← Coffee with a Podcaster: Love Your Podcast Again
Coffee with a Podcaster: Love Your Podcast Again
Trust Yourself, Ask Better Questions & Embrace Uncertainty
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So you've been podcasting for a while. You found your favorite Facebook groups, your favorite LinkedIn people to follow. You've answered all the basic questions, and now you've started podcasting for real. Now you've got more questions. Where do you go? How do you feel in that uncertainty? And why aren't you as sure as when you are following those people in the beginning in this episode, I talk about my own concept of what I call podcaster knowledge divergence. And it's going to be how you can understand how being comfortable in the uncertainty is the best way to look inward for your answers. I'm Matthew Bliss, and welcome back to Coffee With a Podcaster. I've been exactly where you are. Podcasting is one of those disciplines that just opens up entirely when you start exploring it for yourself. In a previous episode, I mentioned that the path between being a listener and being a podcaster is actually quite large because it's very hard to see what's going on behind the scenes just by listening or watching a podcast episode. So the beginning of your podcaster journey, when you start finding out all this information, it's like the world opening up. There is an unbelievable amount of common advice out there that you can use and access to learn something completely new that you had no idea of before. And there's so much of it to learn. And in the beginning, it's all helpful, it's all really useful because it puts you on the right path for what's going to come in the future. But there is a path when you start that common journey in the beginning where you move beyond the cornucopia of new information to you. Eventually you learn everything that there is to learn. And after that, you start to have some questions. You ask things like, the audio is great and I know how to make it great, but. But how do I make it better? What do I need to do to improve the structure of my content? I feel like I've found some people, but how do I find my people? And so you do what you did in the beginning. You go back to the common podcast advice traps and start asking questions again. But unlike before when you asked very specific, general but common questions, this time the questions are more about you. What do I need to do to find my ideal audience? How do I improve my audio? Unfortunately, what we find when those questions come about is that the common answers start to come up again. And this is where the it depends answer is probably the answer that you should be finding and looking for. Because no matter how many people tell you. It depends how to make your audio better, by using sound treatment and treating the room and selecting the right microphone. And make sure you use a compressor. You gotta use that compressor. Ultimately, you can't convey your own contextual, personal circumstances, the quality of your voice, the sound environment you're in, the episodes that you're building in the background. You can't explain that in a social post. And no one can really commiserate with it if they don't understand your full context. And social Media, Reddit, Facebook, LinkedIn, whatever, isn't a great place to share that kind of context, because as good as people might be, they don't really care, but you do. And this is where my idea of podcaster knowledge divergence really comes in. It's that feeling where you get to a fork in the road and you see that there is a couple of directions you can take. And it sounds like there should be more than two directions, but I'm going to give you two, just as a way to push you along the right direction. One path is certainty. Certainty means that you can go to a place that you know has the advice you had before. You can ask the questions, you will get the answers and you externalise it. You go to the Internet, which is prednatally certain, so that you can get that certainty for yourself and feel better about what you do. Unfortunately, with that certainty and that confidence, the growth is actually slower. If you're externally asking things, you're not reflecting on your own circumstances, there may be the occasional comment that actually asks you a question back and that will point you to the other path, which is the uncertain path. And the uncertain path isn't the best choice. At least when we're trying to make the decision, it doesn't feel good. Because uncertainty is obscure. We don't have the answers given to us, we need to seek those answers for ourselves. But part of the reason that uncertain path is so much better for you is because the answers aren't found externally, they're found within yourself. You ask yourself the question, why isn't my audio better? And when you ask yourself that question and you're forced to answer yourself, what you may find is that you answer with better questions. Why isn't my audio better? Well, what can you do to seek further improvement to make that audio better? Or why doesn't it sound better? Who can you ask? Or who has told you, given you feedback about the audio that you can use as a starting point to improve it? Or if you can't hear what needs to be improved how can you work to hear what you need to in order to seek that further improvement? And there is an intrinsic cycle of improvement and betterment and growth with podcasting and with a lot of other disciplines. But we're going to stick with podcasting for this episode. That intrinsic loop of self reflective practice in order to seek improvement is the most powerful tool that you can have as a human being. Because the external validation, turning our attention outward to seek improvement for ourselves is easy. There is no end of people who are out there waiting to tell us what to do. But if you diverge from the normal and you seek answers inwardly and even better, seek better questions for yourself to point you in the right direction to improve things, what you'll find is a self sustaining cycle of improvement. That means you can probably avoid social media entirely. And you'll realize how futile some of the discussions online about podcasting can really be. Now, one of the biggest things that I want to put across with this podcast is the idea that common wisdom isn't wise. Now, in the early times, in the beginning of your podcast journey, the common wisdom is common, but it's incredibly useful. It puts you on the right path. But eventually, as a podcaster, you have to trust in your own knowledge, in what you understand, what you have scaffolded from the very beginning in order to craft the growth of your own journey. Now, it's not to say that people can't come with you on that journey, but as long as you're making that journey through uncertainty, getting comfortable in that uncertainty, to ask the right questions of yourself and direct your own action in the way to pursue that growth, then what you're going to find is another cornucopia of growth for yourself. And I mentioned it earlier, but the funny thing is, this is one of those life skills that we really need to hammer on a bit today. Many people have a self imposed helplessness. They feel like this isn't working. Or sometimes we'll see it in the creator space as them blaming the algorithm or blaming the Internet bots killed my podcast numbers, that kind of thing. But in the end, if you've got externally facing goals that have been supported by externally facing answers to your questions, then who is really accountable for the performance of your podcast? And embracing that uncertainty for yourself is the ideal way to push yourself in a direction where you are accountable for what you do. But taking that responsibility means you understand more about your podcast than you possibly would before. So being a podcaster, knowledge divergent, diving into that uncertainty is the best thing you can do for yourself, for life in general. And while it's not something that guarantees growth, at least in the podcast sense, you will grow yourself. And I can tell you from my own experience, I have had the self directed external action to improve podcasting in myself for quite a while. But the shortest shortcut that I've ever had to improving my own podcasting talents is first of all, becoming a producer and editor for other people. That is, that really is the growth hack to learning how to podcast much faster. But more importantly, I didn't ask the Internet about how to improve all these things. I worked through different clients and my own podcasts with different problems and sought to improve it myself by asking the right questions and and keeping an eye out in that uncertainty for new questions and new directions that I can take to improve my podcasting ability. So I'd urge you to do the same. The next time you're wondering how you can make your podcast better, or if you have a lingering question that just hasn't had that answer yet, look at the fork in the road. You've probably already been down the path of certainty, asked the Internet, gotten some very poor answers. Now stare down the uncertain path, pick it apart, think about the questions you'd ask yourself to try and solve it on your own, and then explore those questions for yourself. Allocate some time to play around with your content to try and experiment, and you never know the kind of results that could come about. And that's the trick with uncertainty. If you're uncertain, you could gamble at a loss. But there's also a chance to win. Thanks for listening to this episode of Coffee with a Podcaster. You might notice that some of these are waxing and waving between prophetic, self improvement style kind of things for your podcast. Others are critiques of the of the Internet or the podcasting space in general. I'm thinking I might expand out this podcast a little bit, so keep an eye out for a potential rebrand. And of course, if you're interested in sending a question or two that you'd like me to answer for you, send it to hellothewbliss.net and I'll be able to answer your question. Thanks for listening. That was Coffee with a Podcaster and I'll see you next time.