68. 3 Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting a Podcast (1 Year Podcasting Reflections, Struggles, and Advice)

The podcast turns one year old this week! In this episode, I’m reflecting on the journey and sharing some things that I wish I had known before I started. I'll share where I've struggled (and where you might be too!) and the techniques that you can use to overcome these challenges. 

This episode was produced by me, The Podcast Teacher! Contact me at Hello@ThePodcastTeacher.com.

Transcript

Hey, hey, and welcome back. This podcast turns 1 year old this week. And today, I'm reflecting on the journey and sharing some things that I wish I knew before I started. Podcasting can be challenging, and I've struggled in a few areas over the past year. Maybe you're experiencing similar things. So in today's episode, you'll learn the techniques that I'm using to manage these challenges and that you can too. Before we get into the struggles, I think it's important to take just a moment to celebrate some wins that happened over the past year. This show started out as podcasting for introverts.

And as I gained clarity through action, stay tuned, that's an important component of the struggles. As I gained clarity through action, it became podcasting for solopreneurs. I've released 68 episodes, only one of which was a repeat episode, and I only missed releasing an episode once. In the fall, I moved from 1 episode a week to 2 a week, and the podcast just surpassed 15,000 total downloads. I am so proud of these accomplishments, but it definitely has not been all sunshine and roses. So let's jump into some of the struggles that I've experienced and what I wish I knew before starting my podcast. The first thing that I wish I knew is that imposter syndrome doesn't go away after watching. When getting ready to start the podcast, I was fully anticipating the imposter syndrome to set in, and I was equipped to move through it when it did.

Starting and committing to the project is one of the hardest steps. For myself and for so many of the people that I've worked with, simply hitting publish on the podcast is a huge achievement because of the mental battle that it took to get there. It's normal to experience thoughts like, why should I start a podcast when there's already so many in my industry? I can't compare to so and so. Their show is amazing. These thoughts are totally normal when you're thinking about starting, and it can be a really big hurdle to overcome. I knew it. I experienced it, and I overcame it. What I didn't expect was that it would continue to creep in from time to time after I started.

I had viewed it as kind of a one and done. Check, Overcame imposter syndrome and actually started my podcast. Woo hoo. Nope. It's an ongoing challenge, at least it is for me. Sometimes, I'm not thrilled with the way an episode turns out or the stats that I'm seeing, and I start questioning if I should even be doing this. There are people out there who are more experienced and more knowledgeable than me. Maybe I shouldn't bother.

Perfectionism really plays into this for me personally. I am a huge perfectionist, and I hold myself to really high standards, and I'm my own worst critic. That's an entire episode for another day. But the point is that I didn't expect the journey to be this hard mentally. I wish I knew to expect the imposter syndrome to continue after getting past the launch. In case you're facing something similar, here are some techniques that I'm using to manage it. 1st and foremost, I minimize the content that I consume from others in my field. There are a ton of people out there doing great things in the podcasting world, and consuming their content is kind of like rolling out the red carpet and inviting comparisonitis and imposter syndrome in.

I'll admit that this can sometimes be challenging as I'm always interested in learning new techniques and staying informed about the latest trends, so it's a balance. When I'm feeling pretty good, I spend time learning from my colleagues who are leaders in the industry. When the imposter syndrome is hitting particularly hard, I table my continuing education for another day. The other thing that I do is remind myself of things I've accomplished. I read testimonials that I've received, reviews for this podcast. I go in and look at the achievements in my Buzzsprout stats. My husband and my biz bestie are also good at noticing when I'm feeling a bit discouraged, and they give me pep talks that always get me feeling a bit better. So having a good support system, whether that's family, friends, colleagues, even a pet that can just give you a good snuggle, that is really important.

Okay. Moving on. The second thing that I wish I knew before starting my podcast is that there's always more to learn, and best practices are constantly changing. And sometimes that knowledge is a distraction. So I've always loved learning. I mean, my first career was as an elementary school teacher. You don't get much closer to a passion for learning than that, So it's not surprising that I love to take courses and participate in memberships and read newsletters and go to conferences. Seriously, it could be my full time job to literally just learn new things.

But the more time I spend learning, the less time I spend doing. And that balance can get really out of whack, and I get very little actually accomplished. To give you an example, I literally spent the past two days learning all about Pinterest strategy because I wanna start marketing my podcast on Pinterest. I learned the basics, but then instead of implementing that knowledge and doing things, creating pins for different episodes, I chose to keep learning. And I went down the deep rabbit hole of Pinterest, SEO, and other strategies. Guess how many pins I've created over the past 2 days? Only one. So a lot of learning. A lot, a lot, a lot of learning.

Not a lot of doing. That's not so great. If you're in a similar situation, here are a few tips. And as is evident by the Pinterest example that I just gave, I am still working on this. So I don't claim to have it all figured out, but I have gotten better at it over the past year. And so I wanna share some things that are working for me that might work for you. The first thing that was really important is to recognize that this is a procrastination technique and to call myself out for it. This relates to the imposter syndrome struggle that I just talked about a few minutes ago because when I'm experiencing that mindset of I'm not good enough, I want to avoid anything that may deepen that feeling.

I experience fear around taking action. I'm afraid of failure and putting myself out there. So I spend my time learning so that I don't have to do the hard things that I may or may not, quote, unquote, fail at. Learning is my cozy and safe comfort zone. Nothing bad will happen to me while I'm just learning. It's an avoidance tactic to procrastinate on the things that really need to get done. Ouch. Right? Oof.

Admitting the problem is always the first step, and it took me a long time to admit that this was an underlying reason behind a lot of my learning. Not all of it, but a lot of it. The next step is to look at the big picture goals and determine which learning aligns with those goals. As a podcast coach, my own podcast is one of the most important assets in my business. And one of my big goals is to increase my monthly downloads by 20% in the next 90 days. Now I need to take action if I want to achieve that goal. It's not going to just happen because I want it to happen. So spending time learning how to market my podcast using Pinterest qualifies as a good use of my time and resources.

That's not always the case. Usually, the answer is no. This is a shiny object that does not align with my goals and is not something that I should be spending my time on right now. But this particular Pinterest example passes the test. But then we get into the 3rd and final step, which is to spend equal time learning and doing as a maximum. Really, I should spend way more time doing than learning, but I'm setting realistic goals based on where I am right now. And for me, 5050 learning and doing is realistic to strive for. This is where I failed big time in the Pinterest example.

Again, I'm still a work in progress. Even though learning Pinterest strategy is a worthwhile use of time and not in and of itself solely a procrastination tactic, 2 entire days spent dedicated to learning certainly was. I spent 99% of my time learning and 1% doing because I was procrastinating. Graphic design is not my strong suit, and I quickly discovered that creating pins that look good is very challenging. Taking that action was uncomfortable, so I kept returning to the cozy, safe learning space to avoid the doing. And now I really have nothing to show for all of that time spent. While I didn't succeed in this particular instance, striving for that 5050 ratio has helped me in the past. Sometimes I even set a timer to help keep me on track.

So as you're thinking about your podcast goals, make sure to choose learning that aligns. If you want to grow your podcast audience, learning how to edit is probably not a worthwhile use of your time and is a distraction. If you purchase my growth program, that aligns with your goal. Yay. But if you just consume the lessons without implementing any of the techniques, that's not doing anything for you, and it's just serving as a distraction and a procrastination technique. Before I started my podcast, I was unprepared for how many temptations there would be to learn new podcasting skills and how many of them would simply be distractions along my journey. Alright. And the third thing that I wish I knew before I started my podcast is that knowing podcasting and doing podcasting are 2 different things.

I came up with this as an entirely separate concept from my second point about procrastination learning, but as I'm flushing out this episode, it's obvious that there's a lot of overlap. So I won't repeat all of what I just said, and we'll just add on to it a bit. The bottom line is that there's no substitute for doing the work. I helped other people launch their podcasts before starting my own, and I was confident in my skills. I knew what to do, but actually doing it was a different story. It's kind of like learning to drive. You can watch someone, you can cognitively understand when to press the gas and when to press the brake, you can score a 100% on the written test, but actually driving, actually pressing the gas when you're supposed to press the gas, actually pressing the brake when you're supposed to press the brake, that's an entirely different story. You can't do it until you do it, and I wish that I had done it sooner.

It being starting my podcast. It would have moved the needle with my skills and in my business so much faster. So my advice here is to start the podcast if you haven't yet, and keep going if you have. Despite the successes that I talked about in the beginning, there have been many times over the past year where I was tempted to throw in the towel. It's part of the process. But the only way to build your podcasting muscle is to put in the reps to keep doing it. It can be very challenging at times. But if you just keep going, you get better and better at it.

The times that you're tempted to quit become fewer and further apart. You get faster. You get more efficient. The process gets easier. And before you know it, you've hit the 1 year mark and are sailing right past it. Until next time, happy podcasting. You've got this.