Welcome to Podcast Suck, a podcast about starting a podcast, where we dive headfirst into the wild, wacky, and sometimes frustrating world of podcasting. If you've ever sat down with a microphone, hit record, and thought, what on earth am I doing? Or if you're just curious about the magic behind your favorite shows, then you're in the right place. Get ready for laughs, insights, and a whole lot of what not to do advice as we embark on this podcasting journey together. Let's dive in. What's happening, everybody? How we doing? Welcome back to another episode of Podcast Suck. podcast all about starting and growing a podcast. We like to live stream the recording of this podcast and utilize it as additional content. In addition to being able to make sure we can repurpose the video archive of this live stream. So this is by no stretch of the imagination, a video podcast, because while I would be going against everything I stand for, gosh, darn it. Today I want to talk about consistency when it comes to having a podcast. Now it's not just having a podcast. I think consistency pays off in several different areas of our lives, but for this example, we're going to talk about why consistency is so important when you do have a podcast. It has a lot to do with the growth and the results you're going to receive from your podcast efforts when you're consistent. So the million dollar question is why do some podcasts thrive while others just fade away? Well, the common denominator here is consistency. If you're not consistent with something, number one, we can't get better at something. So if we're not consistent with something, we can't continue to improve on what we're actually doing. So if you're a little bit timid and nervous when you're just getting started as a podcast host, and you're not consistent to continue to sharpen your skills as a podcast host, guess what? Chances are you're going to stay where you don't want to be longer than you expect. Does that make sense? Consistency forces us into the game. These podcast episodes are a great example of me being consistent with Hosting two podcasts, which is absolutely insane insanity. Do not do it under any circumstance at all But the reason I do have two podcasts People call me all the time. I'm thinking about certain two shows. I'm gonna go how about get really good at one. How about that? the reason that I that that I'm hosting two shows is I firmly believe that when you know more than most about something and It is your responsibility to share that knowledge in as many places as you possibly can. So the podcast that you're listening to right now is all about exactly who I am and what I do as a podcaster who owns a podcast agency. It's also an extension of my book of my YouTube channel, which by the way, you can, you're probably maybe watching this live streaming of the recording of this podcast on YouTube. If that's the case, what up, drop me a comment below. I do respond to each and every one of you lovely people. We also stream it live over on LinkedIn and on Facebook. This allows me to reach three platforms simultaneously live. So people who watch live content, may be different from people who actually listen to podcast content or listen to a Facebook or watch a Facebook live, uh, on Facebook, whatever the case is, I want to make sure that, uh, I'm, I'm reaching as many people as possible. Now, my other podcast beyond the story is my networking tool. It's my business builder. It's my relationship builder. It's what I actually teach people to do. And the reason why you actually want to start a podcast is to be able to interview people you want to build a relationship with and, or do business with. So that's the reason I have two podcasts. Just fun little fact there. Let's dive in real quick here on how you can make sure that you are remaining as consistent as possible with your podcast. First and foremost, set a schedule for when you're going to actually drop new episodes, not record, drop new episodes. So Like every Wednesday 10 a.m. I want to drop a new episode. Great. That's the schedule you're going to lay out for your new podcast episodes to be released, not recorded. Now let's talk about consistency with recording your recording schedule. I strongly suggest that you allocate two days a month, only two days a month and block out 90 minutes to two hours from 10 to 12, seven to nine, 12 to two, whatever your jam is and allocate. And there's maybe weekends too. That's cool. Every Saturday, every other Saturday morning from seven to 9am before I start my weekend, I'm going to go in and I'm going to record two to four podcast episodes. Cause when you do this, let's say you record two podcast episodes every two weeks, that's four episodes a month. That's an episode a week. Let's say you record, four episodes every two weeks, that's eight episodes that puts you ahead of schedule. If you're dropping an episode every single week, so your consistency can be directly correlated into your ability to remain consistent with both your recording schedule, as well as the schedule of when your podcast episodes drop. Does that make sense? They work together. The most important part of this podcast schedule, is you remaining consistent with when you're dropping new episodes. There's a couple of reasons why you want to do that. Number one, you want to, you want to cater to your audience and listeners. There's nothing worse than a good podcast with great content and episode drops. And then you don't hear from them for weeks. I listened to the daily stoic by Ryan holiday. It's a great daily podcast. It's between seven and nine minutes long, sometimes 12 or 15 minutes, but it's basically, an excerpt from The Daily Stoic, which is a book that you read every day. You open up to the 15th and you read that day. Ancient philosophy made more modern, able to better understand in modern day language. I get in the car and listen to the podcast on my way to the studio to compliment what I've actually read. If Ryan misses a day, it drives me absolutely crazy because I'm so used to getting that dose of the Daily Stoic auditorily every single day. Now, granted, life shows up. He's only human. I understand that. And because of my lack of consistency as a listener, sometimes I'm able to go back a day or two and listen to something. So I very rarely miss out, but I share that example because when you're creating quality content and people like to hear what you actually have to say, and you miss out on dropping an episode consistently where they're expecting new content, you're kind of letting your audience down. So it's affecting your, your consistency is affecting more than just listenership. It's, it's affecting the quality of your podcast scheduling and when you drop new episodes. So figure out a schedule and just stick to it. You can adjust it accordingly. Okay. Maybe it started off as every other Saturday. Now it's moved to every other Friday afternoon from one to three, we were going to do four episodes. We can only do three. And instead of doing every other week, we're going to do every week, every Friday from one to three, we're going to record two episodes. That's going to give us eight episodes a month. I'm telling you right now, bulk recording is the way to go. The number one challenge I get with our clients that we work with when they say they can't find new guests or new things or new topics to talk about is that they number one, have not been doing outreach to let people know that they're looking for podcast guests. And number two, they haven't bulk recorded those podcast interviews and or the topics that they've come up with. So number one, make sure that you've coming up with a schedule, you set the schedule and most importantly, stick to the recording schedule and the schedule when you drop new episodes. Next, I want to talk about planning your content. Now, planning your content is very important to your recording schedule because obviously you can schedule all you want, but unless you've planned out exactly what you want to talk about over the next 90 days, it's irrelevant. So if your podcast is just you teaching what you know, you need to allocate 90 days of content. I know it sounds like a lot. It's only 12 weeks, 12 topics, 12 frequently asked questions about your business. 12 SAQs should ask questions about your business. The questions that should be asked that are not. What are the top questions people ask you? What are the top 10 things you know? What are the top 20 things you know? Go find another 20 after that. Leverage AI and chat GPT and tools that will help you think about what you actually want to go and talk about. Once you have your guests booked out, let's say you have guests booked out. I had a client call me last week and said, I've gotten booked out for the next 13 weeks. I said, fantastic. If you did that three more times, you'd be booked out for the rest of the year. How much easier would your life be if your podcast was scheduled out for the rest of the year or better yet, it was booked up so much over the next 90 to 120 days that you were recording everything you needed for the rest of the year. This is 100% possible. And if you continue to record, even though you've got episodes that you've already recorded ahead of time, it puts you that much more ahead. Imagine it being December. You already have episodes through January, but you still continue to record. So when January 1st rolls around, you're good through the first quarter. So you can continue to focus on new ideas and new opportunities and identifying new relationships, but plan the content out. Very much important. A batch recording. We already talked about that. I'm going off my notes here. Batch recording. We just got done talking about that. Use a content calendar. get open up a content calendar. There's tools and resources online and figure out what you want to talk about. Maybe your show is a hybrid between you interviewing people and you teaching what you know, plan that content out. I don't care if it's Google calendar or a yellow notepad, whatever it may be, map it out. So you understand exactly what you are talking about and stick to your promises. Okay. With recording, Stick to what you promised yourself, because when you stick to what you promised yourself, you're going to stick to what you promised your listeners and your audience, and then everybody wins. You win, your audience wins, your listeners win, which is pretty much the same thing. D, all of the above. So stick, keep your word. Fourth agreement, keep your word. at all times. Maintain the quality of your podcast. So when you're doing all this bulk recording and scheduling out and content Keller, it may seem overwhelming, but it's really not. It's a matter of going, okay, let's just focus on the next four episodes. Maybe you want to focus on the next two episodes, plan the first next two episodes out, schedule those two episodes, record those two episodes, and let's move on to another two. You could be doing this in the same day. You'll be doing this within a couple of days. You could be doing this every day. I don't suggest that because then it becomes a bottleneck and you're like, Oh, the podcast again, versus I know when I record the podcast, I know when I drop new episodes, I know when I plan the podcast, I don't want to do outreach to find new guests for it. Know your who, what, why, and where of the podcast. Understand exactly what you want to accomplish with, your consistent, let's call it your consistency schedule, if you will. It's very important, because this way you understand exactly where the deficit is when it comes to consistency. I don't see my dashboard here, but I could be very well missing something. I'm pretty sure I'm still live. That's the only downside of, yes, I am still live here. That's the only downside of live streaming the recording. I'm like, look, squirrel. So those of you listening to the podcast, sorry about that. Thought maybe the live stream went down again. Hey, listen, I'm just trying to stay consistent here. People consistent. I'm trying to practice what I preach now. Also another huge component to your consistency, start engaging with your audience and people that are giving you feedback based on the content that you have. And monitor your progress after 30 days of scheduling content out, planning your content out, scheduling your recordings out, sticking to a consistent release date every single week for new episodes. Evaluate your progress. Remember why you started. You want to stay motivated. You really want to stay motivated because that transfers over to the conversations and the content that you're creating with your podcast. So staying motivated, very important. And my favorite, which most people don't like to do, including myself when I say it's my favorite, but it's very important to where the growth happens and that is getting feedback regularly, regularly. That's a toughie. asking for feedback from your community, from social media. I'm not talking about your friends or your mom or people that tell you the truth all the time. Yes, people, you want to find people that give you the brute, the brutal truth up front, unsolicited, unfiltered feedback that usually comes across as mildly uncomfortable. But you're able to take some sort of wisdom from that and do something different. Okay. So consistency with podcasting, consistency with, with your podcast production, consistency with your release date, consistency with your content game in general. Also ask yourself, side note, where else am I not consistent with other things? Am I not consistent with the gym? Am I not consistent with spending time with specific people? Am I not consistent about this, that, or the other? evaluate those areas because I've once heard that how we do one thing is how we do everything. I don't know if that's absolutely true, but I'd say that how we do one thing is how we do a majority of things would be a fair argument to that sentiment. of what I'm saying here. So, um, all right. I think that wraps it up here for this episode. I try to keep these short and sweet down to 10 minutes. Sometimes they're 15. Sometimes I really get on a good one and they end up being 20 minutes long. But if you're tuning into the live stream of the recording of this podcast episode, thanks for tuning in podcast listeners. If you're listening to this episode and you want to go back and watch this on YouTube, no, it's not a video podcast for crying out loud. but it is a live stream recording of this podcast episode. Go ahead and check us out over on YouTube at youtube.com forward slash podcast launch lab. There'll be a link in the show notes to be able to go check all of that out wherever you're watching this. recording Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and you may have feedback. Go ahead and comment below. I do respond to each and every one of you lovely people. It is my pleasure to do so. Podcast listeners, if you've got feedback about this episode, questions, thoughts, ideas, concerns, send me a DM on LinkedIn, on Facebook, on Instagram, more than happy to help out as much as I possibly can. That does it for this podcast episode. Thank you so much for taking time out of your day to hang out with me for just a couple minutes. And to better understand what you don't know that you don't know about the world of podcasting, we'll talk to you next time. And remember, consistency, consistency, consistency is the trick to really getting to where you're at, bridging the gap in between to where you're at, where you want to be. Until next time, friends. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode. We sure do appreciate it. If you haven't done so already, make sure you're subscribed to the show wherever you consume podcasts. That's the way we get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined, please leave us a review and share the show with someone you know should start a podcast or may already have one. And remember, podcasts suck if you don't have one. Until next time, friends.