Welcome to Digital Podcaster. My name is Dylan Schmidt. So glad you are joining me today. Another solo episode we got for you basically, just to give you the rundown, at least for this run this month doing a podcast today, a day, not today, I always feel like I say my word so fast. And then it sounds like I said today. So I wanted to clarify, I said on a podcast a day, but also a podcast today. Sorry. Every Tuesday, I'm doing more of a longer episode, and then the episodes around that are more experimental. I guess. That's what happens when you do a podcast today. All right, so today, I want to talk with you about something I believe every podcaster should do. And if you are only listening and you haven't come across, if you've never explored the show notes, I would highly suggest going to digital podcaster.com/i Almost forgot what it was digital podcaster.com/blog/every podcaster, that'll be the title for this one, every podcaster. And you can see a whole mind map I've laid out of what I'm about to share with you. But if you go to digital podcaster.com/blog/every podcaster, you'll see this laid out and I think it might I might help you. Curious, curious your feedback on this, this mind map idea. Something new, I'm trying out. So a problem that every podcaster has. And this goes for entrepreneur, content creator, anyone creating something an artist, you want to improve your work, especially if you're making it for somebody else. This what everything I'm about to say doesn't really apply if you're only making it for yourself. If you're sharing something, you're taking the audience into consideration, right? You're, you're sharing something with your audience, then you're you're making it not only for yourself anymore, you're making it for someone else. So you want to share it with your audience. You want it to connect with your audience, right? And how do you know if it's connecting with your audience, you get their feedback. So what you can do to get their feedback is a few certain things that I'm going to lay out here. And why I think people get feedback wrong from a lot of sources, because we'll ask anybody, typically the closest person to us for feedback on something that they might not be absolutely qualified at all to give us feedback on. But because they're the closest source, we're like, hey, what do you think about this idea. And I know, for younger people that typically looks like asking their parents, which is not a bad thing. But again, we're talking about something creating for an audience. So let's just say you're a podcaster, your parents don't even know what a podcast is. And you're younger, and you're asking your parents like, and I'm not saying like, I think I know what a podcast is, they have no experience creating content, or they have no experience creating something for the general public. You're asking your parents for feedback on a podcast, because they're the closest to you, maybe you don't have any friends, you can trust something like that. The likelihood, if there was a graph, the likelihood of your parents giving great feedback on your podcast is pretty low compared to someone with expertise in a podcast, and has experienced creating content or something for the audience, right. And that's a problem for anybody making something because you want to improve your work. You want it to connect with your audience you want to grow. But it's hard to do that, because two things are happening. One, you're trying to make it true to yourself. Or at least if you're listening to me, you're probably more identify with creating content that's authentic, and not like, very sleazy. Not very sleazy, not sleazy at all, even not not very silly, not even a little silly. You know, you want to make it true to yourself, but also something that your audience enjoys. And if you can nail those two things, it feels like you're doing something magical. Because, you know, we all see people have stuff that we enjoy, and we're like, wow, we want to make something like that. Maybe it scares the the wits out of us. I don't know if that's the same. And then, you know, also we just want to we want to do it in an authentic way, right? We want to grow in an authentic way. And where do you look when you've done something that you've never, if we're sorry, where do you look when you want to do something that you've never done before? Because that's difficult, right? You're asking your parents for feedback on something you've never done. And then you're trying to get feedback and you don't know who you can trust? Well. The opportunity here is when you can get feedback from sources you can Trust, you can improve quicker, because not only are you iterating, you're not only making small improvements on what it is that you're making, you have a trusted source that you can go to. Now the quickest person you can get feedback from is someone that's closer to you. And you'll be able to improve quicker. And you can grow your audience and learn at the same time on what it is about inside of you that you can extract and share with people. And you can know that you're doing it again, in the two ways like authentic, and in a way that is connecting with the audience. Finding areas of growth, essentially, while still sharing what you know. And that's a tricky thing. And you might be hearing this going, this all sounds cool, Dylan is you trying to sell me something? No, not trying to sell you something told you that would that, that, to me, that seems like sleazy those presenting all this, I'm actually going to bust out a task for you. And this is a little bit of a two part task. So first things first, I would suggest making a list on a piece of paper or a post it note, it's going to be very short list, but physically writing or physically typing three to five people whose feedback that you trust, feed in, and I would suggest writing it out. And they don't have to have high qualifications of, of like, you know, they don't meet, if it's your parents, you know, and they are your podcast feedback or something like that cool. Just list them. They don't have to be perfect, but just anybody you can trust, and I know I just said, you know, maybe your parents aren't the Great, the great person that should be giving you feedback. But if there who you have to work with for now, that's who you should list. And just anything is better than nothing, because you want support, right? You are going to grow with support, nobody grows on their own, despite how it looks online, we all have support. And then you want to make a list of where they fall in the category of the thing that you're doing. So do those three to five people fall if you're if you're trying to grow your podcast, you're trying to grow a business, anything like that? Do they have experience in the thing that you are trying to do yourself? If so, moving to this next column, column, the people whose feedback you can trust around a certain topic. And when it comes to trust, which, personally is something I'm curious about, I looked at what creates trust. And I found an article by the Harvard Business Review. And there are three things that create trust, there's three elements essentially, of trust. And the first one is positive relationships. So we trust someone based on the extent to which a leader is able to create positive relationships with other people in groups. So too, if you stay in touch on certain issues and concerns, if you generate cooperation, and if you're able to resolve conflicts, and if you're able to give feedback, that is a positive relationship, and that is an element of trust. Also, another element of trust is good judgment or expertise. And this kind of goes into that second column. So another factor in whether people trust is if the person has good judgment or expertise, but if they're well informed, and knowledgeable, so they have to have technical aspects of the work you're trying to do. And they have to, you have to trust that their ideas and opinions matter around the certain thing. And this one is crucial, because this is summing up almost everything I said about who to trust for feedback is you got to this person has to be well informed and knowledgeable. If you're using the feedback, you get alone, like so many people will use feedback from the wrong sources. And they're making improvements or they're, it's like a cliche of, of a parent saying, Oh, that's great, honey. In reality, there are certain things that maybe could be improved. And it's not like we're not in this never ending improved. There's a time and place for that's great honey. And then there's a time in place for how about what if, what honest feedback here like what if you did this differently, or straight to the point because we all kind of crave that real? That real well informed, knowledgeable feedback, and it's hard to find, right? And then the last third element of building trust is walking their talk and doing what they say they will do, which is consistency. So are they a role model of sorts? Are they walking the talk? Are they honoring commitments and keeping promises? Are they following through on commitments? And are they willing to go above and beyond what needs to be done? Some element of that not we're not looking for the perfect person you might be going like I have nobody like this in my life, that's okay, we don't need to start out knowing exactly like you don't need this, this person that's exemplifying all three elements of trust to be successful for one. And you want to set almost the vision of what it is that you want from someone to get feedback from. And this is really important, because this is how you grow. This is how you improve this is how you find a more centered way of operating from because many of us, I'm not gonna say you, but many of us will be operating from the wrong sources of feedback. And we're, we kind of can't pinpoint why certain things are working. And this just seems so difficult. And it's because one, we're not reaching out for help to, we're getting help from the wrong sources, or three, we just don't have a clear direction, you know, of where we want to go. And that's why I'm saying all this is, those three things like having that clear direction, is super valuable. And super important for growing, and, and feeling confident in what you're doing. Because when you have the right person telling you the right thing, you're gonna get the right result. And that's an exciting thing for anybody. And I just, I just want to put that on you that that is out there, that person exists out there. I'm not saying if it's me, or whatever, I'm just saying, I'm going a bit going deeper into you know, feedback for one, because it's always been on my mind, because personally, that's the quickest way I'm able to grow is through feedback through the right sources through the right people. Because if I listen to like the naysayers for one that exists in my head do that's not only out outside sources, going out not good enough to do that. I'm not qualified, whatever. Or if I listen, I read only the wrong comments. You know, I've seen plenty of comments on my own pages when I post something and like, kind of the Who the heck are you to talk about the certain thing, if I only followed those comments, that feedback, I would be had had stopped this a while ago. And I find so much value in getting the right feedback from the right sources that send me in the right direction. So that's different for everybody. There's not a one size fits all, for everybody. And I just give you this because I know it, I know that with the right source, you will go farther, faster. And everything will just lock into place more and more, it doesn't have to be so hard to grow, whether it's a business, I mean, not saying there's not hard work involved. But there's the you want to have the hard work in the right areas and not not make it hard on yourself and in the wrong areas, essentially. So I say all that to just give you the opportunity to take something off your plate and put it on something because you might be walking around to thinking, you know, no one's dealt with my specific thing in my specific area. Speaking from my own experience, for a while, when I started Digital Podcaster I, I was somehow I guess this was my inner inner critic, I was somehow under the impression that podcasts were too small, there was not enough people interested in podcasts to like talk about it, I would run out of things to talk about, or it wouldn't be a big enough thing to make it like a job out of and had I stuck with that feedback or that criticism in my head, then I wouldn't have continued on. And in this last, I think it's been a week and a half now with podcasting Academy launching. I have like, been so grateful that I did not stop whatsoever. And then just take it easy and be like, You know what, I'm gonna switch into like marketing something more wide or something. Yeah, I do marketing and things like that. But I like keeping it specific to podcasting because I have a passion for it. And I've shared this before on the show that I think there's so much more of an inner game that goes into podcasting that people don't talk about. Also, I don't see people bridging the gap between podcasting and marketing. But I say that because I went through. I mean, right now I'm not, but I suspect that in the future, I'll go through a similar kind of evolution of sorts where I go, kind of second guess, or is this the right path? You know, these little reminders? And it's so valuable, have someone go, like, just to check me like, I'll say, Hey, is podcasting? Is it? Is this a thing? And they're like, yes. What are you talking about? Podcasting is huge. So many people need help and like, oh, yeah, okay, because maybe I wasn't seeing this type of feedback that I needed. And then in that moment, I got the right feedback from the right source. And I would have never been able to do that on my own. People always talk about self made Yeah, right. There's no freakin way There's no way and I don't want to ever give you the impression that everything I do is self made. I'm the face of Digital Podcaster, podcasting, Academy, all this stuff, but it is built upon feedback from the right people that have pushed me in the right direction. And they haven't always told me exactly what step to do of like, Oh, yes, stick to podcasting, say this at this time and do a podcast a date note, no one told me to do a podcast a day a month, or podcast Yeah, podcasts a day for the month of May. That was my own crazy idea. But it's something that I felt called to do. And I felt confident to do because I got that right feedback at some point might have been like three months ago, then it like seeped in my head of just that confidence builds over time. And I think it's interesting, because when we talk about trust, from the Harvard Business Review, that article was talking about the three things, positive relationships, good judgment, slash expertise, and consistency, the three elements, those things went not only are they creating trust between you and someone else, they're creating trust between you and yourself. So when you have a positive relationship with yourself, oh, boy, he just went deep. Leave a positive relationship with yourself. When you make good calls, good judgments about a certain situation, thing, content, whatever it is, you want to say. And you're consistent with it, you're building more trust in yourself, which is building more confidence. How cool is that? And we can all incompetence isn't the same as you know, being cocky. Or being a person that the cliche, full of themselves person confidence, I'm talking like a confidence, like, you know, you're doing the right thing in the right direction, we could all use a dose of that, if that was in a pill, which I guess that we call that? Cocaine, I don't do drugs, I don't even drink. So just want to throw that out there. But I guess that's probably why I've, I've heard certain cliches of, you know, that's, that's a that was come up with a million ideas. I've heard that. You know, this is an organic, healthy way of creating trust. So yeah, and I hope that helped. And I hope you have a vision, I'm not saying I hope you have three to five people who whose feedback you can trust right now. But I hope you have a vision of, of and you take a moment to create a vision for the feedback you want to get because the money is nice. The platform's nice, the growing the audience, all that stuff. What's really going to keep you going at the end of the day is having a tight little circle of people that you can rely on, not spilling not over, being there on call 24/7. And might be someone you check in with every couple of months. But having someone you can rely on is a game changer. If you're if you're trying to do something that you've never done before. That's also this also, also, it's, you know, got to do you got to do it. Alright, I hope this was helpful. I, you know, this is part, I say part of this, and I'll mention it here just because I feel obligated to and it feels on smart to not say. But inside podcasting Academy, we do have live monthly, monthly munchie. We do have live monthly coaching calls where essentially you submit a piece of content, I send a survey type a form is form epitone. Remember that were literally form, I send a form where you can fill out a specific problem to get specific feedback, and then coaching around one specific topic. And I've done this with hundreds, maybe 1000s of times now. In other group coaching environments, it has been a game changer. And I don't always do the best job at relaying how valuable this is. And I've seen it be extra valuable. And that's kind of why I wanted to show that value. And this wasn't like some sort of sales pitch for podcasting Academy. This was because it's super valuable, whether that's why I said with me and podcasting academy or if it's in some other environment. It's important because I've seen the results it grows and how quick people get with that consistency. And it's not a one time thing. It's not like, Oh, you got feedback once and now you're good for like the next five years. That's what they show in like Netflix documentaries, but they don't show all the little work because they got to edit it for time. Right. So there is consistent, you know, feedback. It's not a one time thing in podcasting Academy, you can submit a piece of content or something and before our call together, I will review it and then coach it on the call. You don't have to be live, you can watch the replay, but it's valuable. And you can go to podcasting academy.com To learn more about that. It's all about say about that. Alright, I will see you tomorrow for the next episode. Hope you having a great day. Great week. I'll talk to you soon. Good day