E670 - Sustain Your Podcast Momentum - Creating a More Confident Podcasting Mindset

Hey, welcome back to the How to Podcast series.

As a day with you, the burning off are a little three little mini episodes around the idea

that when you walk into the room, walk into the room like you own the place.

It's confidence.

Walk into the room like you own the place and walk into the room like you've been there

before.

I think as podcasters, we need to up our confidence game.

I think we devalue ourselves and make ourselves small.

We don't want, it's funny because we want attention.

As podcasters, we all want attention.

It's called listens.

We all want attention.

But at the same time, we don't want attention.

We don't want to draw attention to ourselves, but we want attention.

It's weird.

It's really, really strange.

What happens though is some people go way too far with this and they think that everybody

thinks about them, like all the time.

They think that everybody's like mulling over and contemplating their words through their

podcast and they think that probably somebody's thinking of me right now.

And you know what?

No.

They're probably not thinking of you right now.

They're probably having fun doing something else, not listening to you.

I'm sorry, but they're probably not.

They're listening to your show.

They're probably thinking about you, but for the most part, you're a very tiny speck

in their week.

I know.

Doesn't that feel sad?

But, but we don't have to be so enamored with ourselves.

We don't have to be so full of ourselves and go way ego heavy as a podcaster.

We don't have to be arrogant as podcasters, but we do need to be confident because people

can smell confidence.

People can smell fear and they don't smell the same, by the way.

When we podcast, don't podcast out of fear and being timid and being small.

This is your show.

You built this thing, whether you have one listener or a hundred thousand listeners.

You built this and people show up for you.

So I'm trying to pump you up a little bit.

Back in the day when I was young, I'm not young anymore, we had like our sneakers, people

called running shoes.

We would call them in Canada, our basketball shoes and they had a little pump on the tongue

of the shoe and you could squish, squish, squish and give air to your shoe and kind of fill

in all the gaps.

We could pump up our shoes.

We pump up the jam now.

But we could do that.

I'm going to pump you up as a podcaster and build you up a little bit and go listen.

I want you to just understand something.

People love what you do.

People appreciate what you do.

And even though only one, two, three percent of your audience will ever leave you a speak

pipe, only one, two, three percent of your audience will ever click that link and buy

you a coffee.

Yeah, that silence was awkward, wasn't it?

Only a tiny amount of your audience will ever do anything you ask them to do.

But the silent majority and vocal minority of your podcast listeners, they love what

you do.

You've already earned their trust.

You've already earned the right to be in their calendar, to be in their routine.

They have accepted your show and they've accepted you.

Now, live it up like step up a little bit.

Here's the thing that I heard recently at a podcast event where somebody was talking

to another podcaster and they walked up and said, are you so and so from the so and

so podcast?

Let me give you a name for a show.

The so and so podcast.

Are you the person that are you the host of that show?

And the person was like, yeah, that's my show.

And the person had that had walked up to this podcaster was like, oh my gosh.

I love your show and they went on and on and on and on.

I've been listening to every episode and I love episode this and I love episode that.

And you could see the podcaster that was getting praise about their show trying to make

themself smaller like like they were if they could lay on the ground, they would lay on

the ground.

They got themselves smaller, smaller, to the point where they're like, okay, okay.

They almost made the person like stop talking and stop praising their show.

They're like, okay, yeah.

They're like, yeah, there's really nothing that is not that big of a deal.

And they kind of downplayed in the moment.

The admiration coming from a listener to the host.

The host was like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, it's not a big deal.

And they downplayed it all.

It was very dismissive of the person giving them praise.

And when they walked away, I just looked at them and said, you know, that was a missed

opportunity right there.

And they're like, it's so awkward.

It's awkward when people praise me and praise my show.

I don't like it.

It feels weird.

It feels eee.

I said, you realize that's a human being.

That's walking away.

And they thought so much of you that they made an effort to come and give you their gratitude

for what you've done.

You've earned the right with that person to speak into their life.

You are an influencer to that person.

You have influence over them because they've chosen you to be their human, to be their

podcaster.

And I think as podcasters, we don't realize fully how much people put us into their life.

And when they do press play on their episode, they connect with us.

And they realize that no matter what you talk about, there's something in it for them.

And I just think that so often we downplay praise.

We downplay people giving us positive feedback.

We downplay interactions with our audience.

And we kind of just write it off as, well, it's not real.

They're just saying these things.

It's weird when people praise my show.

What's weird is when you tell people to stop praising your show and to stop sharing

your opinion.

It's the opposite of what we want.

I think we, as podcasters, we need to sustain our podcast momentum through our confidence

for our show.

We need to sustain the momentum of owning the building, owning our space.

We need to maintain the rights to who we built and be confident in what we built.

And don't let anybody strip us of our confidence.

We built this.

There's a son.

We built this city.

We built it on rock and roll.

We built this podcast and we built it on our confidence.

We have to own this.

This is your show.

It's yours.

And you need to step up and say, yeah, I take ownership of this.

This is mine.

And I'm proud of it.

I'm confident.

I'm not arrogant.

I'm not an ego maniac, but I'm confident in what I do.

And I'm going to sit straight.

This is my show.

This is my show.

I don't know what momentum means to you for your show.

I don't know if it means frequency of episodes.

I don't know if it means quality of content.

I don't know if it means promotion.

I don't know if it means making money with your show.

I think momentum means a lot to different things to different people in podcasting.

So it's not a one size fits all episode for this episode.

But we need to be going forward with our show.

And it needs to have direction and needs to have a goal and needs to have a purpose.

It needs to have an intention and needs to have a why.

All of these things are important as podcasters to keep going.

And when we start to coast, it's kind of like we're always going uphill.

And when we take our foot off the gas, we start going backwards.

When I was little, my feet could just touch the back of my father's seat when he was

driving.

I'm in the back seat.

My feet were just enough that I could touch the back of the seat where my dad was sitting

behind the steering wheel.

And he would always do this trick to us.

And I thought it was real.

I really did as a little kid.

And what he would say is, you know, push on the seat with your feet and we can go faster.

So I push my feet into the back of my dad's seat, which would then push it to his back.

And he would step on the gas.

If I pulled my feet off of the back of the seat, even for a second, my dad would let off

on the gas.

And I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm in the back seat.

I'm in my car seat or whatever as a kid, but I have power over the car.

And I would give it a little push and the gas would be like, I give it a little push.

And the harder I pushed the faster we went, it was the coolest thing ever.

But the moment I took my feet off the seat, the car slowed right down.

You know, imagine being on a hill and you slow down.

I drive a standard transmission car, a manual transmission.

You know, we actually have a clutch and you actually drive a car.

You're not just sitting on the couch with a steering wheel.

I actually drive a car.

So I won't be having any of those electric cars.

Thank you very much.

I actually drive a vehicle.

I manually drive a car.

Now, if I'm on a hill, a steep hill, I have three pedals and two feet.

So I have to, I can't put my foot on the brake because I have to have my clutch in.

So that's two feet taken up.

I don't have a third foot, thankfully.

So, but I have to keep the gas going too.

So I take my foot off the brake, I put my clutch in and my gas is my other foot on the

gas pedal.

And I'm kind of holding my clutch out a little bit, gas in a little bit, holding it, and

I can sit on a hill without touching the brakes at all.

And if I make a mistake, the car starts rolling backwards into the car that's way too close

to the back of my car that's pulled up behind me.

So I have to like hold my space on this hill without going backwards and not popping

the clutch, which means the car just shuts off, chunk, chunk, chunk, and now I'm stuck.

So I have to do this kind of dance on a hill.

If I take, if I do this wrong, I'm going to roll backwards and I find that momentum

and podcasting does not occur if you sit on a hill as a podcast, as a metaphor, you're

on this hill and you take your foot off the gas, you're going to start rolling backwards.

You're going to lose ground, you're going to lose listeners, you're going to lose momentum,

you're going to lose your passion for your show.

When you take these extended brakes, whether announced or not announced, you just walk

away from your show, you will not pick up from where you left off.

You're going to pick up further down the hill and you're going to have to redo some of

the things that you had taken your foot off the gas and the kind of the growth that you

built over time, you're going to lose it because you walked away.

Your audience is going to sit there waiting for you.

The hill has no mercy.

It's going to roll you right back down to the bottom of the hill and you're going to have

to climb all the way back to where you were.

That's what happens when you lose momentum with your show.

You lose connection and you have to rebuild from scratch.

So my ask of you as a podcaster, whether you do seasons or you podcast and then you take

a break or you don't do seasons like this show, which is 365 in a row, that when you take

your foot off the brake and take your foot off the gas, you start to roll, figure out

what your plan is because momentum takes you forward.

You want to keep moving forward with your show and be confident in your content, be confident

in what you do.

And if you need a break, tell your audience and then go take a break, but always realize

you're never going to pick up where you left off.

You are going to have to make up some ground.

And that's fine.

It's fine to do that.

No problem.

But understand that the world does not wait for you.

The world is going to keep moving forward whether you release the episode this week, this

month, this year or not.

The world is going to keep moving forward and people will replace you with somebody else

who's active.

This show has outlived multiple podcasts about podcasting who have started and stopped

and I'm still here.

I'm still here.

My goal is to outwork all of those shows because they just give up.

They just say, you know, it's not worth it.

It didn't give me the results I wanted.

I made big promises when I started, but yeah.

And they walk away, but I'm still here.

This show has momentum.

So I'm doing 365 episodes in a row, momentum, creativity, making content.

So my encouragement for you is what are you doing to maintain momentum and what's helping

you from a confidence side to stay podcasting, to keep podcasting.

Again, you don't have to do 365 episodes in a row.

Not advocating for that for you at all.

But what you do, do you do it with momentum, do you do it with confidence?

Because your audience loves you.

Your audience cares about you.

They want you to be healthy.

They want you to be strong.

They want you to show up.

And they want more of you.

So be confident in your show and be confident with forward momentum in your podcast.

If you start rolling, if you feel like you're rolling backwards down the hill right now,

it's time to talk.

It's time to chat.

How to podcast.ca.

I'll be waiting for you and I'm confident that I can help you with your show.

How to podcast.ca.

Thanks for being here.

Take care.

Thank you so much for listening to the entirety of the episode, including this part.

You know what?

A lot of people leave right now.

So we'll let them leave.

Give them a second to go.

Okay.

Now it's just you and me.

We have our meetups that we do for the How to Podcast series.

We do them during the week.

And we also do them on Saturdays.

So twice a week, you have the opportunity to meet other podcasters just like you.

Some people have just started.

Some people haven't even released an episode yet.

Some have been doing it forever.

And we get together and talk podcasting.

We want to help you in community to continue with your show, to start your show, to grow

your show, to come and meet listeners of this show in one space on meetup.com.

Again, through HowToPodcast.ca, you'll see the links.

It's completely free to join.

Come whenever you have an option to come.

There's no commitment.

You don't have to sign any waivers.

You can just come join us, come join the conversation.

We love to have you there.

Because the only thing that's going to make these meetups better is you being there.

So I'm hoping you will say yes, and you'll say, Dave, I'm tired of podcasting by myself.

I wish there were people like you connect with that are fellow podcasters, and share my

frustrations with guests who ghost me and my editing software is crappin' out on me.

I'm just having this hard time, I'm having a hard time coming up with podcasts, episodes

and titles, and all the things in social media, man, man, man, man, man, man, man.

Wouldn't it be great to get in a room with other podcasters and share best practices and

learn?

Three of our four Saturdays every month are themed to have a topic, but that last Saturday

of every month is an open question and answer.

Ask anything.

Come meet a podcaster, come enjoy the podcasting community throughout a podcast.ca, come to

our meetups.

Can't wait to see you there.

You're still here.

Amazing.

Okay, this is a little bonus content at the end of the episode.

I'm doing it since episode 500, so this is 170 episodes of bonus content.

This is your first time hearing this, and you've been listening to the show in the past.

You might have missed a few things, so you might want to go back and check out the end

of the episodes for the last 170 episodes.

There's some bonus stuff here.

This is to encourage people to listen longer.

So this is your first time catching this, and you're like, oh crap, then stick around for

the future as well, because I'm going to keep doing it.

It's really helping my retention rates.

People are listening longer, and I appreciate you being here.

So this is just for you.

Nobody else is going to hear this.

Just you and I.

So here we go.

Two things that you need you can master as a podcaster on your journey that's going

to help you level up your shop.

The first one is knowledge about your craft.

That's audio editing, software, marketing, understanding how podcasting works, be under

the hood, all of that.

That's super important, knowledge of your craft, and second, knowledge of your audience.

What do you know about your audience?

What do you know about their habits?

How they show up in this world?

What they are looking for?

Where they're from?

How long they listen?

How they found the show?

All of these things are super important as podcasters.

We need to find this stuff out, and we need to develop this so that we can serve our

audience better.

So figure out and build on your knowledge of the craft.

Learn how to use the tools.

Learn about the tools.

And if you're like, I don't even know what the tools are, then you know how to reach me.

Let's talk about the craft, and then let's also talk about the knowledge you have of

your audience.

The more you know, the better you can serve them.

So if you don't know anything about your audience, you need to spend some time on this.

So knowledge of the craft, knowledge of your audience.

Two things you need to focus on this week.

Today.

So your podcast will grow.

Need help?

We want to talk about it.

How to podcast.ca.

See you over there.

See you to work.