SNM045: Should You Start a Podcast

speaker 0: 0:00 should you start a podcast on today's episode? Today's episode is brought to you by fresh books. Accounting and bookkeeping mistakes destroyed thousands of small businesses every single day. Bookkeeping doesn't have to be hard. Turn to the number one invoicing software for small businesses. Start for free today at serve no master dot com Backslash Fresh book Are you tired of dealing with your boss? Do you feel underpaid and underappreciated?

If you want to make it online, fire your boss and start living your retirement dreams now then you've come to the right place. Welcome to serve no master podcast where you learn how to open new revenue streams and make money while you sleep. Presented live from a tropical island in the South Pacific by best selling author Jonathan Green. Now here's your host. It's early in the morning, and I'm sitting on the dock in front of my house.

There's a lot of birds singing, and unfortunately there's quite a few fishing boats driving by. I just waited 15 minutes for them to get far enough away that hopefully most of the noise of those boats we pushed into the background. But if you could hear a little bit of that. I do apologize. It's just the nature of living somewhere like I do some word Paradise, My favorite podcast is quickly turning into my least favorite podcast. It's turning into my nightmare.

They've begun to make bigger and bigger mistakes that are killing my listening experience. It's unfortunate, but it's true. This podcast supposed to come out every Tuesday morning, and lately it's been coming out later and later, sometimes his latest Tuesday night. Originally it was a 30 minute podcast that was at least 26 or 27. Its content This weeks episode was under 18 minutes, and more than six minutes of it was commercial. It's worse than watching television.

The ratio of commercials is horrible, and they do this thing where they mask the commercial to trick the audience. It's an interview podcast of the interview, one person and now their commercials, air interview format as well. They put the first commercial in front of the main person, so you get tricked into thinking you listen into a real interview when it's just in a commercial, then you get to listen to the main person for about four minutes and get another commercial.

And then you listen to talk about the interview for another few minutes and then another commercial. They're doing the same thing my space did, which is becoming very, very, very commercial while lowering the quality and length of their content. I now get about 40% of the content used to get sent 25 26 minutes of information and now get if I'm lucky, 12. And sometimes it's less than that.

For the first time in my life, I'm considering leaving a one star review in the hopes that enough negative reviews will cause them toe turn around the course of their ship. There are a couple of key reasons why most podcasts fail. There are three key reasons. The first is consistency. Second is content in the third is technical television shows.

When I was growing up when I was in my form of years were very much a clock, and this doesn't exist as much anymore because we all have on demand streaming all these other things. But we became very used to shows being on a certain day at a certain time.

If you ask anyone between the age of 30 and 40 they could tell you that Friends, the most popular TV show when I was in high school, was on on Thursday nights, people of years old, the meat could surely tell you what day of the week side filling was on. People knew the night is. Show was on, and in fact, when the show started getting into trouble when the viewership dropped, they move it toe worse and worse nights. They move into Friday night.

And then, if it was really troubling to Saturday night, the moving around of the day they delivered the episode was a sign that something was in trouble is a sign of badness. And it still is. If your show is supposed to be every Tuesday and then it becomes every Wednesday and then every Friday and another podcast listen to did this. It was every week, every Tuesday. Then it became every Friday.

Now it's every other Friday, and then they take a month off because recording two episodes about this so hard they can't do it in advance. Now I understand that life happens, and in this case I believe they had a baby. That's fine. But in the six months beforehand, they couldn't find two hours to record the two upsets to fill that slot. These decisions people make our why their podcast suffer, and these are all popular podcast. That's why I know about them.

I listen to all my podcast on the overcast app because both of these podcasts have started adding in more and more commercials. Entertainment podcasts start out really great, but eventually they get more and more sponsorship to the point where you have to fast four. Through all of the boring ads, I can't listen to another ad for Squarespace. It just drives me crazy. I've never advertised that product. I'm so tired of hearing it on podcasts and you never hear about it on technical pockets.

Always entertainment podcasts where every stand up comedian are. You know, Sitcom Person pretends they built their own website using squarespace. We both know people on television don't build their own websites. That's ridiculous. If I was on television making the television money, guess what? I would have someone else build my websites, too. Probably. Is it two totally different Skill commercials hurt consistency when they lower the length of the content or the quality as you know, every one of my episode starts with a quick and snappy commercial.

That's it. There's no commercial in the middle, and there's no commercial in yet because I hate that stuff. It's garbage, and I also don't do the two or three minutes like extra Long makes it with the episode contents. You can't tell it's a commercial, you know, if you click fast forward, skip past the music. You don't have to ever listen to my commercial, and that's fine. I want to give you a high quality experience. The content I delivered, the style I deliver.

My content is totally based on my experiences. Lister what I would want to hear Too many people start out podcasting thinking they're gonna make money very, very quickly. They have this idea that podcasting is very profitable and that if they could just get ah, 100 listeners to listen every single day, they'll start making really big money, and they put out episodes for one or two or three months and no money comes in. They quit or they get lazy, they lose that consistency.

And I'm Justus guilty of this. A few of my episodes have been a few hours late over the last few weeks. The reason. A couple of recent episodes were a few hours late. It was not because I lost faith in You are Lost my excite about this podcast, but they were technical. I record these podcast episodes morning, my time just before 6 a.m. My time. Sunrise time.

It's the beginning of the day before my kids are awake and four, There's too much noise where I live and I want to deliver this episode to you within 12 hours, Really within 15 hours. 9 p.m. My time is 9 a.m. Eastern. That's what I want my podcast to come out. The problem is, when I send my episode to the audio enters who in America they don't start their day till 9 a.m.

So I now record in episode one day in advance to ensure that we don't run into that glitch. But I'm willing to admit my own flaws and my own problems That certainly have hurt my relationship with my most hard core listeners who were disappoint on the way to work when the episode for the day wasn't ready, and I apologized for that. I've now changed my systems to ensure that doesn't happen again.

As a new podcaster, as someone new in any endeavor, you're gonna run into problems and unexpected things that slow you down. When you're making the decision to start a podcast, it's very important to make the decision to be consistent. People will expect your podcast to be delivered at the frequency you start. If you start out every single day, seven days a week, they're gonna expect that for a long time. When your frequency drops to once a week, you're gonna lose the majority of your fan base.

That's how relationships work. It's with television shows or anything else we get used to when the frequency dropped down. We have to find something else to fill in that time. And then that other thing becomes our new favorite. When I first start this podcast, I said I would do Monday through Friday, five episodes a week for the 1st 8 weeks, we've now crossed over that line.

I am now in a week nine and I'm staying at five week for now because I like I really like what we d'oh, I like this consistency and I've kind of locked myself into it until I run out of ideas that I don't know if I ever, ever will. I have a list of over 100 different episode ideas, but if I ever do run out of ideas, maybe I'll slow down to three times a week or something.

One of the things I learned when it first started out is that doing five times we can editing all the audio myself and writing all the show notes myself was just too much. It was taking me three or four full days of work just to manage this podcast, and it was too much time. Recording the podcast is the least time intensive part of the endeavor. Editing 25 or 30 minute podcast takes me two or three hours. I remove a lot of my verbal mistakes.

I remove all these silences, all these different things to try and make you have the best experience possible, removing background noise right now because it's early morning. There's so much noise. It's usually so quiet. Right now. There's a boat. It's so far away. I can't even see the boat. But the engines here are in such bad maintenance that I can still hear it. The votes probably five miles away from me in the background and turned around, so it's behind me.

There's a lot of birds flying around, and there's a few people awake talking people talking like 50 meters away, so hopefully you can't hear them. But all of those noises, I use special software to remove as much as I can and takes a lot of time, A lot of effort to make the audio sound good. So I've transitioned Thio hiring someone else, a team to handle my audio editing. If I was doing one episode week, I wouldn't need to do that.

So right now this podcast actually cost me money rather than makes me money because it's in the early phases. That's a decision you have to make from the beginning. Can I stick with this even if it takes longer than I think, it will make money, and that's how we need to approach most businesses. People see a podcast podcast like mine or other podcast. They like and think, Hey, I could start a podcast.

They see a podcast like mine in the sea podcast they like, and they think I could start a podcast, and I keep making the big money within a few weeks. But it's not like that. Consistency is the name of the game, and you have to make the consistency decision before you make the financial decision. Most podcasts, they die out a slow death, but the podcaster eventually just gives up. When I first became interested in podcasts, it was in listening to deejay podcasts.

I like listening to continuous deejay mixes. I like listening to dance music. I was due for a long time, and in fact I even had a deejay podcast for a while. And my podcast died when I had to move countries and leave some my equipment behind. I currently don't have a deejay set up in my house because I've moved so many times. I was traveling for a long time. I've moved countries like 10 times last 10 years.

Now that I'm stable here, it is on the list of things that I'll eventually add to the house collection. But usually when I'm buying extra stuff, it's beach stuff. Stand up paddleboard surfboards right now, and lots of lots of stuff for the kids. My kids always need new stuff, so my toy budget often ends up going into buying stuff for them. It's very different being a father than being single. So that's one of things I'm learning.

But my podcast for deejaying was very consistent until it died when I had to move. So I had a technical problem there. But that was 567 years. It was a long time ago. When you're starting a podcast, it doesn't matter when you record episodes doesn't matter when you edit them, it doesn't matter. A Theo's on Lee matters when you make the episode life. ITunes.

When you release in my case, when you make the block post that it contains the episode live when I click that publish button, that's the only thing that matters because the audience doesn't see any of that. You have no idea what time I'm recording this, and 90% of people listen. This won't listen to it the day it comes out. Most people we download podcasts that we listen to it when it's convenient for us. That's why we love the podcast format.

Your experience is defined by when you listen, not by when I record when you start your own podcast. Keep that in mind. Keep in mind the lister experience, the user experience, all that matters. The second issue for many cotton test is content, and people run into different content issues. One of the biggest issues that I run into with the podcast I listen to, you know, my favorite podcasts I mentioned a few times.

I like to listen to bad movie podcast, where they talk about analyze different bad movies, why they were bad and tell lots of jokes about him. Most of the ones that I listened to in fact, all of the ones I listen to have a series of content problems that sometimes make me think about it, ending my listenership and what's interesting. I was listening to an old episode of one today. Listen to them out of order.

Listen to what I feel like listening to that different movie episode, and today they were talking about how they're listener funded network, and they were asking for donations to support their podcast. And I was very interesting that they're listener funded, but they don't care that much about the listener experience. My biggest problem is that all of These podcasts are recorded by groups of 3 to 4 white men who always complain about diversity and movies and misogyny.

And they constantly remind me that they have very far left leaning politics within their episode. And for me, I've mentioned this before. I believe politics, entertainment. It should be separate. There's no reason, first of all, for them to be bringing up political stuff. And the second reason is I hate when people complain about something that they're super guilty of. Just yesterday, they complained how they won't watch any movies with one actress because she doesn't take her top off.

And then they complain that another movie was misogynistic. Now I realize most people don't know what that word means, and I don't want a heart too much on this topic. But you can't complain that other people are sexist and in the next breath say you only like to see actresses take the top off. I personally don't like anything that distraction the plot. I like action movies, so I don't like any romantic interludes. I don't like sex scenes in movies. I don't like romantic scenes in movies.

I don't think most movies need a romantic subplot style of movie I like doesn't require that. So when it's kind of crow barred in, I don't like it, and I certainly personally I don't need nudity in my movies. I know I sound like a grandpa, but I've always felt that way. I think it's silly. I don't understand that whole thing, and I don't like when someone I'm listening, Thio says something that they're very guilty of doing.

They're complaining that this movie doesn't have enough people of different races, but your podcast never has guests of a different race. So injecting politics into the episode has made me think about, well, they're complaining about something, but then they don't actually do anything about it. And it seems like every single on his podcast is recorded in New York. So it's always that New York vibe and that we're better than a real spy.

But do as we say, not as we do, and all of that affects the listener experience. For someone like me, I don't need to hear your politics, and I don't want to hear politics, especially when you say one thing and do another thing. Another one of my problems is they recently began complaining one actor whose politics they disagreed with. They complained a great deal about an actor who is a Republican and have a big problem with that.

They called him a toilet several dozen times without ever saying a specific thing you've ever done wrong. Other than they disagree with his politics. The next episode I listen to they were talking about an actor who is a convicted child molester. Someone who hurt a young child, went to court, went to trial, was convicted, is on the sex offenders registry, and they simply refer to his troubles or his dark times.

They're more offended by someone being from a different political party than they are by someone hurting a child. That someone with Children, as someone who's dealt with a situation where something always happened in one of my Children. I don't like that I have a very big problem with Harding Children, and I think Harding Children is worse than having the wrong political view. I don't even have very strong political views. I live in a different country.

I'm very disconnected now from the American political system, but I don't think it's appropriate to mix in the wrong content with your content, so adding in too many commercials, cutting down the size of your episode, changing the direction of your content, trying to stick in inappropriate content. It's the same thing I don't like in science fiction books. When they suddenly create these big political messages that I consider inappropriate. You can't change the message midstream.

Now, if you want to do a political bad movie podcast and you say on Episode one, it's gonna be political, that's fine. It's the shift in direction that kills podcasts and will cost you listeners. Consistency is what people respect. If you decide Thio do a weekly podcast, you need to come up with content every week. Not everyone can record in episode off the cuff with just the episode title.

Take the time to write out notes in advance and a plan out the topics you're gonna talk about. Be willing to edit out bad content, cut out your arms and your Oz and your SOS and the words you say that you wish you weren't saying. If you're doing a weekly podcast, you should have 52 topics written down in a notebook that you're going to use over the next year.

You don't have to have anything beyond the title or the subject, but that would mean that you always know what you're gonna do next. It's very hard when you suddenly realize, Oh, I forgot to record today's episode. I forgot to go to this week's episode. What should I do an episode on? So I'll leave You forgot. You have to do the technical part. You forgot it on the creative part. The third big hurdle for people is technical.

There are a lot of moving parts when it comes to creating a podcast. There are service is that will handle everything for you. There are certain service is that will you record the episode that you uploaded to the Web site and they do everything and even hosted for you? When you go in that direction, you give up total control of your business. So I'm not a believer in that. I don't believe in going that far down that direction. That's why I don't use a single service.

That's why I don't use a single service to handle the entire process of my website, and I certainly don't do that. My podcast. I don't want someone else to have total control. When you let another company have too much control over your podcast, they start to control the commercials. They control the revenue streams they control the linking when you want to leave and take more control. When you start making money, you'll run into problems. I like to be in control from the start.

On a technical level, there's three different steps that are difficult. There's the recording of the episode. There's the editing of the audio file and getting the audio file ready. And then there's uploading and distributing it. Those three steps and they could be hang ups for people. And yes, I have a course of development called podcast Rock star right? Cover everything, and it's also have a blueprint that goes over this entire process. But it could be really simple. I record my episodes inside the house.

I use a road pro castor at XLR cable and a zoom H six n audio recorder. Those the three pieces of equipment use right now I'm outside sitting on the dock. All I'm using the record is my iPhone and a lava Lear microphone by road. Everything I use is made by road microphones on my microphones. Actually, all three of them now, don't think about it in my road, I used to use a different level, your microphone, but it died after five years.

So now I use one of my iPhone. This microphone doesn't work with the zoom. Otherwise, I would use it with that So you could record your episodes with a microphone that costs 60 to $70 on Amazon. Not sure I to buy it for her price. Regular. Get 50 bucks in America Now for the recording part, it could be very simple. The hard part is finding a location quite enough, and I'm in a location right now. That's louder than I would usually use.

Unfortunately, I don't know why, but it just both crazy and they didn't all go out at the same time. Today, when you have a little bit of a background noise problem, you then have to deal with that in editing. Whenever boat gets really loud, I do a big space of silence. I stop talking for a little while and then I chop it out. The technical part of editing you could handle with free software.

That's what I use to do my face, one of all my audio editing. But it could be daunting for someone to do it for the first time. To listen to your own recording to chop out all the boring words to remove all the silence is to make it sound smooth. It could take a while and for me to episode for me to edit it. Episode takes two or three hours. It's a very long time, and it's exhausting to do it five times a week. Some podcast.

They don't do any ending, and they live in all their mistakes, and that's their style. For me, I don't want to waste your time with empty words or big silence is your time is too valuable to me. So I consider that a poor use of your time, the entire editing process. Once you learn it, it's not too overwhelming. It's just the mechanics of sitting down and doing it. Now I have run into people that completely can't do it.

One of my assistants told me that in addition to write blockbuster me and writing work on other projects, she also at its audio for band she knows how to use pro tools. She's an expert audio engineer, So I thought, great, that could be really helpful and useful to me if you could, and of these podcasts episodes for me, that would save a huge amount of time.

And I sent her one of the episodes, one interview episodes where my guest at a lot of stuttering problems had a lot of little problems and I wanted to remove. I want to make him sound cleaner and better and give him a really good experience has never set of my podcast. I definitely don't want someone to appear my podcast and feel like they came off looking bad. So I sent her the episode and it took her days and days.

She made massive mistakes across the board, and I ended up having to re edit everything. So I've learned that there are people who really struggle with the technical part of creating a podcast. They struggle with the audio editing. They can't do it, so I know that exists. It's not hard if you sit down and learn it, but I know there's people that simply can't because I've run into that in people I work with.

So that's the second technical hurdle, and you couldn't do what I do it eventually. Hire someone but does cost a bit of money, and you have to make that decision on your own and trends. How many episodes you're recording. Then there's the uploading aspect, and it's not hard. You just have to learn the little steps, and I walk you through them in my blueprint, but you complete the final file.

Then you put it into iTunes so you can add in your images and the title and all that information. Then you upload the file to your special podcast hosting service. In this case, I use Lipson. Then you have to connect that to your block so you have to create a link, and I use a little pieces offer called Blueberry Power Press, and you connect everything together. The whole technical process.

Setting it up the first time takes a couple of hours, but once it's done, adding an episode is really the same as uploading a block post and finishing it at the same time. If you're blogged, if your recordings have lots of technical glitches, if there's lots of steaks, if the sound is really, really bad. You'll find it very hard to find that audience.

So before you decide, if you wanna start a podcast, you need to be sure that you could be consistent, that you can create high quality content for as long as you want the podcast running and that you can overcome these technical hurdles. And if you do those things, you can create a podcast that engages your audience and does help to grow your business and becomes a juggernaut. Overtime. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Serve No Master.

Make sure you subscribe, so you never miss another episode. We'll be back tomorrow with more tips and tactics on how to escape that rat race hit over to serve no master dot com forward slash podcasts Now for your chance to win a free coffee of Jonathan's bestseller, Serve No master. All you have to do is leave a five star review of this podcast. See you tomorrow. Thank you for listen to this episode of the serve. No master podcast. Follow me at facebook dot com.

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