This is Podcasting where I'm on a quest to conquer the podcasting realm
and I'm bringing you along for the journey to help you achieve your own podcasting success.
What's going on guys? Welcome back to Podcasting. In today's episode we are diving into my current
podcast struggles, so let's dive right into it. So this episode is going to be unfiltered, unedited.
I'm just going to be talking off the top and kind of see what happens and yeah, so let's just dive
right into it. So currently what I'm struggling with as far as podcasting is concerned is finding...
I'm finding that I want everything to be perfect and that is causing issues because it's taking
me five hours to record a 10-minute episode of a podcast. I keep starting over again and wanting
it to be perfect. I mean look at this episode for instance. I started recording this like 20 minutes
ago and I've stopped recording it and started again multiple times, multiple times and it's
already an issue and I'm stumbling over my words here. I'm really drinking a lot of coffee today
and so it's definitely impacting my speaking here because I am caffeinated up the gazoo. Is that a
phrase? I don't know if that's a phrase. I think I just made that up but anyways, that's not what
we're talking about here. What I'm trying to say is that I want everything to be perfect and it's
causing issues and a metaphor for this is you know, I'm trying to be an archer. Like I'm an archer
right and I'm trying to hit a bullseye and there's no way I can hit a bullseye because I'm
focused on hitting a bullseye too much and I'm struggling. I'm shaking there holding the bow
and I want this so bad and I'm never going to achieve that bullseye. I'm never going to hit
it with that arrow because I am trying too hard and so I'm really trying to focus on
letting something not be perfect and so this is an exercise in that. This episode I don't plan on
really editing. You know, I'll do some bare minimum editing to make it sound better but as far as
removing filler words or even some background noise, I'm just going to leave it and see kind of
how I feel after that and upload it and see what happens. So yeah and one of the things about
perfectionism I think is that we're in an age of AI and that's starting to come to fruition
and that's something that I've been thinking about as well is I think that authenticity might
be better. You might have more, you know, imperfectionism could be a benefit for authenticity.
One of the reasons I think of this is I was watching a YouTube video from a creator that does
helps people with YouTube channels called Think Media and he was talking about how one of the
trends going on currently with YouTube is authenticity and really that means people are
just uploading videos with no editing. They're just recording on their phones or they're recording
their living rooms, hanging out with their dogs and there's no high quality editing. People are
craving authenticity and so that's something that's interesting and I think as AI becomes more
prevalent and people are using AI to create perfect podcast or other content or things in general,
authenticity might be more of a craving people are having and so maybe imperfection could be a
benefit and so that's something I've been thinking about as well. Another struggle I'm dealing with
currently as far as podcasting is concerned is I have a lot of podcast ideas and I'm trying to
figure out how to have the time to do all of them. So a long-term goal of mine is to have a podcast
network called Wolfshild Media and eventually I'd like to expand the network into other things like
audio documentaries and video documentaries and media in general but obviously start with podcasting
and podcasting be the staple and the base for the network and the media company but having all these
different ideas and trying to work a full-time job outside of podcasting is definitely a challenge.
I've been using a task management project management software called Asana which has been helpful.
I think that's how you pronounce it and I've been able to create projects on there for different
podcast. For example, I have one project on there for podcasting, one for some other podcasts
that I'm doing and so that's something that I'm hoping will help me and I think it's starting
to help me as well as well as with motivation because when I create a task I feel like there's
a bit of a dopamine release if you will kind of gamifying the different tasks that I'm trying to
achieve and yeah and as far as podcast ideas I do have a lot of podcast ideas but at the same point
again that perfectionism is coming into play where I want it to be the idea needs to be perfect as
well so I'm struggling with you know is this a good idea? Am I wasting my time here? Is there an
audience for this? And you know I understand how to see if there's an audience for a podcast.
You know one of the things that I'm working on currently for podcasting is coming out with a
an episode where I will dive into creating a pod figuring out a podcast idea and kind of a structure
that I'm using for myself and so I understand how to see if there's an audience for a podcast
and kind of research that and it's pretty easy these days right? You can go on a podcast directory
and search for similar podcasts and see if there's an audience for that or different content.
Maybe if there's a YouTube niche for it or a Reddit community so you can go on Reddit and see
if there's a community for whatever niche or genre you're looking for so maybe you have an idea for a
podcast or I don't know baking gluten-free food or something and then you go on Reddit and you look
at communities that are focused on just that and you see oh wow there's 200,000 people in this
community if I can just get a fraction of that that would be awesome for a podcast so that's
something that I know how to do it but I'm second guessing myself and so one of the things that I'm
starting that I'm going to start doing is what's called mini series and this is an idea that I have
for myself to really focus on the creativity of podcasting and not so much focus it focus on it as
a business which is really what I want to do is I think that if you want to be successful in podcasting
you need to focus you need to take it as a business and really have a business plan which I've created
I have a mission statement for my different podcasts I have a mission statement for this podcast
I have a mission statement for all the different podcasts I'm doing a business plan marketing plan
etc but it's kind of ruining part of the creativity and you know they say that when you are you know
taking a passion and turning it into a job it could ruin it and I don't know if that's starting to
happen for me but I still enjoy it I still enjoy the process like I'm enjoying recording this right
now but I'm trying to figure out how to find a balance and so one of the things I'm going to be
doing is some mini series the first mini series I'm doing is a Halloween one and you know I've
never actually been much of a Halloween person in general but I do enjoy fiction and fantasy and
things like that I think Halloween encompasses that and so one of the ideas I have is to do a
mini series where I release a episode each week of October and so that's going to be called Spooky
Tales and Traditions Halloween 2024 so you can look for that coming out here in October
and basically I will be doing each week I will be telling a story a spooky story and I will be
talking about a Halloween tradition and we will be doing that for the first for all of October
and so I'm looking forward to doing that I just created the cover art for that last night
and I used Canva to do that so if you're trying to figure out how to do some cover art I'd recommend
you know just going on Canva you can do that for free they have a lot of free options you can just
type in cover art template and you can find a different you can find a bunch of different
options for that so that's something I'd recommend if you're interested in learning how to do that
I do have a YouTube video actually on how to create a podcast cover art on Canva specifically
so you can check that out if you want as well but yeah so I'm starting a mini series for Halloween
I have some other ideas for some mini series that I want to do a audio documentary on the
Arthurian legends so that's something that I want to do and it's going to be called Arthurian legend
through time so that's something that I'm interested in starting as well which is something I'm working
on but trying to work on all this different ideas is kind of a challenge and I'm wondering if I need
to gain some more focus and you know focus on one or two podcasts instead of trying to do this
network thing right off the bat which probably is a good idea but I don't know I'm still figuring
it out so that's kind of a struggle that's happening right now is you know figuring out
the best plan of action that'll help me reach my goals and so that's something I'm currently
struggling with as far as any other struggles I'm currently dealing with as far as podcasting is
concerned finding audiences for the different podcasts is obviously a struggle getting listeners
is a struggle that I think we all deal with at first and so that's something I'm struggling with
I did do a Facebook ad for a podcast episode and you know I only paid $20 to kind of test out the
waters here for Facebook ads and I did get two followers on Facebook from it and the interesting
thing is that there was I believe 31 clicks on the ad to the link that I had for that podcast
episode and that was to send the person to a Spotify episode of a podcast and so it said there
was 31 clicks on the link yet if I looked at my analytics on the podcast hosting platform and
looked at Spotify there was no increase in listens during that four-day period so that I thought that
was really interesting I don't know you know if there was some if people were clicking on the link
and then they just did not go into the episode and download the episode it is interesting to see that
there's some other interesting insights during that ad that I did so that's kind of an interesting
thing and then you know it was valuable in the sense that I got over you know it was like 1500
impressions on that ad so that means you know there was over 1500 people that are now at least
somewhat knowledgeable about the podcast because of that ad maybe didn't translate into followers
or downloads or anything like that but there was a you know it did people did see it which I think is
an important aspect would I do another ad maybe if I had more of a budget for it or if maybe in the
future I will try some more ads and let you guys know how it's going but I'm not sure if it was
worth it at this point in time and we'll see how it goes in the future I might try some more maybe
try some different social media ads different platforms try some ads on as well and it's kind
of what happens there but yeah as far as any other podcast struggles it's kind of all I can think
about at this moment and so yeah that I can't really think of anything else off the top of my
head other than you know trying to be perfect and trying to realize that perfection does not exist
and you know you can just do the best you can and also trying to figure out how to find the time
and the energy to work on everything and find a focus what do I do to create a high quality podcast
or high quality podcasts rather and how do I balance that with quality how do I balance
quality and quantity is something I'm trying to work on as well but yeah that's kind of the
struggles I'm currently dealing with right now curious to hear your guys's thoughts your current
struggles if you can relate to any of these struggles here that I'm kind of relaying to
you guys let me know follow us on social media I do have a newsletter now coming I do have a
newsletter I do have a newsletter that I just started actually on Substack so that's
podcasting.substack.com you can check out the newsletter there I also have some articles on
medium.com and then of course I have a YouTube channel you can follow us on Facebook and I just
started a Reddit community as well on podcasting so if you go to Reddit and check out podcasting
you can find us there as well I'd love to have you over there as I'm trying to create a community
here for podcasting my phone just went off and I'm not going to edit it out because this is an
exercise in being okay with not everything being perfect so yeah let's if you want to if you want
to follow me on there or on any of the social media platforms or Reddit or anything or interested in
some more content through articles check out those check out those resources as well until next time
guys I hope you enjoyed this episode and enjoy the journey and the quest to podcasting where we will
conquer the podcasting realm together until next time have a great day