it comes down to courage and it comes down to worrying about what other people think. And it it bums me out I guess it bums me out because I haven't like felt this comfortable enough sharing pocket all this stuff. That's why I'm doing I guess this challenge is to make me more comfortable. But I just want you to be comfortable and know that it gets more comfortable a little bit as you go. The uncomfortableness may shift, you know, you may shift from now you're not worrying about publishing, it's worrying about you know, other things, because typically, you know, not a third hashtag, not a therapist, but typically, if you worry about one thing, and then you overcome that thing, a new thing will pop up. And I guess that's how anxiety works, right? But a new thing might pop up in some area, other area. So it's not about dissolving everything and you have no more issues and you live in complete nirvana. i That's not realistic for most of us. So know that it will get more comfortable. You have to fight through the uncomfortableness and uncomfortableness isn't a sign you shouldn't promote yourself and market yourself in 2022. My goal, my task for you today is to remote one thing today. That's all. I hope you have a great rest of your day. I will talk to you tomorrow.