This is digital podcast hosted by Dylan Schmidt. It's that time again, is that time again, welcome. I'm so glad I can share with you today, what we're going to be talking about today is why overthinking your content is keeping you stuck. So I meet with a lot of people, whether it's through email, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, all the platforms. And I found that over and over people, most people actually I would say, 99% of the people I talked to, are overthinking their content so much, and it's keeping them stuck. And I can identify it. So simply because I do it, I've done it, I don't do it really much anymore. But I've done it for years, I popped this digital podcaster thing out of nowhere. But the truth of the matter is, is that this has been years in the making, this wasn't something that just sprung out, even though it did in a way. But like it is the combination of a bunch of stuff, starting and stopping and starting and stopping over all these years. That allowed me to finally get to the point that I settled on digital podcaster. It took me a long time, and a lot of work, and a lot of listening, and a lot of trial and error. But how did I do that is basically eventually I spun my wheels for so long. And then eventually I'm like, Well, I got no other option. This is what it is, because there's nowhere to run anymore. So I got nowhere to hide, and this is what it's going to be. And I've overthought content, let's like, let's just take a look at what overthinking your content looks like just at the beginning of it, right? overthinking your content is like thinking, you need to do something before you get somewhere else. So before I hit publish, I need to make sure that I have all my things in a row. Before I record my podcast, I need to have my show outlined in my notes to a tee. Before I record this video, I need to have the lighting, perfect, all that stuff. All that stuff is nice. But if it is getting in the way of you hitting publish, that stuff is an excuse. It is purely an excuse. Because what should be happening in the early stages. And most likely you are in the early stages. Or else basically you're not in the early stages when you have a team helping you. That's when you're not in the early stages anymore. When you're in the early stages, all that lighting, all that stuff doesn't really matter. The fanciness comes with time that does not come in the beginning. No one starts out fancy. That's a you're comparing yourself to someone with a large platform that's been doing it for a long time. If you think that you need to have these certain level of video qualities. Let's take this podcast, for example, right off the bat. People will see my videos and maybe they even hear the audio quality. All those things are the topics that I'm sharing. There's no magic in the stuff I'm saying there's no I didn't have to meditate, I didn't have to go in it. No, this is just straight coming from the heart for me to you. And that's why you're listening is because there's me sharing my heart to you. There's that's that's the magic of what it is. So overthinking your content would look like I'm not gonna say this because I'm not qualified, or I don't have my points defined well enough, I don't know my target audience doesn't matter, you just all you need to do is hit record and then hit publish that one two step right there that one two punch. But you got to do because overthinking your content is keeping you from making content. And it's keeping you from growing your content. Yeah, we all want the fancy stuff. We all want the platform that looks great, we got the numbers to match and we got the lighting and our hair is perfect. And we can just show up and do all that stuff. But it doesn't work like that unless you already have money, willing to just completely pour into this endeavor and build a team. Either way, your team wouldn't even know what to do unless you you would need someone to map it out with you. Because let's just say for example, like money was no object for what you were doing. You would still have to provide you'd have to be operator for your team and tell them how you want it to look like all that stuff they would need direction because most of the time people aren't good at just making stuff up out of thin air. You'd have to give them some type of direction. And so really you have to you just have to keep moving forward. And the beauty is you've heard it a million times with a camera and your phone is good enough to record you could do a people will be like I don't have a camera I can't add video to my podcast and if you've got a nice camera phone that will work just fine. You got your all you really need is the the headphones that camp comes with the iPhone. I'm not sure what Android comes with these days because just an iPhone guy but they come with the headphones, the ear pods or whatever, I don't know, if they still do, I think they stopped making those in the phones, which is just whatever. But that would be good enough for a podcast too. If you saw what you could do behind the scenes, like what you could do with how big you could grow podcast with such minimal equipment, you wouldn't overthink it. But due to time and space, you can't really do what you're doing and also work behind the scenes that maybe haven't had the opportunity to work behind the scenes at some type of media company. Like I have and see that it doesn't take much gear like the gear is literally there for professionals to use. And the thing that I found too with gear is like the more fancier The more you spend on it, the more features it has. And none of those features tell the story for you. None of those features will help you connect with your audience in a way like storytelling does, in a way that understanding what your audience wants to hear in the first place. And again, if you're thinking to yourself, Well, how do I really know how to do the storytelling? How do I knew know how to connect? Those are that's just again overthinking your content. What does not overthinking your content look like? It looks like me sharing this message with you, me only having one line for this podcast of thinking, talking about overthinking your content and hitting record and just going with it because I know that what's in my heart is what needs to be shared. Because right now I don't have time to map it out. And I wouldn't even map it out. Even if I did have more time, I wouldn't map out every part I want to say because there's stuff that's going to come through that needs to come through. And that's what's most important in that moment. Because I know and I trust that there will be a time in the future that if there's something else I need to say, I can share it through whatever medium it needs to get shared. But you can't the problem people get is they try to overdo their content in a way and you can't overdo your you think you you are going to add so much value in this one piece of thing. And then that's that's going to be the piece that's going to move the needle for your person, it doesn't work like that, unfortunately, I hate to break it to you, you're not going to end world, you know, hunger through one podcast or one through one Instagram post or one LinkedIn update. It's not gonna happen. You're human, we're all just humans. And we can only do so much with a time we got the message we got. So if you can use that moment, you got to connect with somebody and just simply inspire them. That's a win in my book. That's a W right there. That's at the end of the day. That's the most you could want, right? It's just the simply inspire somebody to take action. And that my friend does not require overthinking that requires doing and that doing doesn't need to be some grand gesture that is perfectly laid out. No, no, that's never gonna happen. The only stuff that you see that looks beautifully perfect, is not done by one person. It's done by a team. And how did they get to the team? They just started with what they had. And we're talking about most people here. Yeah, some people started out ahead. But I'm not one of those people. If you're like me, this applies to you too. But you didn't start out ahead with some budget that you could just pour into something you just started out with what you have. And then you just keep going. And you start to get traction with that. And then you start to be able to invest more into what you're doing the production and upgrade little pieces here and there. But huge mistake I see is people like I'm, I'm gonna record once I get this piece of gear now, no, don't wait, because that gear is going to take you a minute to learn. And that's just delaying the progress of being able to inspire somebody that's just delaying. But it's just going to give you more to overthink because then you're going to see all those buttons and all those features that you're not using. And then you're going to start to feel bad because you're not utilizing the gear how you should be using it like a quick story about this is for years I've used GarageBand the built in audio editing service for Mac. It's done totally well. I went to school for audio engineering, audio production. I have a background in audio. That's, that's been my jam for years. I love it. I'm big fan. And I worked with Pro Tools it's called which is like the professional audio recording software for audio engineers. And there's a couple different ones. But Pro Tools is a common one you'll see in recording studios. And I've worked with that for years. But then when it came time for podcasting, I was like, that's so overkill, especially when we're talking about podcasting. You do not need Pro Tools for podcasting. You don't need any of these fancy things like you literally can be just fine with GarageBand. And what did I do? Over eventually, you know, I grew a podcast that I was working on that I currently work on. As of recording this. I grew it to it's in the top point 3% Sent globally of all podcasts in the whole world How crazy is that. And for years, I just use GarageBand just GarageBand. And it's funny because I spoke with another podcast guy that he started this podcast and then handed it off to me. And he didn't know my background, I didn't share my background, there wasn't really a need to. But he made some assumptions that just makes me laugh. I just love thinking about it because he made some assumptions that I didn't know what I was doing. He didn't ask me my background, he just hesitantly handing off a project and I was picking his brain just because I'm like, Is there something I'm missing? This was when I was like, first getting into podcasting. More about the technical side of things like there has to be something I'm missing and he's there's an art to this, Dylan, there is an art to podcasting. And just not anybody can pick up this art. And I'm like, Man, that's crazy. I can't wait to learn with this art is because one I'm really eager to learn in two. Is there some like mystery secret sauce here that I just don't know? Because I mean, add not. What can I possibly be missing gets there's this like, secret door I'm missing? And I'm really curious to learn what that is. Because, Hey, I'll go down this rabbit hole, teach me teach me I am eager to learn. So I hopped on a call with him. And then I'm like, today's the day I'm gonna learn that. What what the secret thing about podcasting is the art. I'm not learning the art of it so that I can begin I know, I'm, I'm just brand new to this, but one day it will become, I will become better and I will learn the art. And what did I learn, there was really no art. And it was just to see a couple series of quick and easy processes. And it was just all overkill. Like there was there was no need for anything crazy going on. And the podcast, very simple. Very simple, very simple. And it is funny to think back now is like, I you're probably thinking yourself, Well, yeah, it's simple for you, Dylan, but it's advanced for me. No, no, I promise you, I promise you it's not. It's not hard, like we're talking. And you go Yeah, but still no, we're talking like just basic recording into a and then it doesn't matter what you use, you could use zoom, you could use the voice memos that's on your phone. And then it's like a couple steps here Here is the next part is like you just chop that and then put it into a service like GarageBand or something, you just drag in a piece of audio, literally just drag in a piece of audio. That's your intro. And then you have your talking that you recorded on The Voice Memos, or zoom or whatever. And then that's it, you could just hit export, and then upload it using something like libsyn or buzzsprout or something like that. And that's that's the that's the technical part. That's the art as he would have said, I guess. And then yeah, there's a couple more steps if you want to make the sound more polished or something. But if you use buzzsprout, there's like a one button, you press in there, I think I forget what they call it magic mastering or something. And it will make your audio sounds good, it's cool. If you want to get way more fancy with it, and start to overthink it, then you go well. But if I want to add transitions and all this stuff, that's when you start to overthink your content and you don't publish it, I would rather have 100 pieces of imperfect content out there than like a couple pieces of perfect content out there. Because I know that those couple pieces of perfect content. There's no such thing for one as a perfect piece of content in a way, the perfect piece of content is the one that's imperfect and gets published. But let's just say for example, there was this amazing piece of perfect content, I would rather still have the 100 pieces, because that's still 100 pieces that are out there that are hitting people in a different way. And I can't be the judge of how it lands on somebody. At a certain point. There's a handoff, there's a handoff between what I say and how someone takes it. So if I'm going to get in the way of that, then it's it's selfishly trying to have the experience of the person that I'm trying to talk to, which is not fair. For my listener, it's not, it's not fair for anyone that I'm making the content for. Because the content is not for myself. It's for the person listening. So I'm here to serve. So that's how I'm viewing it. That's how I view my content creation process. And that's why I think overthinking is You're overthinking your content is keeping you stuck, you know, content wasn't made supposed to be this thing that was so hard to make. And it took so much fanciness to get right. content was supposed to be in a way that is just authentic you sharing your story and the way in whatever story you want to share. And I think the real art of podcasting that the man that I spoke with years ago, the real art of podcasting isn't in the editing and all the stuff that he claimed it was the real art of podcasting is not overthinking your content. And just sharing it anyways and trusting that the right ears will listen when you tell them about it. And that's it at the end of the day. That's it. So that's all I got for you today and a couple ways we could work together There is I got the profitable podcast Academy online program. The link is in the show notes for that we also got a free guide, I put together 240 plus tools and resources. That's exciting. And I'm working on a new one, it might be out as recording this. So check the show notes for the most up to date guide I'm putting together because I've gotten a lot of people asking, podcasting is confusing, it is confusing, it doesn't need to be. But I don't know if it's like people selling stuff. And that's why like when I built this digital podcaster business, it didn't, I'm like the gear is secondary, the the actual editing of the audio is secondary. Because if you edit the audio too much, you lose the the the creme de creme de la creme of the message that you're trying to share. So I think over editing is hurting more than it's helping. So I'm not a big fan of the editing depends on your what you're trying to say, in your podcast. But for the most part, it should just be straightforward, straightforward. That's why I focus more on the messaging. And we cover that in profitable podcasts Academy. But also, I put together this free guide the tools and resources guide, and I'm creating and working on a new step by step guide. And I will release that very soon might be out like I said, so the show notes will have the link to that I'll have the most up to date guide I've got going either way, it's going to be a valuable resource. And I was totally off topic there for a second. But basically people are saying like it's confusing. And I'm just like, it shouldn't be confusing. Let's make a step by step guide. So that's what I'm working on. And I'm really excited to share that with everybody. And yeah, find me on Instagram at Digital podcaster YouTube digital podcaster we're on Twitter Digi podcaster and we are on Facebook, LinkedIn all the stuffs and I can't wait to talk to you next week. Talk to you soon.