Welcome to Episode 12 of Thanks for Thinking, the music business podcast centered around self-reflection and proactivity for thoughtful music production professionals.
I’m your host, Carl Bahner.
Today’s Discussion Prompt: Reevaluations & Added Value
I mentioned in episode 10 that I was committing to 36 episodes of this podcast. My initial plan was to release three episodes per week, for twelve weeks, and then reflect on my experience and reevaluate whether or not I wanted to continue beyond the 36th episode.
So far, I can’t see myself stopping after 36.
But I do see myself pausing after 12.
Why?! And for how long?
First, the “why” part. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the response that I’ve received so far about the podcast - from friends and peers, but also from total strangers that I never would have expected to meet or speak to. Writing these episodes has also been really cathartic for me, but knowing that they are resonating with other people too just confirmed my suspicion that I may be on to something with this.
But I did notice that there are some things that I could do better - not just within the podcast itself, but with the way that I present and promote it.
If you’re a frequent listener, it’s probably no surprise that I like to be transparent about my own frustrations and problems with my business, and the marketing of the podcast has been lacking, to say the least. Now, to my defense, that lack of marketing was mostly intentional - I knew that this podcast would have a very unusual format, and I knew that I’d need some trial-and-error time to determine who would get the most benefit from my seemingly endless supply of existential crisis-inducing questions and prompts. And, realistically, I knew that I’d need some time to get the hang of it myself.
Now, I think I have a much more clear idea of who I can help the most - freelance creatives, primarily (but not exclusively) in the music production space, who are trying to find more career satisfaction and make more money along the way.
To be honest, this isn’t exactly a huge surprise to me, since that’s pretty much exactly the target audience that I wanted to help. But, sometimes who I want to help and who I can help the most don’t quite line up. But, thankfully, they seem to line up for me.
So, I’ll be taking a short hiatus from releasing new episodes so that I can prepare some additional resources to accompany each episode, past and future.
Full disclosure, the external goal of the podcast is to help people like you to question your own habits, passions, and goals so you can grow your business while growing your sense of self-awareness. And the internal goal is to enable me to connect with people like you who may want more of a hands-on, tactical coach to help apply these concepts to your unique business goals.
So the podcast in and of itself is not really the end game - it’s just one of the vehicles that I can use to connect with you.
To reach a bigger audience, I’ll also begin releasing text-only copies of each episode in a shareable blog format. Personally, I generally prefer reading articles because I tend to read faster than most podcast hosts speak - but I do obviously see the value in having short form podcast episodes with the built-in focus music. And I don’t think these two platforms should be mutually exclusive, and I feel that repurposing the ideas and concepts on two multiple platforms will just help the message to reach further than the podcast could on its own.
I’m also going to be releasing what will essentially be a “study guide” or “worksheet” for each episode. I don’t want to make any specific promises about what they will or won’t include because I’m still experimenting with the formatting. They won’t necessarily be a required element, so I won’t be changing the format of the podcast itself. But for anybody that does feel like that might be useful for them, I’d like to have that available.
Lastly, I’m also working out some plans for an email list - not to bombard your inbox, but to provide maybe weekly recaps of the topics, links to the Discord conversations, recommended reading and viewing, etc. Just like the worksheets, I’m still trying to hone in on the specifics of how I want to handle this, but haven’t made all of the decisions quite yet.
…which brings me to the “how long??” answer: I’m planning on taking two weeks away from writing and releasing episodes so that I can get these additional materials worked out. However, if I do need a third week, so be it. I want to prioritize value over speed.
So today's discussion prompt is: what are some other ways that I can provide value to you, personally?
Long-form videos? Interviews with other industry professionals talking about the difficult questions they’ve asked themselves? I definitely can’t promise I’ll be able to implement every idea, but I can promise that I’ll give them each consideration. So, come join the discussion in our Discord community and let me know what I can do to better help you.
The link to the Thanks For Thinking Podcast Community is in the show notes.
Or, you can reach out to me directly on Instagram at @carlbahner and @thanksforthinkingpodcast if you’d prefer to just speak privately.
I’ve definitely got my work cut out for me - and so does my intern Ethan who is helping me to put these materials together. But, in the meantime, if you’ve already worked through each of the first 12 episodes, I’d recommend that you go back and work through them again. These episodes were designed to be revisited as your business grows… and as your self-awareness grows. And you’ll find that working through these questions again may surprise you with updated answers.
Thank you again so much for listening to these first twelve episodes. I really hope to see you in the Discord, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on how I could provide even more value for you. But either way, I’ll be back in a couple weeks.