Jade Boyd: When I was starting out, I had a lot of imposter syndrome around only creating two episodes a month and feeling like that wasn’t enough or it wasn’t going to be worth it. And that’s definitely not the case. Consistency doesn’t have to mean every single day or every single week in anything that you’re doing in terms of your marketing. But if you do want it to be something that you commit to over time, and you gradually do want to do something more frequently, you have to start by committing to a frequency that you can actually do this week, this season.

Welcome to the 100th episode of this podcast, which is crazy even saying out loud because podcasting is like, it’s a ride. It is a crazy ride and journey and it’s really insane to me that this is already the 100th episode because it’s gone by so quickly. And I just want to start out by saying thank you so much.

If you’re somebody who has listened to the podcast for a while, or if you’re a follower of the podcast, I appreciate every single person who subscribes and listens to this podcast on a weekly basis, because it really is. it’s a lot of work to publish a weekly podcast. And in this episode, I’m going to share a lot of my takeaways and what I’ve learned after a hundred episodes of what it actually takes to show up consistently and create good content for a podcast and a lot of these things are things that I wish I would have known when I started a podcast. So if you’re thinking about starting a podcast, this is going to be a really helpful episode for you. If you already have a podcast, maybe there’s some tips and tricks that you’re going to learn in this episode. And maybe we’re just going to commiserate a little bit together on some of the hard parts and the hard parts of the journey of growing a podcast.

And being that this is the 100th episode, I do want to celebrate that because showing up and creating a hundred podcast episodes, like I said, it took a lot of work and it’s been an up and down journey. And I’m very proud to say that I have a podcast with a hundred episodes now. It feels like a really important milestone and I don’t want to just skip past that.

And so to help me celebrate, I would really appreciate if again, you’ve been listening to the podcast for a while, or you’re a follower, if you haven’t yet rated and reviewed this podcast on whatever platform you’re listening to. Please, please hit pause and go scroll and leave me a review. Let me know what you’ve thought of the podcast so far and rate it on your favorite platform.

And if you want to go above and beyond and just make my day or make my week this week, if you’re not listening on the day, this goes live. If you want to screenshot one of your favorite recent episodes and share that to Instagram stories and tag me. Every time somebody shares a podcast episode on Instagram and tags me, it makes my day. It makes me so happy that you guys are learning from and enjoying this content on the podcast, because I do put a lot of time and intention into creating as best content as I can for this podcast. And it just makes a huge difference knowing that people are actually listening and benefiting from what I’m putting out there.

So if you want to help me celebrate and make this week, all the more special. Again, Rating, review, sharing your favorite episode, all of those things are so, so appreciated.

And this episode is going to have a little bit of a different flow to it. I do have like 10 overarching things that I’ve learned from my first hundred episodes, but I’m just going to kind of act like we’re sitting down for coffee and I’m chatting with you as if you’re somebody who doesn’t know anything about podcasting and telling you about my journey and what I’ve learned since the beginning of this podcasting journey until today, some of the things I wish I would have done differently from the beginning. Some of the things that were harder lessons to learn that I wish somebody would have told me earlier on. And some things that just come with practice and experience and showing up a hundred times to record long form content.

So you’re going to get some real behind the scenes looks at what it looks like for me on the back end of my business as a podcaster. So let’s just dive in. Like I said, I have 10 main things that I want to cover and some stories and examples to share along the way.

So the first thing that I have learned after a hundred episodes is that you just have to start before you’re ready. You’re never going to be ready to start a podcast. And even after a hundred episodes, I still feel a little bit like an amateur, even though I’ve gotten worlds and worlds better than from when I first started, both in terms of like the workflow and organization and content structure and sound quality and all of those things after a hundred episodes, it’s gotten so, so much better, but I still don’t feel like quote unquote, ready to be a podcaster.

So if you’re waiting for a magical moment where you feel like, yeah, I have what it takes to be a podcaster. It’s never going to happen. You just have to start before you’re ready.

And what actually inspired me to start this podcast, I think I’ve told this story on the podcast before, but my friend Molly Knuth, who also has an amazing podcast called The Found Podcast. I remember listening to one of her podcast episodes about podcasting. So super, super meta here. And she shared that she bought her podcast microphone before she was ready to actually start recording episodes.

And she had that on her desk for a while reminding her that that was like a goal that she was pursuing and that pushed her to take the next steps. And I remember listening to that episode thinking like, hmm, someday I want to start a podcast, but maybe I should just get the mic and take the next step even if I don’t feel a hundred percent ready to record my next episode tomorrow. And so I did that. So thank you, Molly, for the initial inspiration and motivation to take the first step and to buy that first podcast mic, and to just get started creating content before I thought that I was perfectly ready.

I also initially had no idea what I wanted to even call my podcast, and I launched my podcast before I had a podcast name that I actually liked. So if you’ve been following from the very beginning, you’ll know that I launched this podcast under the name The Jade Boyd Podcast, which is the most generic and not SEO friendly podcast name to choose, but I had no better ideas and I knew that I just needed to get started and get something up there and changing your podcast title is actually not a huge deal when you see the behind the scenes of what managing podcast content actually looks like.

And so I started with the Jade Boyd podcast and I think I did that for like six weeks maybe. And I was still thinking of podcasting names that felt more aligned. It would make more sense from an SEO perspective. And I think after six ish weeks, I changed the podcast name to The Business Minimalist, which is what it’s been for a very long time.

And disclaimer, in real time as I’m recording this, I’m thinking about changing the podcast title again, due to trademark issues that have come up. And so the podcast name might even be different at the time that you’re listening to this podcast. It might not be The Business Minimalist anymore. And again, I never would have known that starting out and there’s certain things like that that might feel really important or it might feel like you have to have that figured out before you launch a podcast, when in reality, yes, it’s more convenient and more efficient if you have that decided right out the gate and it would be nice not to have to change those things because changing the podcast name does mean changing the cover art and the title and the intro and outro. But at the end of the day, that’s not a huge deal and it should not prevent you from getting started.

And I wish starting out that somebody would have told me that, or somebody would have been this example for me, letting me know that not everything has to be decided. Not everything has to be finalized. You don’t have to have this perfect plan in place and the ultimate strategy for your podcast in place before, you know, you’re ready to just start creating content and see where it goes.

So lesson number one, start before you’re ready.

I guess before we move on, one other way that I’ve seen this come up is that even now, after a hundred episodes, I see myself falling into that trap in different ways, like reaching out to potential guests, for example. There are certain guests that even now I would love to have them on the podcast, but I feel like I’m not ready, or I’m not a good enough interviewer, or even people that I’m pitching to be guests on their podcasts that I feel like someday I’ll be ready to pitch them, but I’m just going to wait until I have a little bit more experience or my talking points are a little bit more refined.

And so, this is also something that I need to remind myself of and tell myself today because it is true at the beginning of your podcast, but it’s also true now.

The second lesson I’ve learned after 100 episodes is that you find your voice just by showing up. You’re not going to think this through or just sit down and plan out your episode or even your topic structure and have this perfect plan in place. This kind of goes hand in hand with the first point, but I think podcasters think that they have to be great at speaking into a microphone with nobody listening to them for an extended amount of time in order to start a podcast, but you find your voice by recording a bunch of content and practicing over and over again. And even from a topic perspective, I started out creating a lot of podcast episodes that were mostly focused on productivity. I, of course, talked about productivity from a business owner’s perspective and how that helps with your business.

But over the last, even like six months or 20 ish episodes, I’ve pivoted and created a lot more content on the strategy and marketing and like business management side of things. And so my voice has not only evolved in terms of my ability to sit down and talking to a microphone, which. I can always be better at and I have plenty of room to grow in that as my podcast editor will probably tell you, because he sees all of the raw cuts and all of the, all of the times that I mess up my words and have to start over.

But also my voice has evolved in terms of the topics that this podcast covers and what it focuses on. And now I would say, even within the last couple of months, I’ve transitioned into more of a mix where it’s part guest episode, part solo episode. I’m doing more guest episodes than I used to do. I’m also creating kind of an equal mix, 50, 50 of more productivity focused episodes versus business strategy focused episodes.

And again, you’re not going to have that perfect plan in place when you start out, you’ll find your voice. You’ll find the topics that resonate well with your audience just by showing up and creating content and not by overthinking it.

The third thing that I’ve learned after a hundred episodes is that podcasting is very much a team sport. I cannot imagine running this podcast by myself anymore. When I first started out, I think I was doing two episodes a month, and then eventually I went to biweekly. So some months have five weeks, obviously. So some months were two episodes, some months were three episodes. But now, ever since last July, so for the last, almost a year at this point, ten months, I’ve been doing weekly episodes and finally committed to doing that. And I don’t think that that would be possible for me, if it was just me. I just really don’t think it’s possible to show up that consistently with how much work it takes to produce every single episode of a podcast.

And it really depends on your format. Like if you’re doing five minute podcast episodes, then sure, potentially you could do that on your own, but I feel like I’ve just learned that leaning on other people when it comes to podcasting is so important because I do value showing up consistently.

And we’re going to talk about that in a second. But, it makes a world of difference, not only in having the help and saving the time for creating every episode, but also having that built in accountability and people on my team who are going to be asking me, hey, Jade, where’s that podcast recording? Or, hey, you mentioned this link in the episode, have you actually created that free resource? It’s going to be due, like I have to put this in, like, you know, those little nudges that are pushing me to actually do the things that I promised myself I would do that is so incredibly helpful.

And it’s not only the people on my team. So I mentioned, I have an amazing podcast editor, Colton shout out to Colton. And if he’s okay with this, I’ll include his email address in the show notes, because he is an amazing podcast editor. He is so talented when it comes to editing audio. He cares way more about the quality of audio on this podcast than I do.

And it is great to have somebody on your team that cares more about something than you do. That is a huge blessing to me. And so he’s constantly trying to improve the audio quality. He gifted me this podcast microphone, which I can also link in the show notes when he started doing my editing to help me get better audio quality.

If I record a certain episode and the audio is off for any reason, he’ll message me about it so that we’re able to fix any issues before we batch more episodes and he just goes above and beyond to make sure that the audio quality on this podcast is the best that it could possibly be. And I am so appreciative of him, because if it was me editing, I know that I would cut corners and just not care as much about that part of the podcast, but it’s great having somebody on my team who actually has the time and skill and expertise to care about those things. And I’m sure you guys as listeners appreciate that as well. I know that I appreciate listening to podcasts when they have good audio quality too.

The second person on my team who I really appreciate is my virtual assistant, and she does all of the nitty gritty admin work when it comes to scheduling every single episode. And you would think that that wouldn’t be a huge deal after a full podcast episode is recorded to just get it scheduled on the platform, but there’s actually a really gigantic checklist that comes with scheduling every single episode when it comes to writing the show notes and making sure all of the right links are in every episode, that it’s scheduled at the right time, that the transcript is there, that the entire blog post is written and has the right Pinterest graphic to pin on the blog post, the entire SEO checklist for every blog post, because we do all of our show notes on my website in my blog.

There’s just so much work that comes with scheduling every single episode. And she saves me so much time on a weekly basis because we’re doing weekly episodes, getting all of those things scheduled ahead of time. And I know that when I was trying to do that all on my own, that was the one thing that would hold me up because there’s such an extensive checklist for getting every single episode scheduled. And so oftentimes I would have the episodes recorded and they’d be edited and ready to go, but I would procrastinate on actually getting them live and out there. And so she holds me accountable to making sure everything is done on a weekly basis by the deadline and that everything looks neat and tidy, that there’s photos and graphics and links. And that everything that I mentioned in the episode is actually provided for you guys. So that is a huge weight off my shoulders as well.

Podcasting is also a team sport because you guys are a part of this too. I so appreciate all of the topic ideas and feedback and comments and reviews that you guys leave for me. I also get a lot of topic ideas from conversations with my coaching clients or from watching other people’s stories on Instagram and the things that they’re struggling with when it comes to marketing and strategy and productivity.

I’m definitely not podcasting in a silo, just coming up with ideas on my own. You all are the inspiration. And the motivation for me to show up on a weekly basis and create this content. And so I really do appreciate whenever a podcast listener messages me with a question about an episode or tells me about how they implemented a certain routine or process or strategy that was mentioned on the episode, I love just having those conversations and connecting with you all, but it also just gives me so many new ideas for podcast content, and I do think that finalizing the ideas for the topics is something that takes me. More time than I would like it to at this point. And so having clear, specific suggestions from you guys is super, super helpful.

And I’ve created like an official form that you can fill out. So if you don’t want to message me on. Instagram, if you just want to submit your podcast idea on that form, I’ll link that in the show notes as well. And that’s another huge way that you can support this podcast moving forward, because I really do want to create content that you guys actually care about consuming.

And then one last shout out showing that podcasting is a team sport is just all of the amazing guests that I’ve been able to interview on this podcast. Those are some of the most valuable and most interesting episodes for me, at least, like, obviously, everything that I’m teaching on the podcast. I already know that’s part of teaching.

I don’t learn anything from solo episodes that I’m teaching myself, but the amazing guests I know you all have enjoyed so many of those episodes as well, and I’m just like blown away by the level of value and expertise and free resources that the guests on the show have been able to bring to the podcast.

And also just all of the amazing conversations that happen before and after we hit record and all of the advice and encouragement that they’ve been able to give me on their area of expertise and like individualized advice based on what we talked about during the episode. It’s just been an amazing experience.

And like I said, when I first started out, I didn’t do as many guest episodes and now I’m doing more and more for that reason, because I know that all of the guests on this show are such a valuable part of that team and a valuable part of growing the podcast and providing as much value as possible to you all as well.

So lesson number three, podcasting is for sure a team sport.

Lesson number four is to make content that you would want to listen to. I think when I first started podcasting, I way over thought the strategy behind everything to a certain extent. And I wish that somebody would have told me just focus on creating content that you would want to listen to create a podcast that you would subscribe to.

And like I said, you’re never going to teach something on your podcast that you don’t already know. So creating solo episodes can sometimes feel really boring or generic, or like you’re not providing any value to people. And I think that’s just a mental hurdle that you need to overcome when you’re podcasting, because just because you know it and it’s old news to you does not mean that it’s not revolutionary information or transformation to somebody who’s listening to your podcast. That’s the way that it should be.

But going back to making content that I would want to listen to, I’ve become way more intentional about weaving in stories and real world examples into my podcasting content, which makes it more fun to record and makes it more fun for me to think about the examples of how these principles come to life in my own life in business.

But it also just makes it easier to hit record. And when I have a bullet point of like, tell this story, it just comes off more natural. And to me, it feels like the content is more interesting, but it’s also just more fun for me to record too. And I have noticed that when I am creating content just to fill the calendar or it’s not something that I’m passionate about talking about or excited to show up and talk about, it’s draining, I get demotivated, I procrastinate on actually recording the episode because it doesn’t seem fun or exciting to me, and so going through the process of planning content and asking myself, is this something that I’m excited to talk about? Is this an episode that I would want to listen to? That’s just been a really helpful checkpoint for me to kind of filter my content ideas through that lens of. Am I creating a podcast that I would want to subscribe to?

Also, it makes me more excited to share the episodes when they finally are alive, because I’ve definitely created some episodes that I’m like, oh, it’s technically live, but I kind of hope nobody sees it because I’m not super excited about that episode. There’ve definitely been a few of those sprinkled in there.

And it’s so funny that I feel like a few of those have been the episodes that you guys have loved the most, which is just really ironic to me, but when I do show up and pick content ideas that I’m really excited to record, I’m also more excited to share them on the backend, which obviously just contributes to the overall success of the podcast when I’m doing that more consistently.

So after a hundred episodes, I have learned that it’s so important to create content that I would want to listen to.

And this one I did not write down ahead of time, but I feel like it kind of fits in this category. I do think it’s important to listen to your own podcast every once in a while. Nobody likes listening to their own voice. And even for me, it’s kind of painful to queue up any episode on this podcast or even other people’s podcasts that I’ve guest interviewed on.

Whenever it comes up in my podcast queue, I have this just weird feeling of like ugh, I am so embarrassed. I don’t want to listen to myself speak. And every single time I’ve done it, I’ve been surprised. I’m like, wow, that actually sounds pretty good. I mean, part of that is due to Colton’s editing and part of it is due to just like, when you’re in the moment, I think at least for me, I tend to overthink things and I never think that it goes well. I’m always just thinking of the things that I could have done better or things that I could have outlined better, things I could have worded differently. But then listening back, especially to some of like the guest interviews that I’ve done on other people’s podcasts, it has only increased my confidence, even if I hear myself mess up, or if I notice again that I should have worded that differently, or I forgot to bring up this point, which would have been really powerful or really added a lot more dimension or clarity to that.

I still overall just feel way better after listening back to it because it kind of gives you a dose of reality of like, oh, this is what it actually sounds like. And it’s not nearly as bad as I was imagining in my mind. It’s actually pretty good. And maybe I’ll share that more often. So along with making content you want to listen to, listen back to your own content if you’re a podcaster or if you’re thinking about starting a podcast, it is a discipline. It might be really uncomfortable, but it’s also just going to make you so much more confident. One, because you’ll see things actually as they are and not as you are imagining them to be.

But two, you can also notice some of your like ticks and trends and how can you improve or like different points that you miss that you want to mention on future episodes. It just makes you a better podcaster overall.

Okay, lesson number five that I’ve learned after 100 episodes is that if podcasting is worth doing for your business, it’s worth doing consistently. And I think that this is true of anything. This is not unique to podcasting. Anything worth doing in your business, especially when it comes to marketing, is worth doing consistently.

And podcasting is not an exception to that rule. It follows the rule to a tee. And like I said, I’ve been doing weekly episodes since last July, but it doesn’t have to be weekly episodes to be consistent. And from the very beginning, I had commitments to how consistently I was showing up month after month. And at first that was only two episodes a month. And that’s what I could do when it was just me. And I did it consistently and I committed to that. And that was really important in keeping the momentum going. There’s this huge thing in podcasting called podfade, where over time, most podcasters stop creating content because it is a lot of work.

And they don’t have the processes in place, or they’re not passionate about the idea. They’re not truly committed to building their podcast. I wish that I would have pulled some of the stats for this. I don’t have them for you, but pod fade is a huge thing. And the majority of podcasters don’t get past like their 10th episode or something like that. It’s a very small number of episodes. And so just the fact that I have a hundred episodes is crazy to me because I knew those stats starting out and of course, everyone thinks they’re going to be the exception to the rule, right? Like I’m not going to be that statistic of podcasters who just drop their dreams.

Of course, I’m going to show up and grow this amazing podcast. We’re very optimistic at the beginning of anything that we try doing, but I do think committing to that consistency and being realistic in the beginning of how many episodes I could actually produce on my own was really, really important. And now that I’m in a groove of things and have a team, It’s all the easier to show up consistently on a more frequent basis at this point, weekly episodes.

But when I was starting out, I had a lot of imposter syndrome around only creating two episodes a month and feeling like that wasn’t enough or it wasn’t going to be worth it. And that’s definitely not the case. Consistency doesn’t have to mean every single day or every single week in anything that you’re doing in terms of your marketing. But if you do want it to be something that you commit to over time, and you gradually do want to do something more frequently, you have to start by committing to a frequency that you can actually do this week, this season.

And even with taking my maternity leave this summer, I’m still committed to weekly episodes. I’m still committed to batching a lot of content ahead of time, especially for guest episodes and some solo episodes over the summer, but also trying out some new strategies to repurpose old content so that I can extend my maternity leave and the time that I have away from business into the fall. So potentially coming up this fall, you might see some episodes of me guest interviewing on other people’s podcasts, content that had already been recorded, or even content that I recorded previously on the podcast that I’m updating based on things that have changed.

Consistency doesn’t have to mean creating brand new content every single time you’re releasing content, but I do think with podcasting, I want this to be a valuable resource that you guys are showing up every single week and listening to and getting new value from. And in order to do that, I have to be consistent. I can’t show up once every six months. And I’ve noticed this with guest interviewing too. When I’m looking at different podcasts that I want to pitch or podcasts that I want to listen to just for personal reasons, like podcasts I’d be interested in following, I look at the last time that they have released an episode. And if it’s been like three or more months ago, I know that they’re not serious about podcasting and it’s probably not going to be a podcast worth following. And I don’t want people to look at my podcast and think that, think like, oh, she doesn’t actually care about creating content or this isn’t going to be worth my time because she’s obviously not showing up consistently and all this information is already outdated.

And part of that is just perception, right? It’s not actually true. I’m sure there’s a lot of great podcast content on podcasts who don’t show up regularly, but it’s the perception of actually being committed to something and dedicated to it and seeing that they’re creating new content and having that come up on my feed more often.

So lesson number five is if podcasting is worth doing for your business, it’s worth doing consistently.

Okay, lesson number six is that having guests on my podcast is a valuable investment of my time. This is something that I’ve definitely learned over my first hundred episodes. Like I said, when I first started out, I definitely did less guest episodes, and part of that was because I was creating less content, but even six months ago, I think I was doing mostly solo episodes and one guest episode a month. And now I’m ramping that up to two guest episodes. So almost half my content being guest episodes. And this is for a few reasons, just because I’ve seen the value of having guests on this podcast over time.

First, it’s made me a way better podcast guest.

Just practicing having those conversations with other people on my podcast and thinking through the structure and the format of it, but also listening to how they respond to questions and how they guide the conversation and how they show up as a guest, especially people who are really practiced at podcast guesting.

It only makes me a better podcast guest, which is a huge part of my marketing strategy, getting in front of new audiences and building my email list by a guest interviewing on other people’s podcasts. So I just learn a lot through the process of guest podcasting and also looking at all of their pitches, because it makes me think differently about the pitches that I’m sending to other podcasts, because if you have a podcast, you’ll know that there are so many cold pitches that come in. And after a hundred episodes, I get them almost every single day of like, hey, Jade, this topic would be perfect. And the majority of them are terrible fits for this podcast. And it’s somebody that I would never interview in a podcast like this.

I’m like, did you even look at the description of what we talk about or like who I have on as guests? Absolutely not for most of them. And so even from having other people pitch me to be on this podcast, I learned a lot from the good pitches. Of course, there have been some phenomenal pitches where I’m like, ooh, I am going to add that topic or add that section to my next pitch, but also from the bad pitches and reinforcing the things that I never want to do when I’m pitching other people to be guests on their podcasts.

It’s also been really great to do podcast swaps where I’m interviewing on somebody else’s podcast, and they are also interviewing on mine. I think podcast swaps are really fun to do, but it’s also opened some doors to help me get on bigger name podcasts with much larger audiences that I maybe wouldn’t have had the chance to guest interview on had I not had the opportunity to have them as a guest on my podcast as well.

And then overall, it’s just really helpful in growing podcast, listenership and getting my podcasts and all of my solo episodes and all the other content here in front of new audiences, because all of my guests episode, all of my guests, experts are also sharing that link with their email list and their Instagram following.

And getting this podcast in front of a lot of new eyeballs. And it’s just been really helpful in terms of growing my followers and subscribers and downloads for the podcast to have more guest episodes and more guest experts come. And like I also said, it’s just really fun to build real relationships when you’re actually able to sit down and have a one on one call with another business owner.

A lot of the conversations that happen before and after those episodes are so valuable to me and to them and actually building a real relationship and a lot of the people that just have like cold pitched or we haven’t really had a relationship or have just followed each other on social media, but not known each other really well.

Then they guest interview on the podcast and I feel like we actually have a real business relationship where I’m able to reach out to them and ask them questions or I’ve invited several of them to be guest experts in my coaching program or vice versa. They’ve invited me to their coaching programs to guest present on productivity and business minimalist strategies.

And there’s just a lot of unexpected opportunities that come out of building those relationships. And guest podcasting is such an easy way for somebody, especially like me, who’s more introverted and not the life of the party to build real relationships where it does turn into collaboration opportunities down the road.

Okay. Lesson number seven is that the numbers don’t always paint the full picture. When I first started this podcast, I had like big dreams to be able to say that this was a top 100 business podcast. And it comes up at the top of search whenever somebody is searching like business or productivity on iTunes. And although that would still be cool. I have since learned that having a quote unquote chart topping podcast is down to a lot of luck and actually doesn’t really mean much at the end of the day. When you look at how podcast rankings are actually determined, a lot of people can cheat their way onto, into the top 100 business podcast on iTunes or whatever that is because of the way the metrics are formulated.

And even with like their first episode, they could be a chart topping podcast, technically the way the stats are done. And so numbers are not. Everything. And so for me over time, of course, my listeners have grown, my downloads have grown, it’s definitely been slower than I imagined it would be or hoped it would be, but ultimately I’ve been okay with that because I’ve seen the numbers on the back end of my business and what this podcast does in terms of email list growth and the number of clients, almost every single client who’s hired me for coaching has said, I’ve been binging your podcast and I agree with you on all of these things and I’ve wanted to apply for a while, you know, that’s the story that I hear over and over again. And so there are different things that make this podcast worth showing up for and the numbers don’t always paint the full picture, but especially when I was starting out and those first like six to 12 months when I wasn’t creating content super frequently and wasn’t seeing those results, the numbers were very disheartening starting out. And I wish that somebody would have told me that those numbers aren’t everything. And look at the bigger picture, look at what this is actually driving on the back end of your business. And those things are important too.

And like I said, there’s so many different ways that having a podcast has been an incredible business building tool. Even what I just mentioned about the opportunity to build relationships and all the opportunities that that has led to, that’s obviously not shown in how many downloads each episode gets, but it’s still invaluable and it moves the needle so much on the back end of my business.

So lesson number seven, yes, keep track of your numbers, like in anything in business, but the numbers don’t always paint the full picture.

Okay, lesson number eight is that good podcast content can’t outperform a good strategy, you need both. And what I mean by this is that it’s not enough from a podcasting strategy perspective to just show up and create interesting episodes, because then you’re just attracting a bunch of people who love getting free content, right?

Which is not a bad thing, but I’ve learned over time that I need to have a better strategy for my podcast that is leading into my business. And that comes in a few different ways. So the first thing is from the beginning, I wish that I would have created more episodes that were more strategic in building my email list, because even for people who are active followers of the podcast and have it on their list someday that they want to join The Business Edit Coaching Program, or it’s on like their business bucket lists to work with me in some capacity. Having them on my email list is so much more helpful in terms of moving people down the sales funnel and actually inviting them to work with me, because when people are listening to podcasts, as you’re probably doing right now, they’re in their car or they are, taking a walk or, you know, somewhere where they’re not in the mindset to actually buy a course or sign up for a coaching program or submit an application. They’re not going to type all of that out on their phone. And I’m the exact same way, but when it comes to building an email list. They’re actually getting on a subscribe list where they can be in that context where they are ready to take action and are getting more up to date real time notifications of potential opportunities to work with me in any given month.

And so from the very beginning, I wish that my podcast content would have been more strategic, that I would have planned my episodes to lead into freebies or building my email list. Earlier, which is definitely something I’m doing more now, but again, earlier on all of this content is evergreen. And I know several of you have gone back to the very beginning of this podcast, which honestly, whenever I hear people tell me that, like, I am, I went back to the beginning of your podcast all the episodes.

It makes me cringe a little bit because I do know that I’ve evolved a lot as a podcaster over time. And sometimes it does make me cringe thinking about those early episodes, but I know that people are still going back and listening to those episodes. So I do wish that earlier on, I would have thought through how to make this podcast lead into my email list more consistently.

And I do think this one is kind of a double edged sword because my business has evolved over time and my strategy has evolved over time. So I don’t think going back to the beginning, I ever would have had the perfect content strategy in place that would have been perfectly evergreen and relevant today.

And that’s totally fine. But I do think that you can’t just focus on creating bingeable content, it does have to have a clear place in your overall marketing strategy. And when I was starting, I was just kind of figuring out where this podcast fit within the overall marketing strategy. And to some extent, I had to start before I was ready, right? But I do think you need both. It has to be good content that’s interesting and engaging and relational, but it also has to be a part of a bigger strategy.

Okay. Lesson number nine is that your hosting platform makes a huge difference.

When I started out, I started hosting on Libsyn. If you don’t have a podcast or you don’t know what a hosting platform is, it’s basically your main platform that you upload all of your content to. And your hosting platform then uploads that content to all of the different podcast platforms like iTunes and Spotify and YouTube music and whatever else you want to connect it to.

But you only manage your content in one place and that is your hosting platform. And there are so many different hosting platforms to choose from. Libsyn is kind of the industry standard, it’s a very popular one for podcasters to use, which is why starting out, I thought it would be the safe route to use Libsyn because everyone uses Libsyn, right?

It must be great. But I really did not like Libsyn and it took me a long time to change hosting platforms, which was another one of those things that I thought was going to be a huge deal and a huge hassle and really tedious, but it actually is not very difficult to change hosting platforms. There’s a few different things that make it, like you don’t want to be switching hosting platforms all of the time because the analytics don’t necessarily switch over seamlessly. So you could split your analytics between like the first year and a half of my podcast is on Libsyn and I downloaded those stats, but then all of the rest of my stats are on my new podcast platform. So technically I can put them in Excel and see everything in one place, but because it’s evergreen content and people go back and listen to old episodes frequently, I can’t see the overall stats in one place in a software program with pretty charts without doing some manual data entry and moving that stuff around. So it’s not something you want to change super often, but I would say that I’m very glad that I ended up changing podcasting platforms.

And now I’m using Captivate, which I can also link in the show notes if you’re interested in choosing a podcast platform. And I chose Captivate for a few reasons. The most important one being dynamic advertising. Libsyn, the plan that you have to sign up for to insert ads that are on all of your episodes. So you might notice at the beginning of my podcast episodes, I have an ad and it shows up on all of my historical podcast episodes, I’m not going back and editing every single episode to insert that ad. I’m just inserting it in Captivate and it’s putting that ad at the beginning of all of my episodes. And it does the same for outro advertisements. You can do it for mid roll advertisements as well. And the plan to do that in Libsyn at the time that I was looking at this was like $100 a month. And it was a very confusing process on how you could do dynamic advertising in your podcast episodes. The platform is not very user friendly or intuitive, but Captivate makes it super, super easy. And it’s also way more affordable. I think I might pay 17 a month or something like that for Captivate. It’s Phenomenal.

And again, much more affordable if you’re first starting out. And what I realized over time is that I had so many baked in ads. And if you go back and listen to my episodes, I have calls to action of like, hey, the coaching program’s launching sign up by August 1st. That’s the last day to join, but that’s completely irrelevant now. Right? Because. That was two years ago and now my coaching program is evergreen and you can apply at any time. So if I had dynamic advertising at that point, it would eliminate a lot of that outdated content that is on my podcast. And even mentioning outdated offers, because the way that I used to structure coaching back then, or might have talked about it, is probably a lot different than the way that I’m talking about it now.

And so actually creating content that is evergreen, that will be relevant, having dynamic ads that I can add and remove from all of my historical episodes has been super, super helpful. The second reason why I switched to Captivate is that it also allows you to have a private podcast. So for my group coaching program, all of our content and all of the coaching call recordings and all of that is uploaded to our private podcast that only my coaching clients have access to. And again, on Libsyn, that was something that was way more confusing and way more expensive than it needed to be. And with Captivate, I’m able to do that for like 17 ish dollars a month.

And my clients love being able to listen to recordings and trainings while they’re on the go. And then all of the implementation happens in a workbook. There’s one workbook for the entire program so they can hop in and out of the podcast. They’re busy, they’re scaling their businesses, they have a lot going on. And I would never want a coaching program to be something more that you have to sit at your desk and carve out time to do. I wanted it to be something that they could do in the busyness of growing their business. And so having the ability to do a private podcast where they can listen in the car on their walks on the go, and then actually implement the trainings and that workbook when they come back to their desk was super important to me.

So lesson number nine, your hosting platform can make a huge difference. I have loved Captivate and I can link that in the show notes, but there’s many, many other great options when it comes to hosting. But if you haven’t started your podcast or even if you’ve started your podcast and have been really frustrated with your hosting platform, know that it’s not a huge deal to switch platforms, just don’t want to do it every other month.

Okay. Lesson number 10, this episode is getting pretty long. I’m getting a little bit more chatty than I intended to, but hopefully you’re learning a lot, but, last tip or last thing that I wish I would have known when I started out is that you need a system. I always say that podcasting is the one thing in my business that just absolutely has to be done in ClickUp.

There is no way that I would be able to manage the 30 plus tasks. With different due dates and different people assigned to them related to a task that has to be done every single week. We’re doing weekly episodes at this point. There’s no way that I could manage all of those moving parts without the automations that I have set up in ClickUp and having that workflow set up is a game changer on top of having a team in place without the system and the workflow for managing this podcast, it just, I cannot imagine how it would be possible. I would be losing my mind and constantly being frazzled, trying to publish episodes.

And over the last hundred episodes, my podcast workflow has evolved so much. I took an initial podcasting course that gave me a rough idea of some of the things that needed to be done for every episode to be live. But I have added and tweaked so many things to be custom to my process and to improve it in a way that works best for my business and for my team and who’s responsible for what. And so, this is the workflow that of all the workflows in my business that has evolved the most, but the more practice I’ve gotten with podcasting and the more times we’ve gone through this workflow, the more refined it’s gotten. It’s been so much easier to slip into a rhythm where it doesn’t feel like a lot of work. Even though I do, I mean, I’ve said several times during this episode, podcasting is a lot of work, it is a commitment, but at the same time with that workflow in place, it’s easier to slip into a rhythm and go through that process without necessarily having to recreate the wheel every single week and that’s been a game changer.

And like I said, this entire workflow is automated and ClickUp, which is my favorite platform and where I systemize and automate all of my workflows in my business. And if you want to steal my template for organizing my business in ClickUp, you can grab my Organize Your Business Course, and it walks you through the exact template that I use in ClickUp to organize everything in my business, but then I also take you through the back end of my ClickUp space and show you exactly how I have things set up in the automations that I like setting up. And I walked through my podcast space as well to show you how I actually manage all these podcast episodes and what I automate in my podcast workflow within ClickUp. So I’ll link that in the show notes as well.

So to quickly recap the 10 things that I’ve learned after my first hundred episodes, start before you’re ready you’ll find your voice by showing up, not by overthinking it, podcasting is a team sport, make content that you’d want to listen to, if podcasting is worth doing, it’s worth doing consistently, having guests on your podcast is a valuable investment of your time, the numbers don’t always paint the full picture, good content can’t outperform a good strategy you need both, your hosting platform makes a huge difference and you need a system.

So I hope you found this episode helpful, especially if you’re somebody who’s been dreaming about starting a podcast and are just hesitated to get started. I hope it’s been encouraging. Please do share this episode if you loved it and tag me on Instagram or share your favorite episode in the past to help me celebrate my first hundred episodes.

Like I said, I’m really proud that we’ve created this much content for the podcast and that it’s grown into what it is today. And I’m so thankful for all of you who are listening and subscribing to the podcast. If you haven’t already, please do leave a rating and review. It would be so meaningful to me this week as I’m celebrating a hundred episodes to see more of your feedback and honestly, I have very few ratings and reviews on this podcast compared to how many people are following the podcast at this point. And so I know there are many of you who’ve been following for a while who have not rated and reviewed it yet. So if you haven’t yet, please, please do take the time to do that before you head out because it does make a world of difference, not only in me seeing those things, but it also helps my podcast rank, we talked about rankings a little bit and show up more often when people are searching certain things within podcasting platforms.

So if you’re interested in starting a podcast or want to chat more about something you learned in this episode, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me and I will hopefully see you back here next week for another episode.