This is Digital Podcaster hosted by Dylan Schmidt. Today we are going to talk about what most people get wrong about podcasting and why they don't even start. So I've been seeing this a lot lately, I've been having a lot of communication on Instagram, and kind of chatting with people, not kind of I IV, I have been chatting with a lot of people about what's keeping them stuck from starting their podcast. And a lot of the times I see a lot of different reasons, actually. But they all boil down to just a couple reasons. And a lot of that is they don't feel they know enough to speak on it. And it's not that they can't, you know, maintain a conversation, which is something that I kind of thought from the beginning that was more of an issue is that, yeah, they could speak on something, but they wouldn't be able to maintain speaking on it. And what I've really seen more so is that it's more about, they just are afraid of what they're saying is the right or wrong thing. And they want to be more prepared to speak about something. But the fact of the matter is, you're never going to be prepared enough for speaking on something just like this podcast isn't scripted, I'm not going through, you know, notes, I have a couple outlines of notes. But, you know, oftentimes I'll just start off with just a sentence to get me going. And that's enough to get me going. And I don't need more than a sentence. And I found that if I script it too much, then I'm in my head. And if I'm in my head, I'm not focusing on value. And if I'm not focusing on value, then the whole thing just kind of unravels and falls apart. And the whole juice and gold of the whole thing, it just stagnates. So, how do you do that, though, right? Maybe you feel like, well, Dylan, that's good for you. But I can't just riff on something, and just, you know, keep talking. And, you know, eventually words will come out. And I just, I just can't get in that flow like that I have to, you know, get myself into a flow. So now we're having a conversation about flow, which is not coming in the form of a script, write a script, will help keep you on track, it will help tell you where to go. But you're not going to find the flow in the script. You know, a loose outline is awesome. I'm like, so for it. But when someone is I need a script, or Hey, Dylan, you know, I'd love to do this pipe, guys, I'd love but I need a script first. I'm sorry, I don't know that we would be a perfect fit for you being on this podcast, or I don't, you know, think that's probably a podcast that I really much want to listen to. I'm more curious about what the person speaking their core messages and just leaving that room for anything to happen than to think, hey, these are words that they're reading off a teleprompter. If I wanted to do that, I'd watch the news. And I don't watch the news. I read headlines occasionally. And I go to some new sources, occasionally. But pretty much I hear the important news through people around me in my life, that tell me what I need to hear, right? Because it's just scripted. A lot of it is scripted. And yeah, I'm informed. But I'm not, you know, I'm not naive, and I'm informed. But I'm not glued to the television. Because when I turn on, you know, CHANNEL SEVEN, I see that there's a teleprompter to the reading. And I'm not feeling a human connection behind those eyes. And I'm more focused on other things, you know. So that's one of the things I feel like with podcasting is people are just so want to be so right, that they're afraid of being wrong, and you have to let yourself be wrong in order to get it right. It sounds confusing, I know. And it really isn't. And it's really just another way of telling you, you got the skills, you've got the knowledge you need to do what you need to do, you don't need to do any more planning, what you just need to do is make it happen. You just need to take action, you just need to sit down and press record. You just need to reach out to that person that you want to speak to. You don't need to, you know, figure out all how am I going to exactly get this, you know, going right? So for example, for this podcast, I've been reaching out to a bunch of people to appear on it. And one of the things I've realized now that digital podcaster is my own brand. And I'm the face of it, there's a little bit of differences that happen with that. And it's not something I exactly expected from the beginning, because I've worked on podcasts for years. But now that I'm in the driver's seat, now that I'm a pilot, there's a little bit of different branding that comes along with that too. Because when it comes to branding, it's your own flavor. It's your own style that you infuse in it and you want that to match what you're doing. I've done that great for other people over the years. And now that I'm doing it for myself, it's a little different, in a way bad or worse, just a little different. And it's kind of fun, but it's also kind of interesting to me because I am so just go forward and I treat it like it's someone else's brand in a way and I move faster than most people because I don't have the thoughts of you know what, what could happen. I Don't don't really have the what could happen thoughts, because I don't have time for those. There's too many people that I want to serve. And there's too many, you know, people I want to meet, and there's too many people I want to talk with. So I don't get hung up on a singular conversation or a singular interaction, because there's just too much going on. But one of the things I noticed with, you know, reaching out to guests is, you know, I'm just gung ho, I am like, so forward, push forward, I'll just put myself out there, it feels great. It feels actually not great or bad or anything, I'm just moving forward. Really, it's kind of neutral. But one of the things I noticed is I've been reaching out to some people that I, I, when I come across their Instagram profile, so I'll go on Instagram to see, you know, that's my initial place where I'll look to learn about them and see what they're doing. And I'm just cruising around, right? I'm trying to find guests on here that I would be interested in talking to. And there's no agenda of this show, like deep agenda for the sake of like, you know, I'm not trying to formulate it in some corporate way, right? I'm not I'm not a corporate type of guy. I've never had maybe, I think, I don't know if I've tried to be corporate. I just, I just don't fit in that box. I've tried to, man have I tried to fit in that box. I think I did. I did. Okay, revert back for one minute, I worked at Walgreens, this was like, right after I graduated high school, this is 2007 I moved to Colorado Springs, I got a job at Walgreens, I worked in the photo department for two weeks. It was such a cool job because I thought, you know, I'm like this cool little hip kid. And, you know, listening to cool music, collecting vinyl records, and I'm just out of high school, you know, got my whole future ahead of me still do. And I work out Walgreens developing photos, and I thought it was gonna be cool. You know, I'm in Colorado Springs right by Pikes Peak Garden of the Gods. And I think like, I'm going to develop some cool photos that, you know, maybe a photographer, no, there was none of that. And I was only there for two weeks, it was the most draining job for me, for me. And I guess that's one of the more corporate jobs I've had was developing photos at Walgreens. And I was so curious on like, the photos that would come out, because what kind of photos would you expect to see it, you know, you could see anything. And I can't imagine like photo. Developing centers are booming right now with digital photos as they are with digital, you know, photo frames you can buy and iPhones more accessible. But I haven't got a couple photos printed. But yeah, the photos that were getting printed were not interesting whatsoever. And there were some like pG 13 rated our photos going out, typically from older people, which is not what I expected by any means. Just don't know how to share that. But it just still blows my mind to this day, I think about it. But I totally did not fit in at that Walgreens job. Hence why I only lasted two weeks, my soul was my soul was moving faster than my 18 year old physical body could contain at that time. But yeah, it wasn't for me. So I'm so off track here. But what I've noticed, though, is when I'm reaching out to these podcast guests, and I'm looking at their page, one of the things that draws me to the people that I want to speak to speak with and share on this podcast is people that have enough like an authentic message people that have a story to tell, or there's something about their content that speaks to me and I can, I can pick it up right away. There's like a certain authenticity that's in the content that I pick up on. And it's so apparent. And if you've done this, you know what I'm talking about, if you haven't done this, it's when you start a podcast, and then you start looking for guests, you'll start seeing it immediately, you'll look at, I've been looking at Instagram pages for a long time now. But when I look at it through the lens of for me and my podcast, and who I want to bring on and what I want to talk about, it is so different than just scrolling Instagram, normally, because I'm looking for a different purpose, as I'm looking like with the purpose of reaching out and who do I want to connect with on a deeper level, because it's one thing to just follow somebody. And it's one thing to just, you know, engage and leave a comment but to like, actually get on a call and spend 3045 minutes chatting with them. And then learning more, that could potentially be a big time suck and not fun. And that could be really draining if you reached out to a lot of the wrong people. And they all said yes. So I'm intentional about who I'm talking to who I'm talking with. And I've reached out to amazing people and I've got amazing guests lined up and you know, there's all different types of creators, but one of the things I'm seeing across the through line of as I'm like noticing who I'm picking out here is they all have this authentic message. And what I find fascinating is that a couple of them, not all of them and I'm not gonna say who and you'll never know because there'll be so many guests coming out. But a couple of them had never done podcasts or they have you know, never shared their message. before and it's interesting to me because, you know, I don't have this huge platform built yet. And, you know, if I'm blessed with a huge platform one day cool, if not, I'm just gonna keep doing it either way, because it's been so exciting and fun. And such a learning growth for me. And for the people I'm meeting, it's just been amazing. So one of the things I'm finding interesting, though, is like these authentic people that I've got a good radar is I've kind of mentioned already, and these people are kind of like, Hey, you know, can I have a script? Can I have some type of an idea, like a more detailed thing, can you give me something and I'm like, you know, I'm thinking in my mind thing, and I chose you, because you've got the authenticity here, you got this, this cool thing you're sharing, you know, and there's a specific message behind what you're doing. And I'm just thinking, like, my script would be, I can't really script out what they're gonna say, and I can give them my, you know, obviously, high level ideas here, but it's I love going into things blind, not saying everyone should be like this. But you should know, just kidding. But I love going into things blind, because it gives room for like, exciting things to happen, you know, not exciting, you know, in the way of just going to flip out, you know, not like that. But it leaves room for a lot of interesting juice to happen, you know, I got to figure out a different word besides juice, that's, that's, that's got to be reserved for something else when there's talking about doing things with other people. But that leaves a lot of a lot of room for fun. And it's not fun when it's like really scripted. Because then, then it comes like you're just reading a blog or something. And that's never what I want, at least my brand to be, and I don't want to inspire people to just be a regurgitator of information. I want people to feel comfortable in their creativity, and their authenticity, and to bring that message to life, because it shouldn't be a scary thing to bring to life. And I think a big thing that's missing with bringing your creativity to life is the safety. When you have the safety, you have everything, because you know that you can't get it wrong. And there's only getting it right. And that's really important for a creator is to have that safety of knowing you know what, no matter what I do, no matter what I say, no matter what I publish, it is the right thing at this right time. And that is a very freeing state of mind to be in. And that's the state of mind that I've been growing digital podcaster with. And it's in a place of if you're onboard, cool. If you're not, that's cool, too. There's literally no hard feelings either way. But this is what's happening. And you're free to you're free to intern you're free to exit at any time. And that's that's the greatest gift a creator could give themself is to allow that freedom of cool, I'm here doing my thing. If you're coming cool. If you're not coming, cool. I'll be here either way, we might meet up and three years from now we might meet up and seven years from now. It's all good either way, I promise. So wanted to share that with you. I hope that helps you on your own creative path. And I'm excited to bring more and more guests on this show and share their journey and I don't want to like pigeonhole too much of what's going to happen on the show. I want to leave room just like I've been talking about in this episode. I want to leave room for anything to happen. Because I know that there's going to be some exciting things along the way that if you pigeonholed too much, those exciting things don't have room to happen. So we're gonna allow room for that. And yeah, I hope you allow room for that and your own creativity. So hope you have a great day. Feeling productive. If not, maybe not feeling productive is the way you're feeling productive and that's cool too. I'll see you next episode.