Episode 100: Ten Important Lessons Small Business Owners Can Learn From Producing A 100 Different Podcast Episodes for My Daily Business Coach
It’s the 100th episode of the My Daily Business Coach Podcast and as a special coaching episode, Fiona talks about the 10 things she has learned after producing a hundred different podcast episodes. From embracing imperfections on the production to having fun in marketing, Fiona shares the top lessons she’s learned so far from making this podcast what it is now.
We are also running a special competition to win one of 10 $100 gift cards for the My Daily Business Coach shop. Listen to find out how to win! Closes 11:59pm AEDT Thursday 10 June 2021
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
The 10 things she learned:
#1 Just start. Just get going.
#2 Things don't need to be perfect.
#3 Everything gets easier with time.
#4 Massive reminder, marketing can be fun.
#5 Business challenges are universal.
#6 It's your podcast. You can do what you like.
#7 Don't be scared of technology.
#8 Keep it simple and template where you can.
#9 When you show up consistently, you're going to be seen and you're going to have to, you know, uncover a whole lot of stuff about yourself.
#10 There are lessons everywhere.
Conclusion
Podcast episodes mentioned in this episode:
Resources mentioned:
Episode transcript:
Hello and welcome to Episode 100 of My Daily Business Coach Podcast. Man, it feels good to say that when I started this podcast. I know I've talked about this quite a few times. I just sort of told myself, OK, you can do 20 episodes, just do 20, see if anyone listens. And if they do keep going, if they don't call it a day, you had to go, you experimented and you can always just call it a season. So, yeah, to be in episode 100 is absolutely amazing.
And I have to say a massive, massive thank you to every single person who has shared this, who has commented, who has sent us a DM, sent an email, left a review, hit the stars, forwarded to somebody. Just all of it means so, so much. And it just feel like it's actually helping people. And I genuinely started it with that in mind as well. Like that was a huge part of it. It was like, let's be more accessible to more people. And I just yeah, I'm overjoyed with the feedback that is coming in that it does actually help. So thank you, thank you, thank you to every single person.
And on that note, because we are in episode 100, I am running a little competition. So for the next three weeks, anyone who shares any episode of this podcast, whether on Instagram, just make sure you tag at My Daily Business Coach so we don't miss it. Whether they share it through an email on a blog, please send us a copy of those. You can email that to hello@mydailybusinesscoach.com or anyone who leaves a review on Apple reviews for the podcast will go into a draw to win one of 10 $100 vouchers for our website. So that means you can purchase one of the courses you could, you know, put it towards business coaching. You could gift it to a friend if you like. I want to, you know, give this to my friend who's just starting a business, any of that. So, yeah, I'm really, really excited about that. So that will run from today. If you're listening to this in real time, which is Thursday, the 20th of May 2021 through to Thursday, the 10th of June 2021.
So if you share it on social media again, just make sure you tag @mydailybusinesscoach so we can see it. If you share any episode on your blog via an email, anything at all, just make sure that you let us know where whether sending us DM, sending us an email hello@mydailybusinesscoach.com. And yeah, you could be one of the winners of ten 100 dollar vouchers, and that is Australian dollars for anything on the mydailybusinesscoach.com/shop.
So we will be announcing the winners on the week following. So that will be Thursday, the 17th of June 2021. So make sure you listen in for that. We'll also contact you, you know, via email or via Instagram if you are a winner and it's open to anyone, anywhere in the world. So if you need business help and I feel that our products can help, you definitely just take part or you need to do it, share it and or leave a review on Apple. And it could be you that is winning that. So super exciting. All right.
Today it is episode 100 and it's a coaching episode. So let's get stuck into it, shall we say, being episode 100. If I said that like 100 times already, but being episode 100, I thought I would do a coaching episode on ten things that I've learnt after producing a hundred different podcast episodes.
So like I said before, I really came into this thinking maybe twenty. We'll see how it goes. And yeah, it's it's grown and it's just been such a delight and such a fun way to connect with so many different people around the world. So if you are interested in podcasting, if you work with people who want to do podcasting or if you listen to podcasts, you love podcasts and you're wondering what do they do for your business, then definitely today's episode is going to be really interesting for you. And of course, if you want to catch up with this later and you want to sort of read back over what I'm saying or any links that I might mention to platforms or tools that have helped me, definitely, you can check out the show notes, as always at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/100 because episode 100.
#1 Just Start.
I cannot emphasise this enough. Just start now. If you listen to this for a while, if you've worked with me, if you're on my Sunday email, thank you firstly for choosing me to spend your time with. But you'll know that I sat on this idea for way too long way too long, I bought a podcasting course from Pat Flynn years and years ago, I never really finished that, but I did, you know, he's fantastic. I love Pat Flynn. Talk about him all the time with my clients. I've even reading some of his books for business book club. But, yeah, I bought a course. I was like, yeah, I'm going to do this. I found my intro track. I went to an American voiceover agency. I got them to create this very overly produced voiceover intro and outro of my podcast. I, yes, spent money kind of setting it up and then I let perfection get in the way. I was like, oh, all sorts of things. I don't like my voice. I need a really beautiful studio. I need to soundproof my walls. All this stuff just kept coming up. And so I kept putting it off and putting it off and putting it off. And I wish I had just started. And of course, the podcast wouldn't be what it is if I'd started, you know, then because I had just started my business then and now I have, you know, a lot more experience, a lot more knowledge, a lot more understanding of what small business owners want. But still, I wish you know, maybe I hadn't have started 2016, but maybe I'd started in like twenty eighteen, not 2020. Like, it took me a good four years to get going with this. And in the end, I sort of just set it as a deadline of, oh my God, I'm going to be 40 this year and this needs to be done before I'm 40 and I just scraped in. So that is the first thing. Just start. And whether you're listening to this thinking you want to start a podcast or you're listening to it thinking about, you know, hiring your first person or putting your name out there or entering a ward or just showing up on Instagram TV, just start. Everything gets easier once you start. And quite often it's the anticipation and the anxiety around starting that is worse than actually just starting and seeing how you go. It's kind of like, you know, going to the gym or anything like that where you think or making a phone call to, you know, what you think might be an awkward conversation. And actually, once you're in it, it's fine. It's just the mind stuff that goes on before you actually get going. So I wish that, yeah, I had just started a bit earlier.
And if you are listening to this and you're thinking, OK, I'm going to do it, I'm going to start a podcast, I do have a short course called How to Start a Podcast, and it literally details exactly how to start it, but not just start it, how to come up with a process and a system so that you can continue with that and you can find that course over on mydailybusinesscoach.com/shop or mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast. Both of those you'll find the how to start a podcast short course. Anyway, that is number one. Just start of my ten lessons that I've learnt from a hundred episodes.
#2 It does not need to be perfect.
Nothing is perfect. You can listen to the most, you know, souped up podcast with, like the best recording studio and like five producers and editors making it sound amazing. And maybe the content isn't that good. Or you can find a podcast that you think the content is brilliant. The artwork artwork's not that exciting. Things like this are so subjective. So if you sit around waiting for every single thing to be ticked off, you know, you're not going to start. It is not going to start. The other thing in terms of this doesn't need to be perfect. Listen, is when I started, I was scripting every episode. I literally was like writing them like word for word. And I haven't listened back to those first. If I it I kind of think, do I want to add maybe sometimes I should, but, you know, to maybe see how far I've come, maybe I haven't come that far out of it. Disemployment. But yet the idea of like having to sit down and write word for word, what I'm doing that took up a lot of time. Sometimes I just repurpose things that I had already written in an email or for the blog. But now I just Free-Fall like right now I'm just like I wrote down ten, like, dot points. And for each like as in the lesson like one to start to doesn't need to be perfect three, etc.. And I'm just I'm just free balling it. I don't know if that's, I should say that term, but yeah, I'm just free styling and I have asked my editor quite a few times, “Hey Scott, do you think this just sounds like a big ramble? Doesn't actually make sense.” And he's like, no. And so far I haven't really had that feedback. And, you know, not to say that they're fantastic every episode, but my point here is it doesn't need to be perfect. I didn't need to put that much pressure on myself to write out every single word to get all the hyperlinks organised, like all this stuff that was really just adding a whole lot of extra work and wasn't adding a whole lot of extra impact to the content that was being delivered through the podcast medium. The other thing is that it. Doesn't need to be perfect in terms of, you know, oh, my gosh, every single episode is scheduled for this time and every week often we try we try to get our podcast out every single Tuesday and Thursday at 6am. But some weeks it just hasn't it hasn't been out. And there has been one week so far that it actually got to Friday. And I was like, oh, my God, I completely forgot to put the podcast out yesterday. And that's fine. You know, you notice way more than anybody else does.
So that is the second point. It doesn't need to be absolutely perfect and don't put that much pressure on yourself because, one, it's just going to make you procrastinate and never get around to it and to you're not going to just enjoy the process, like just enjoy it and find confidence with whatever it is that you have to talk about. If you wanting to start a podcast on it, chances are you know a bit about that topic. So maybe you can just freestyle and, you know, kind of trust yourself that the knowledge is within you and you don't have to sit there and write the perfect script so that you can read it word for word on a podcast.
The other thing that that's done is allowed me so much more time back. I have friends that I know that spend like a day on each episode. I mean, podcasting groups where people have asked, you know, I spend ten hours each episode and unless you're getting most of your income through your podcasts, like monetising it or you know that every single time you put out a podcast episode, you know, a thousand people rush to buy whatever your passive income product is, then, you know, really look at yourself and think, do I need to be spending 10 hours or a full day on every episode? Is actually adding anything to the content, or is that just perfectionist tendencies that, you know, aren't making it enjoyable for anyone? So that's number two. Doesn't need to be perfect.
Number three, and I should say that all these lessons are obviously applicable to podcasting, but also applicable to so many things that we do in our business.
#3 Everything gets easier with time.
And again, it kind of builds on the first two steps. But really, any type of marketing that you're doing or even any type of system and process that you're setting up in your business, it's going to be harder at the start. You're not used to it. It's something new. And just like anything else in life that's new, it's going to be awkward. You're going to fumble, you're going to learn, you know, have mistakes that you learn from, hopefully. And it's just maybe not going to be as enjoyable as you know. The further you go, the more understanding that you have of what you're doing, the more experience, the more you know where the shortfalls will be or where the possible obstacles are, the more you'll actually just navigate your way through it and hopefully have fun doing that.
Whenever I talk about this topic of like things getting easier in time, I can't help but think back to years and years ago a good well, like decade and a half. Now, I used to do the social column for The Age newspaper, which is a big newspaper here in Melbourne, although, you know, like most newspapers, it's kind of dying a bit. But back in the heyday before social media, I used to do the social column. So that meant going out to events, which sounds really much more fun than it was going out to events, interviewing people, taking photos with this amazing photojournalist that was you know, we were like a duo. I would write the copy, she would do the photos and kind of supplying that copy to the editor usually that night. So it had to be in by Friday morning and it came out Sunday. And my events mostly were like Thursday nights, Wednesday, Tuesday, Thursday nights.
Anyway, when I started that, I had to audition and I had to go to a film premiere and I had to find people and interview them and write and to write short, like, obviously, you know, if you listen to this podcast or read my emails, I'm not that good at being really succinct. So to write 150 words per event and put it all together in like 500 words for the best column of the paper was quite difficult. And actually, when I first started, I remember just finding it really hard to think of questions to ask people hard to kind of piece three different events together. How do I kind of draw comparisons or a common theme? How to be kind of funny, which again, I'm not a funny writer. I don't think I'm unfunny as a person, but I'm not a funny writer. Some people are just brilliant. I have a friend, Matt Gambino. He's one of the funniest writers I've ever met and just he's so brilliant in it anyway. So I'd interview people, I'd write this column and I just found it so hard for the first few months.
But when I got, you know, through doing it every single week, week on week for more than a year, I found it so easy. I knew exactly what I ask, who to interview, which photos, you know, we're going to be received well, all of that stuff. And it just became really enjoyable. So whether it's podcasting, whether it's something else you're doing in your business, whether it's even just interviewing people for the roles, all of it gets easier with time.
So that's #3 - Everything gets easier with time.
#4 Doing this podcast has been a huge reminder that marketing can and perhaps should be fun.
It should be enjoyable. Now, I work a lot in this space with small business owners who have never really had a marketing plan or are not really sure of how to actually have a marketing strategy as opposed to just sort of scattergun approaches. And one thing that we always discuss, whether I'm running a workshop, whether it's one on one, whether it's group coaching, whether I'm in somebody else's mastermind group doing, you know, a class, I will always ask, what do you hate about marketing? Because there is a lot out there that people don't like. They like I've spent $25,000 with an agency and it didn't get me anywhere or, you know, I did this much money on Facebook ads or I hate being on Instagram all day or I don't like, you know, writing blogs. And someone told me I need to write a blog a week and I don't know what it's doing or I don't know how to send emails or I don't like the tools. This, you know, or on a bigger scale, things like marketing is selling out. And if I have a really great product, you know, people should just fine me or, you know, I'm a creative I don't want to market. So this all these sort of negative elements, I guess, around marketing and doing this podcast, I absolutely love doing this podcast like on Mondays, which is when I record the podcast mostly and I interview people and I do all my solo episodes. I love it. I can tell you that I actually really look forward to it. I, you know, try and find different pockets of time throughout the week to do another podcast episode. I'm always coming up with ideas and I just find it a fun medium. I'm literally sitting here in my office talking and imagining that somebody is out there listening to this and it's helping them. And so I think it made me reflect on other parts of the marketing tool bank, I guess, that we have here at My Daily Business Coach.
And to assess, are they are they enjoyable or do I physically feel like, oh, when I have to do them or I have to think about them and a lot of the stuff that I do do I absolutely enjoy. But of course, there's some elements of marketing that I'm not doing because I either perceive that it won't be that enjoyable or I think, oh, it's going to take a long time. And so I'm really kind of pushing back on some of those feelings that I've had in some of those sort of limiting beliefs and looking at what's possible. Because podcasting, I did have ideas about it, of course. And I listen to podcast for so long. I used to work at Audible back in the day almost 10 years ago now, and we were listening to podcasts then and looking at audio as a medium outside of just music. But I did have ideas about is it going to be boring? Will I get sick of doing it? Is it going to be repetitive? Will I, you know, just not be able to come up with different ideas? Who will I interview? Is it just going to be a mountain of work and all of those things? And I can say that it's actually been one of the funnest marketing channels that I've ever had experience in. And I've been working in marketing for twenty years.
So that has been a massive lesson and a massive reminder that marketing can and should be fun. So if you're listening to this and you're thinking about your own marketing channels, whether they're social media, website, clubhouse, podcasting, all of those things, really think about it. Are they fun? Are they enjoyable? And remember that, you know, maybe you're not making them fun. Maybe you've kind of lost the spark that you originally had. So how can you get that back? And also, maybe you're coming up with a bias or you're coming to the marketing activities with a lot of negative energy. So really question that and really dive into it and think like, how could I make this more fun? And for me, podcasting has been so, so fun. So that's a lesson for massive reminder. Marketing can be fun. I know. Crazy, right?
#5 Business challenges are universal.
So, I have been fortunate enough for this podcast to reach people literally all over the world, literally, you know, six of the seven continents. I know we have not reached Antarctica yet. So, hey, if anyone has any friends there that need some new podcast ideas, feel free to share the link. But, yeah, we have reached every single other continent, Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, North America, South America. And I've been able and fortunate to hear from people all over from India, Russia, Scotland, to buy Malaysia, Auckland, London, Ohio, Egypt, you know, all over Australia, Sri Lanka, people in Japan. It is amazing. And every week when I look at the analytics in the hosting platform that we use, there are there's a map of the world and there a little kind of colour codes on how deep or how, I guess, volume is, that the listening numbers and the downloads are from those regions and it just keeps growing. It's like the pins on a map. And it started out mainly in Australia and New Zealand. And then it grew and grew and grew. And it's literally all over. And it makes me so excited to see that. But outside of, you know, my ego feeling really good.
The other thing that's come with that is that seeing that so many businesses all over the world suffer from the same challenges, the same, you know, lack of confidence about things, the same mindset issues, the same issues around which platforms to use, how do I know who my audience is? How do I create a marketing plan? How do I humanise my business? How do I get in front of the camera when I'm not that confident? How do I set up a system so I don't have to feel like I'm starting from scratch every time? How do I reach out to somebody to collaborate or how do I reach out to media or how do I find out what I'm really good at as a leader? How do I, you know, lead my staff? How do I be inspirational to the people that I'm working with? How can I create products that people really want to buy? How can I lead people through the bio cycle?
All of it is so common and it doesn't matter where you are in the world. And I think that's been really eye opening. Obviously, I've worked with people. I've had clients in different parts of the world, but I don't have clients in every single country where people have contacted me about the podcast. And so just DM-ing with people and sending messages back and forth or getting emails from people and saying, oh, you know, I've listened to this podcast, I love this episode and there in Malaysia or somewhere else. And it's just brilliant to be able to connect with these people and also to ask them, you know, what are you being challenged by right now? What are the struggles you're going through? And also in that regard as well, given that we are still going through covid-19, is that the perspective that's come from that?
You know, I'm talking to people sometimes that are reluctant to talk about what's happening in their own country around covid for fear that the government will find out and they'll be jailed. And those sorts of things are just unfortunately not a risk in Australia except for, you know, this debacle that the government had recently with India, which was absolutely horrendous. And I cannot believe it ever got passed. But that aside, you know, I'm not living in a country like that. And it's been incredible to hear from those people and to hear about the business struggles they're going through with everything else that's going on with covid as well. So, the heart really goes out to those people. But, yeah, that lesson about all of our challenges are quite universal. Obviously, there's different depths of them and there's different access to certain things. But overarching, a lot of the themes are the same. And that's been such an amazing thing to learn and to connect with so many different people. So that is number five.
And just to recap the five lessons so far,
#1 Get started
#2 Things don't need to be perfect
#3 Everything gets easier with time
#4 Massive reminder that marketing can be fun
#5 Business challenges a universal
#6 It's your podcast, change it up if you want to.
And also, I guess, in that that podcasting or any kind of marketing that you're doing, it doesn't have to stick to a formula. If you start out doing social media one way and talking about certain themes and then you kind of tire of them or you just not that excited about those, or perhaps you change product categories and you want to talk about something else, do it. It's your business. You can you know, you can do that.
Don't feel like you have to do something a certain way because that's the way you've done it. You know, really change things up. Part of what's so great and fun about marketing is that it's experimenting. And I say that all the time. I'm like, if an agency comes to you telling you they can absolutely guarantee this, this and this, be wary because a lot of the time people need to experiment to be able to understand the behaviour of your audience, to be able to understand, you know, different tactics that will work best for your product or your services or perhaps both. All of those things are often experimenting, learning, improving, analysing, and the cycle continues.
So at the moment, I have different types of podcast episodes, but I might decide in six months to remove one of them or to add a fourth type in. And I can do that because it's my podcast. And the same goes with, you know, being flooded with, you know, people asking to be on this podcast. And a lot of the time they haven't ever listened to the podcast.
So they're really pitching things that are just not suitable. But at the start, you know, as soon as someone starts pitching to you and Sophie Walker talked about this in her episode with Australian breath stories when she was talking about, you know, at the start, you're being pitched by people and you're like, oh, OK, this is exciting. And it's the same like with my podcast, when we started getting requests, it was like, oh, OK. Well, like these requests are coming in from all over the world. That's really great, because obviously those people are seeing us or somehow we're tracking in certain lists or whatever.
But it was tempting with some of them to be like, oh, you know, this person is a really large audience or this person, you know, has worked at this and this and this place. But if they're not right, they're not right. And that's part of that lesson is that it's you know, it's my podcast. I get to decide who's on it and I get to decide the direction that it's going.
So, again, whether it's podcasting, whether it's something else you're doing in your business, remember that it's your business and you do get some control over what you're putting out there and kind of the opportunities that you say yes to and those that you turn down. That's number six.
#7 Don't be scared of technology.
Now, again, like I said before, anything new is going to come with a whole slew of, you know, worries and fears and concerns and anxieties and, oh, my God, I'm not going to do this well. And it's going to be out there and people are going to see. But one of them for me was the technology. Now, I don't think of myself as like someone who's not good at technology. I have worked in the online space for pretty much my entire career from, you know, e-commerce platforms like Amazon and membership programs like Audible and Open University. I worked on their MBA program really looking at how we can use technology to make sure that the MBA modules are accessible to all people. But I still had my doubts about whether I'd fully understand the technology behind podcasting. And actually it's not as hard as it seems. I know I have an editor and I don't edit these podcasts myself.
So obviously that part of technology that I'm not having to learn myself, but I was still like, oh my gosh, you know what? If I want to record somebody outside, you know, not on Zoom, what if I want to have a real recording with them face to face? And I did do that. One of my earliest podcast interviews with Nick Shelton from BROADSHEET. And if you are a fan of him, if you're a fan of Broadsheet, if you use it all the time, like so many people, you can definitely check out his interview. I think it was episode 14 and he and I did the interview at his house and my technology set up was not great. I didn't really understand exactly what I was doing. The sound quality wasn't that great, but in the end, no one really noticed and it actually sounds fine. But I did perhaps let that kind of stumped me.
So I did do the interview with him months and months before I launched, almost a full year before I launched this podcast. And I think that coupled with, you know, reading so many things about podcasting, I kind of got it into my head that it was these big tech jungle and I wouldn't be able to kind of carve my way through it. And that's just not the case. Like, you know, public service announcement. It's not there are some things that you'll have to get your head around. And really, they're definitely nowhere near as hard as they appear to be. And like anything else, once you do use that platform or that software a couple of times, you totally understand it. And like everything else, there's always a YouTube tutorial video or in my How to start a podcast cause I go through and do tutorials in most of the platforms that I use. But really, yeah, I was letting this kind of fear of technology and if not understanding how to use at all and thinking that I had to be like a professional sound technician to be able to podcast stop me from just going for it.
And so yeah, I know that with some of my clients or people I meet that speaking gigs or master groups or whatever, master groups masterclasses in different groups, they do say, oh yeah, I haven't used Canva yet because I'm not good at technology. Or when we talk about systems and processes, they'll say, oh yeah, I've not looked into Asana, I've heard of it, but you know, I'm not good at technology. And so I think we have that limiting belief that stops us from kind of exploring avenues for automating things in our business, for marketing in a more efficient way.
So if that is you and even if you're someone like me who had a lot of online. Your answer, but still is a bit scared of certain technology. Don't be literally. Education is access. So if you're scared of Asana, let's say you might just go to YouTube and check out what's there about Asana, one of the women I love.
When I first started my business, I definitely used to listen to her videos a lot on YouTube is Megan Minns. And she is I think she's I think she describes herself as a business coach. She's in the US and she is really like an expert at Asana. And so if you want to know how to use Asthana, definitely just YouTube - Megan Minns Asana and you'll find so much free content there on how to use it and tutorials. So yeah, education is access in terms of technology. And that was lesson seven for me. Don't be scared of technology. Now I open GarageBand, which is what I record this on when I'm literally recording it on right now and I know exactly how to use it. And I might not be, you know, a key professional who can like, I don't know, do the backstage of Beyonce's concerts on it. But I can do enough to get this podcast out. And that's amazing. You know, it's more than I thought it would be. And when I first opened GarageBand even, I was like, oh, my God, there's all these buttons, there's all this stuff. And I learnt what I had to do. And again, in my how to start a podcast, cause I go through the basics so that you have enough knowledge to be able to get started.
#8 Keep it simple.
And by that it's really about how would this work for me?
So I've talked about it before. I pay Scott. He's a great editor, sound mind editing, and I pay him and I pay one of my VAs Nezi. He's fantastic to help me with this podcast and that is a way of simplifying it. I don't want to become a podcast editor. I'm not trying to become a sound technician. I'm happy to outsource that and give money to somebody who will be able to do it a lot faster and a lot better than I can. And I don't want to be spending ten hours on my podcast trying to edit it myself. So and that is a choice. And I know I'm in a very privileged position to be able to do that. But also, I should say it's not as expensive as if I was to sit here for a whole day. I don't have that much time. And that would take me away from doing other things in my business that can bring in income or that can have, you know, more impact on my clients, etc., than sitting here trying to figure out how to edit.
The other thing about keeping it simple is I sat down at the start of this before I began and kind of mapped out a process. Now, I know I'm somebody who loves systems and processes. It's a big part of what I work with people on, but it can be as simple as it usually. For me, this is exactly how it starts. A line across a page from left to right, just drawing a line. If you're digital, you could use your iPad or you could use a tool like Mind Meister or Canva or whatever. Just draw a line. I'm old school. I use pen and paper and I always mark, you know, start retention or awareness advocacy.
So with the podcast it was like, okay, how do I even start this? All right. A good place would be to list out ideas for the podcast. So I'll need some sort of tracker to list those ideas out. And that's what we all use in the business. We look at the my daily business coach podcast tracker and again, in my How to Start a podcast course, I give you access to that. It's a Google doc and literally that was a stop. Let's map out some ideas.
I also thought about what are the different types of podcast episodes I, I'd like to have. I don't want just want to do Q&A with other small business owners. I want to do other stuff. What does that look like? I also keeping it simple was like, I want to put out two episodes a week, but I don't have time necessarily to record two one hour episodes. So what if one of them is literally like five minutes and I could probably record a bunch of those in, you know, an hour versus having to do like a full fleshed out episode times to every week. So keeping it simple for me, it was about understanding the process, mapping it out, having templates as much as I could. So we have a template for podcast at work. It's just a Canva template. So whenever we ask, I guess we can just pull their headshot into the template, change the name, change the podcast episode. And there's the artwork. Similarly with the solo episodes, we have a bunch of splash images. We also have a template for the the episodes because they're just sort of like text over an image. So we have templates for the things that we need and that we're going to be doing again and again and again, even podcast questions. We send all of our guest questions ahead of the, you know, interview so they feel as comfortable as possible. And that is a template.
We ask similar questions. We don't ask the same questions every single time, but we ask similar questions. And there might be, you know, three similar questions at the start. The middle will be different depending on the business background, what we know about them, all that sort of stuff, maybe what they want to talk about, and then we might have a couple at the end, you know, what kind of tools do you use? What's a technology tool that you couldn't live without, that sort of thing? So we have that templated.
We're not starting from scratch every time we have emails templated that Nezi sends out to guests. So she liaises with the guest. She sets up the interviews. That's all done on Zoom. So the process, it sounds complicated, but it is simple. And at the start, yep, it might have taken me an hour or two to sit down and map that out, figure it out, write some templated stuff, but it just runs so much smoother because there is a process in place. The other thing with keeping it simple is I don't rerecord these episodes and you've probably guessed that because they're not perfect. But I sit here and just like I'm doing right now, I open GarageBand on GarageBand. I always say Guerrouj because I was in the garage, I opened GarageBand, I hit record. If I stuff up, I stop, I pull the little cursor back and and keep going. I usually do these in kind of one take a don't. And that's not to say, oh my God, I'm so great. I do them in one take. It's to say that it's keeping it simple. And again it goes back to the whole doesn't need to be perfect. If I stuff up, I don't usually rerecord.
There was a moment and I talked about it with a good friend of mine a few times, but there was a moment in a recent episode where I completely fumbled on what I was saying. And the reason that I fumbled was that I found it awkward to ask the question because I was so aware of my privilege and I was so aware of kind of, yeah, just getting it right and being again, trying to be perfect in that question, asking that I completely stuffed up the question and I was sort of fumbling about and could have recorded it. I totally could have. I could have been like, you know what, I want to sound better, so I'm going to rerecord it.
But I didn't. I was like, you know what, that's reality. And that shows that I was awkward. And it is awkward to have these conversations. But without having those conversations, nothing's going to change. So I need to get over my own ego and just let it run. And that is also keeping it simple. I didn't have to, you know, go back and rerecord and a couple of times I've had to rerecord because we change the episode like no.
So I might have changed something because of dates or somebody, you know, who's been interviewed once, wanted to come out later in association with something that they're launching or whatever. So, you know, I might need to change the hey, you can find the podcast show. No, it's at or hey, welcome to episode whatever. Other than I don't really rerecord.
So again, just keeping it simple, just not going into that whole idea. If this has to be absolutely perfect, the can't be me making any mistakes. All of that stuff, even when I had you know, as some of you might know, we've had a lot of illness in our household this year. Just everyone, I guess, opening back up and all the germs and everything else happening. And I didn't sound like my voice was really croaky for many weeks. And I was sort of like, oh, my God, I should have batched more episodes because I sound awful. But I was like, you know what the content is, what matters, not what my voice sounds like. So just get over it and record. So that is. Yeah. Lesson number eight, keep it simple, simplify things as much as you can. Look at where you contemplate and don't get too bogged down in things trying to be perfect. Just keep it simple. What's going to work for you and get it out.
Number nine. Oh this was a big one and a scary one and is lots of the reason, lots of the reason. It's a very common reason that people prevent themselves from moving forward with different marketing activities, especially trying something new.
#9 You're going to be showing up and showing up means you're going to be seen.
And that is a hard thing. That is a hard thing because the act of showing up forces you to question things about yourself, about your privileges, about your own limiting beliefs and having a podcast. You are very much showing up because it's not some, you know, polished campaign video that you've done with the help of a photographer and a videographer and somebody writing the questions for you.
You are showing up as yourself you are. And this is why podcast work so well is that there's an intimacy. It's me, you know, making jokes. I think in episode four, I like singing. It's just like I just this is me. This is how I am. And, you know, when I write a social media post, you're not necessarily getting exactly how I am through every single, you know, piece of text or the image on Instagram stories. If I'm showing up, it might be for, you know, thirty seconds. Whereas some of these episodes are more than an hour, the questions that I'm asking people are showing a reflection of the things that I value.
Also, they're showing a reflection sometimes of my own limiting beliefs or of things that I think are important that maybe other people don't think are important or of things that I believe that other people may not believe. And so when you're putting yourself out there in any way that you're marketing, would you put yourself out there consistently? You're going to have to face your own kind of not shortcomings. That's the wrong word. But things about yourself that perhaps in other parts of your life you don't have to face now.
I often talk about running a business, being sort of akin to going to therapy, where you as a business owner are both the therapist or the psychologist and the person receiving therapy, because in business, you're constantly kind of coming up against yourself and questioning like, why do I think that or why didn't I let myself do that? Or Why am I acting like this is a leader or why didn't I pull somebody up, one of my staff members, you know, what am I scared of and more scared of not being locked? You know, all of these sorts of things come up or even when you're getting brand photos taken, you sort of like, what do I want to wear and how am I going to come across?
And, you know, all of these things come up that don't necessarily come up when you're working for somebody else. And I think that has been a big lesson of doing this podcast, is that a lot of parts of my personality are showing up through these podcasts that may not have shown up in full in other things that I do. I think now that I've been in business for six years, I think most of what I do is just exactly who I am and like it or love it or hate it or, you know, loathe it, but. Being on this podcast and talking and even the idea of, like, you know, putting out tip episodes and, you know, thinking, well, are people going to say, of course, like, that's so obvious. Everyone knows that like DA or are they going to find it useful? And all of those things come up the same way when you write a book. I was actually just talking to someone who is putting out a book soon, and she was talking about her fears and asking, you know, have you had a similar fears when you were putting out your book? And I'm like, yes, 100 percent. I had years. I had fears that no one would buy it and fears that people would think it was absolutely ridiculously basic. I had fears that people would, you know, sort of be like who she think she is putting out a book? Yeah, all sorts of things. I had so many fears going through. And I think any time, like I said before, you put yourself out, you can kind of hide away and be small and be like everything's safe and everything's comfortable. And when you start putting yourself out there and podcasting is a great way to put yourself out there, because as I talked about before, the exposure is global. You will question yourself. You question everything from, oh, my gosh, the sound of my voice and oh, why did I laugh at that thing that was inappropriate or why did I ask a question that way? Or why do I keep talking about this topic? Maybe it's something I need to be aware of or learn versus other people being interested in it. So that is lesson nine, that showing up is going to force you to be seen.
#10 There are lessons everywhere.
And I've always thought that. But I think with this podcast, I'm perhaps more conscious of ideas and concepts and sort of conversations or common themes that are coming up in like DM's or, you know, I just find content ideas for this podcast absolutely. Everywhere, from random encounters through to, you know, something somebody says to me in the supermarket through to, you know, an email that I receive through to a conversation with my son, through to a passage that I'm reading in a book. Literally, the lessons are everywhere. And I've been so like enjoying making some of those lessons into podcast episodes because then I can share my thoughts, ideas with other people. My father all through my life used to say everyone has something to teach you.
And he truly believed that he would have conversations with like everybody. When we were growing up, we had a listener van like a van and whenever we used to get petrol, because back in the day, people would come out and, you know, fill your petrol for you. Every time they'd start talking to dad, we would open the windows and yell out life story coming up, because dad would just talk to everyone and anyone like anywhere he went, he would be able to strike up a conversation. Obviously, he's Irish. So, you know, that was part of his charm. Irish people have the gift of the gab, but he really did mean that everyone has something to teach you. And I do believe that having this podcast, having a kind of forced idea of, OK, twice a week, every week there has to be content has really made me kind of more, I guess, hone in on those skills of picking up ideas, concepts, conversations like thinking about it, you know, in terms of life, but also in terms of business and not every single conversation. I'm not saying, oh, my gosh, when I talk to people, I'm not present. I'm just sitting there thinking about how could this be a podcast idea? Not at all.
But I think after I have those conversations, often later in the day or before I'm going to sleep, I'll reflect on them and they'll kind of simmer away until it gets to a point where I'm like, oh, that would be a good idea for a podcast. And I love that. I love I feel like this podcast has really opened my eyes up a bit more to receiving lessons from everyone and everything. Now, I have been running my Sunday email for years. And again, that's another place where I often will take an idea and a concept and kind of flesh it out a bit more and think about how could I share this with the brilliant people that I absolutely love that are so dedicated and loyal on that email every single Sunday. And of course, I do that in my work as well. I'm always talking to people and in the DBMS and everything else, but I think the podcast especially has kind of reignited that love of learning and that love of really kind of picking up on all sorts of things from my life and the people that are in it. So that is number 10 at that level are everywhere.
Now, if you're listening to this and you have any kind of consistent content that you put out or anything that you're doing, your marketing and sort of feeling like I'm stumped right now, I have no idea what to talk about. Obviously, you know, go and have a look at, you know, what your audience inside say if you have the data, but also just be open. Just be open to the next conversation that you have, be open to something you hear on the radio. Be open to a passage from a book. Be open to a quote that you read on Instagram. Whatever it is, there are lessons everywhere. And if you kind of stop and take in the lesson and dare to kind of explore it, there's so much just brilliant content that can come from that and more so connection opportunities that can come from it as well.
So to recap, the ten lessons that I have learnt from producing and creating 100 episodes on the podcast are:
#1 Just start. Just get going.
#2 Things don't need to be perfect.
#3 Everything gets easier with time.
#4 Massive reminder, marketing can be fun.
#5 Business challenges are universal.
#6 It's your podcast. You can do what you like.
#7 Don't be scared of technology.
#8 Keep it simple and template where you can.
#9 When you show up consistently, you're going to be seen and you're going to have to, you know, uncover a whole lot of stuff about yourself.
#10 There are lessons everywhere.
So thank you again for being part of 100 episodes of this podcast. I cannot thank you enough to every person who has listened to it, who said who's commented. He's left a review. And again, to remind you that if you want to start a podcast, if you're listening to this thinking this is it, this is the sign from the universe, I need to start my podcast and you need a bit of help.
Do you have a really affordable and accessible short course how to start a podcast that walks you through exactly how I started it, the tools and platforms you have out there, how to promote it, how to, you know, find people to interview what types of podcasts you're going to put out that are best for your business objectives and things like your processes and systems. And you can find that over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast or on the My Daily Business Coach shop, which is mydailybusinesscoach.com/shop. And again, that competition that is running from today until the 10th of June 2021. If you share any episode of the podcast on Instagram, make sure you tag @mydailybusinesscoach. Likewise on Facebook, if you send an email mentioning any of our episodes, if you have a blog that mentions any of them, please share it with us. You can email hello@mydailybusinesscoach.com and you could be a winner of one of ten $100 vouchers to use on the mydailybusinesscoach.com/shop. Thank you so much for listening. All of this will be available on text as well as the audio as well at the top of the blog over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/100 as this is episode 100. Thank you to everyone who's made this show possible. I could not do it without you. And a special thank you to Scott from Sound Mind Editing and Nezi, my brilliant HVA who helps so much with getting this podcast out by.
Thanks for listening to My Daily Business Coach podcast. If you want to get in touch, you can do that at mydailybusinesscoach.com or hit me up on Instagram at @mydailybusinesscoach.
