#012: Your Podcast Isn’t Perfect (and That’s a Good Thing)

We all want to do our best. Well, most of the time.. 😀😀

But what about all those times we want to do our best but we don't know how? What about all those times we want to do our best so badly we do nothing at all? What about all those times we think other people will judge us for not doing our best?

What about when we start to confuse our best with perfect? What if we can't be perfect? 

In this episode:
(1:46) The (biggest) struggle I see almost 100% of podcasters have
(4:09) What I WISH someone had told me before I launched my first podcast
(6:17) My best advice for podcasters at any stage
(7:28) How people actually feel about your podcast
(10:20) How many episodes you should air before judging the numbers

Links in this episode:
Free Download: 10 Questions I Ask EVERY Guest
Book a 1:1 Coaching Call with me
Podcast Rescourses: Equipment, Software and Everything You Need to Start
Shop my EXACT Podcast Setup

Transcript

Morgan Franklin: 0:01

You know, as a Podcast Producer, something that always surprises me is the number of people that come up to me and say, I've been thinking about this podcast for a year, five years, sometimes 10 years. I know I've shared this story before. But when I was at my first podcast convention, I remember being so shocked that over half of the people that were talking to me that had spent hundreds, possibly 1000s of dollars to be at this convention, didn't even have a podcast yet. Starting a podcast is scary. Once you started your podcast, promoting your podcast is scary. Pretty much every part of having a podcast is scary, right? He's putting yourself out there to be judged by other people is terrifying. In this episode, I want to talk about you I want to talk about your podcast, I want to talk about how no part of your podcasting journey will ever be perfect, and how that's actually a really good thing. Hello, and welcome to Podcasts for Profit. My name is Morgan Franklin. I'm a podcast producer, strategist, and educator. This podcast will help you create and grow a podcast that cuts through the noise of social media and speaks directly to your target audience. If you're ready to create a podcast that will align you with the experts in your industry, position yourself as a trusted leader and create another source of revenue for your business, you're in the right place. I've had so many names for this episode. One was stop sabotaging your own podcast one was how to get out of your own way. One was how to start believing in your podcasts and yourself. But the message is really all the same. Just like with everything in life, there is never a perfect time, you're never ready to do the hard things, you're never perfectly ready to make those big scary decisions that are going to change your life. Something we struggle so much with as podcasters. And just as human beings on this planet is wanting everything to be perfect. We want every picture every blog post, every email blast every podcast to be absolutely perfect. But that is just so not realistic. Not only is it not realistic, it just isn't what people want. Here's a really good example of how I know this is true the other day, I was really diving deep into my LinkedIn analytics. And if you've ever been in your LinkedIn Analytics, you know that is not a ton of fun. But I wanted to see what was performing and what wasn't. I kept noticing that these posts that I was making that kind of looked like a tweet, it was just like a plain graphic that looked like a screenshot of a tweet was performing really well. I'd say about 200% Better than like the perfectly branded curated posts that I had been making that took me like hours to make. So of course, like any content creator, I'm complaining to my fiance, and I said, I just can't believe these posts are doing so much better. Because in my mind, obviously they're kind of lazy. And he was like, Yeah, because it feels like it's coming from you. And that completely stopped me in my tracks. Because it feels like it's coming from me. It feels sincere, it feels real. I know I say this all the time. But social media just doesn't feel very social anymore. And I think so much of that is because it doesn't feel real. It doesn't feel real, because we've all been in that situation where when you're having like a really genuinely great time and someone pulls out their phone and they say, Okay, I'm going to take a video really quick, and you're just kind of thrown off because someone else is documenting your life. And there's for content, it doesn't feel real, because by this point, we've all had hundreds of situations where we've repositioned everything in a photo for a perfect shot. We're so used to train and curate our perfect life for the internet. And honestly, you kind of feel like that's going out of fashion. Nothing you ever do will be perfect. No solo episode, no interview, no recording, no blog post about an episode, nothing. And that's amazing. That's so freeing when you think about it. But it's even better when you think about the fact that no one wants that from you anyways, they want you. They want to connect with you. They want to hear your stories. They want to know when you've messed up because they're constantly messing up to. There is no benefit in trying to be perfect. And that's what I want you to remember more than anything. The anxiety you feel to do things right to an impossible standard is in no way an expectation that anyone else has a view for a minute, think about your favorite podcast, think about your favorite podcast hosts. Why do you love them? Probably because you have something in common right? And it's probably not that you both have a perfect family with 2.5 kids and a Golden Retriever and a white picket fence. It's probably because you both gone through something in common. That wasn't perfect. One of my favorite podcasters and comedians is Conan O'Brien and it's not because I relate to him for being a multimillion dollar late night host or a six foot five Irish Catholic guy. It's because he's goofy. He's weird. He's nerdy. He was a late bloomer as a kid and so was I never really knew where he fit in when he was younger, and as a young adult and professional, and honestly, I felt the exact same way. If you aren't sharing enough of who you truly are to find common ground with people, you will never have an audience, you will never have a podcast people see pop up on their phone and can't wait to listen to, because we can all do the analytical parts, right. And I believe there is tremendous value to that. But at the end of the day, if people don't like listening to you, and if that connection and comfort of spending time listening to your podcast isn't there, this is never going to work. A super simple exercise to work on if you're having trouble with this is think about podcasts you love. Think about the parasocial relationships you have with celebrities or influencers and think about what you have in common with them. Why do you like them? What have you bonded over with them? How can you bring that commonality into your podcast, maybe it's through storytelling, maybe it's showing your humor a little bit more than you currently do. Maybe it's episode topics about things you've had to work through, and how your listeners can benefit. Because at the end of the day, that's all any of us really want. We want to be seen, we want to be heard. And we want to feel like we aren't alone. The best advice I can give you, if you're feeling overwhelmed by podcasting, whether you just got started, or you're 100 episodes in and you want to give up completely, is to plan ahead. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. And I know that's so cheesy. But if your podcast is coming out every week, by the first day of the month, I want you to know at least what podcast episodes will be coming out that month. So for example, if you have a podcast that comes out every single week, on June 1, or the first of next month, when you're listening to this podcast, I want you to have all four episode topics laid out. You need to have your topics for each week. So you can ruminate on them, like let them slosh around in your brain for a few days. I never record a podcast episode right after I think of the idea. Normally, I have about 10 weeks of episode ideas in my phone. And I'll just keep making notes on every episode and things that I want to talk about. So when the time actually comes to do my scripting and to do my recording, I've had enough time to actually get ready and actually think about what I want to talk about instead of being rushed and forgetting all the things that I really want to say. The next thing is people don't care nearly as much as you think they do. Of course, there will always be people who are personally invested in seeing you succeed or fail. But for the most part, people don't really care that much, or at least as much as we think they do. I think this is something that freaks people out about launching a podcast. We think all these people are going to be listening every week sending it back and forth and laughing about all the dumb things that we've said. And maybe that's true, maybe it is but you know, what a listen is a listen and a download is a download. And if people are so bent over your podcast, that they're sending it back and forth to each other to make fun of you. You're doing something right? Because I've worked with many, many podcasters that would do anything for a solid base of listeners resending their episodes back and forth, no matter what the intentions are. A quick story about this, I teach a social media and branding class at a local beauty school and about 90% of these kids hate posting on social media. So a couple of weeks ago, I just asked him, I was like, Why do you guys not like posting on social media? That's the whole reason I'm here, I want to help you. And one of the students said, I can see every time one of my posts is sent to someone else. And I know it's someone being mean, just for context for you. This is one of the best students in the school. They have an amazing social media, they make great posts, they do great hair, and it just totally caught me off guard. Because like this student is so talented, how could they feel this way? But I think that's a huge point of insecurity for a lot of us. We've told ourselves that anytime we're having a tension put on us, it's bad. It's for a bad reason. And like that students, so many of us just assume people sharing the posts or sharing our podcasts or talking about us is because they're making fun of us. And really, when I thought about why someone would be sharing her post, I thought it was because they looked really good. So I need you to kind of start reframing the way that you think about people talking about you. Because if you are succeeding in podcasting, people will be talking about you. But if you are constantly thinking that they're saying something bad about you, that mindset is going to drive you completely insane. And I go back to the fact that none of us are perfect and no one wants you to be perfect. No one is born knowing how to podcast no one is born knowing how to interview someone. You have to learn and you have to do these things before you're ready and you have to keep doing them. The one thing I can promise. Unless you is that you are going to get better. If you are putting in the time and effort consistently, you will get better there is no question about it. I have never worked with a podcaster ever in my entire career that has not improved from trying every week. But you have to show up for yourself. And you have to give yourself a little bit of grace along the way. Podcasting is the long game, sometimes the really, really, really long game. Every week, I see people on podcasting groups just falling apart because they been a whole month and they only got X number of listens. You cannot judge the progress of your podcast after a month. Like I always want to comment this, but I don't because I don't want to hurt their feelings even more. But I'm like, you cannot judge your podcast after a month. If you are airing a new episode every single week for six months, I think you can start to see where you're standing. But it will take six months just for people to realize you even have a podcast and I know this from starting multiple podcasts and thinking everyone knew exactly what I was doing. But I promise they did not. Before six months, nobody even knows you have a podcast. Commit yourself to making an entire year worth of podcasts if you really want to see the progress you're making. And you don't need to drag yourself down about the numbers. Until then, if you have a podcast for a full year, and you release an episode every week, that's 52 episodes. If after 52 episodes, an entire year of this show, you still think you haven't seen any progress at all, which I can tell you right now is not going to happen. But let's just pretend you have my full permission to go on any Facebook group and complain about how many downloads you have. But until then, until one full year, you just have to commit yourself to the process. And the last thing I want to talk about is you being embarrassed or afraid to talk about your podcast. Because like I said, most people, they just don't care. They don't care what you have going on. They don't care what's going on with anyone but themselves. So you are not bothering them by talking about your podcast. But if you aren't talking about your podcast, no one is ever going to know about it. People very, very rarely just organically find podcasts. And I'm so sorry. If someone told you that just by posting your podcast, you are going to become a successful podcaster. But that is just not true. And if you aren't talking about your show, no one is going to know about it. Even if you are talking about it, you still have to get people to actually care enough to listen to it. So do not ever be embarrassed to talk about your podcast. There are so many things in life to be afraid of, and to feeling anxiety about. As someone that has chronic anxiety. I just want you to know that your podcast should not be one of them. You are worthy of all of the successes coming to you. You are worthy of taking up space, you are worthy of sharing your opinion, you are worthy of having a podcast and not only that you're worthy of having a podcast but you're worthy of having a podcast that exceeds every expectation you have for it. If no one has told you lately, I want you to know that you are capable of everything you put your mind to. you've conquered every challenge that has been put before you. And this is no different. You aren't perfect, and no one wants you to be and I can't wait to listen to your podcast. Hey, thank you so much for joining me on this episode. If you enjoyed the podcast and you'd like to hear more episodes like this one, go ahead and subscribe to the show new episodes air every Monday morning and if you found this episode valuable and you want to help other business owners and podcasters will you leave me a five star review? 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