← The How To Podcast Series - Podcast Co-Hosts, Practical Podcast Tips, and Podcast Community
The How To Podcast Series - Podcast Co-Hosts, Practical Podcast Tips, and Podcast Community
E652 - Podcast Perfectionism Is Fancy Podcast Procrastination - Lessons from Do It Today by Darius Foroux
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Okay, we're rolling. Hey, welcome back to the how to podcast series. I am looking at a book called Do It Today by Darius Fourroux. It is an amazing book, and what I'm going to do over the next five episodes is we're going to be talking about some lessons from the book. Not all encompassing because the book covers so much, but I pulled out five things that I thought could be really helpful for you. And then the rest of the book, it's up to you. Go find it. Link in the show notes. It's really good. Do it today, Darius Fourroux. So, yeah, we're jumping today. We're going to be talking today about we're going to take lessons from Darius's book, and I want to focus on how podcast perfectionism is just fancy. Podcast procrastination. Some lessons from the book Do It Today, Darius Fourroux. There you go. Ready? Okay, let's go. So are you the kind of podcaster who spends three full days tweaking the script for your show? How many times have you recorded the intro? 5 times? 10 times? 20 times? Are you obsessed over every single transition? Do you agonize if your tone was just right, or did I capture what I was really feeling? Did I connect with my audience? How many times have you got, in your own way during the recording of your episode? It sat unpublished for two weeks, that show, that episode, while you chased perfection. That delay costs you momentum, it costs you downloads, it costs you progress, it costs you growth, and it costs you time. And it makes you really frustrated. At the end of the day, you're just frustrated that you can't get this right. And listeners are waiting for you. Listeners are waiting for your content. They love you. I don't know who you're trying to impress because you people just love you. They don't want your perfection. They want you. And nobody's perfect. So if you're trying to reach a perfect audience with a perfect episode, I can tell you right now, there's no perfect audience. There's no perfect listener. You. You are not a perfect listener. I love you, but you're not a perfect listener. Nobody's perfect. Why are we so caught up with perfection? Think about how much time you have to devote to your podcast on a regular basis and how much time you spend just in this constant, whirlwind cycle of create, edit, recreate, re, edit, recreate, re, edit again, and you're not moving forward. I think that this podcast perfectionism that we can put ourselves under really is really just another reason for procrastination and just putting it all off. So here's the truth from Darius Farou's book Do It Today. If you're a perfectionist, then you're only a procrastinator wearing a mask, and that's not much different from a lazy person. Again, this is Darius Words from a lazy person who doesn't do anything. Perfectionism, it's not a virtue, right? I It's procrastination in disguise as we read through and do it today. From Darius Forough. We fool ourselves thinking that we're preparing, but we're actually just stalling. We're actually just in on hold. Is it frustrating when you call the bank or whatever and they put you on hold and not for like two minutes, but like 45 minutes and you hear that same crappy song over and over and over again and like they've come on multiple times? Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line. It's frustrating to be in the stalled waiting period when we're trying to create something for us as podcasters. I think it shows up everywhere. We re record our intros until they're flawless and they begin to not even sound natural anymore because it's been so edited. We obsess over our edits, we chop every we balance levels forever while our episode just gathers dust. It just sits on our computer. Nobody has heard this yet. It's been there for weeks, months. And this episode hasn't gone anywhere because we're so caught up in making it just right. Polishing your show notes or thumbnails to pixel perfection and stalling the audience growth in community building by not moving forward and pressing publish on that episode. For myself, I'm hosting multiple shows and I've seen this feeling of perfectionism sabotage. Many podcasters sabotage momentum time and time again. Your voice matters more than your Polish Listeners crave your authenticity, not a scripted TED Talk clone. So here's something to think about. Have you yet, if you've been podcasting for a little while now, have you released an episode that was in your mind perfect and then had very little response, like low listener counts and not a lot of engagement. You're like, oh, I put so much time into that episode. I had high hopes that that episode or that guest or that conversation was really going to just take off, go viral in podcasting. And the results were like me. And then you kind of just do a podcast episode because you're like, whatever, just get it out the door. I feel compelled to do the episode, but I don't really. I'm not really invested in it. Like, yeah, I like my audience, I like my topic, but it's like, I'm just gonna slap this thing together and throw it up there online and move on. No, that happened for me. Episode 76 of this episode, this podcast episode 76, a long time ago. It's got over like 73,000 listens for one single episode now. Do all of my podcast episodes have that kind of number? No. Some have five, some have 20 downloads. And you know what? I'm happy with anything, really. I have no episodes that have zero, so that's good. But that episode in particular, I want you to know, I almost didn't record that episode. Why did I almost not do it? Because I was actually annoyed that day. I was annoyed at something else unrelated to podcasting, and I had this thing in my head that I gotta get this episode out, and it was kind of nagging at me that I should talk about that topic. It was like six ways to deal with a hater and how to deal with hate when hate comes your way as a creative person. And it was just bothering me that this episode was sitting in my mind and I couldn't get rid of it. So I just jumped on the mic, I recorded something quick, put it out there with zero expectation of any kind of substantial results. I had very low expectations that anybody would even listen to it or care. And it is my best episode ever. Like, I, I, when I see the number for that episode, I don't even understand how that's possible, but it went, I guess, podcast viral in the sense that it gave me more results than almost my entire catalog at that time. And it was amazing to know that that episode and my stories and that conversation resonated so much, it went around the globe, and the results came back and said, this was good. And I almost did record it. I didn't even stress over it. I didn't even. I didn't even really edit the show like I like to edit, but that was kind of just like a turn on the mic and just talk episode. Again, very little expectations, but it hit. It just hit. So when you think about recording your podcast and you spend days, months on one single episode, and you just, you just keep editing and. And you just don't. You never release it. You're sitting on gold. You could be sitting on connection with your audience. And again, your audience doesn't care and will hardly even tell that the intro is to your standard. Perfect. Your audience doesn't listen to a podcast with the ears of a podcaster. They listen to your podcast with the ears of a listener. It's a big difference. And I think you're putting too much pressure on yourself to make it perfect. So don't be that perfect one. Don't be the one who spends way too much time trying to be the best version of yourself. You're going to get better just by doing this on a regular basis. You will improve. And don't forgive yourself the idea that your episode two has to be as good as someone else's. Episode 200. That's. That's not possible. It's not. You're gonna have to do a lot more episodes, like 198 more to get to that level. And you can't get to 200 episodes without episode 2, 3, 4, 2852. You gotta keep going. So I want you to try this little quick done dash exercise. I want you to grab one raw episode draft or some recording you've done and set a 90 minute timer. No more edit to 80%. Good. Trim big silences, add basic music, write simple show notes. Hit publish and announce it live. That's one for progress. That's it. That's all I want you to do. I want you to give yourself a time limit. Because I think you don't have limits in your life. I think you just think you can just keep editing forever. But you're never going to reach your audience with that file sitting on your computer or on your phone. Nobody's going to hear it. No one's going to hear it. Your challenge is to dig out and fix those episodes that are almost done. Not perfect, but almost done. Get them to 80% and put them out and be okay with that. I would love for you to publish those episodes or episode this week. And what I want you to do is let me know, Dave, I've been sitting on this episode forever. It's not 100%, but it's done. Done. Beads. Perfect. I want to see your podcast grow. And I want you to get out of your head and get into the hearts of your audience. And you can only get into the hearts of your audience by hitting publish. Done beats perfect. Your voice matters right now. And if nobody's hearing your voice, you're not having any impact on your audience. So release it. Connect and iterate and get better. Your community is waiting for the real you, not the polished you, the not the perfect you. Because if we're going to wait around for the polished and perfect you, you may never release an episode ever. We'll never hear from you. There are people that you can reach that no one else can reach, but the only way you can do it is if you hit publish. There are episodes of my show that like that episode 76 that are not perfect. I'm sure there's gurus who could rip, rip it apart left and right. But you know what? I don't care about their opinions because it connected with an audience and you can't argue with success. So if you want to be successful in podcasting, you actually have to podcast. You actually have to hit publish. All the dirty warts and bad things about the episode that you wish you could fix at all, you put it out there, people fall in love with it and they fall in love with you and they see your progress. And that builds community. Progress over perfection. If you need help with your podcast, reach out to me. I'd love to help you. HowToPodcast CA thanks for being here. Hey, it's Dave. Thank you for sticking around to the end. This is where we do our call to action or pathway to engagement as I like to call it. And here's what's interesting. I've been doing this podcast for years now, hosting meetups, helping podcasters, editing for people, doing a lot of the behind the scenes stuff. And I, when we have people who follow the show, reach out to me and say, dave, guess what? I'm like, what? They said, I just hired my first consultant. I'm going to go work with them and help me with my podcast. And I kind of go, wait a minute. You what? They're like, yeah, yeah, I found a podcast consultant and they're going to help me with my show. It's hard to pretend to be happy. Why? Because I want to work with you. I like, wait a minute, like Dave, you know the guy Dave who's been doing the how to podcast series and eight other podcasts and the guy that's been with you the whole time and we've done meetups, we've done time together, we've spent time together. And you've hired somebody else now maybe I'm not your person. That's okay. I'm, I'm totally fine with that. By the way. Keep coming back. I love having you here. But if you're like, well, I didn't hire you because you don't have anything like that, do you? And I do, and I have been for a long time and I don't talk about it enough apparently, because people are going to other people looking for things that Dave does. So in the spirit of Dave and in the spirit of making better connections with you, I do have personal coaching in podcasting. I have podcast community. I have all of the resources, I have all of the background, the history in podcasting and the love for you as a fellow podcaster. If you're looking for a podcast coach, somebody who can walk with you, somebody who cares about you, someone who is your challenger, your cheerleader and your coach. Because even though I've said on the show you can't be all three, I think I am. And I want to help you. So howtopodcast ca please, before you go searching anywhere else, come to where we started and where we met first. Right here. I'd love to help you. Howtopodcast Dossier Come, reach out to me. I want to talk to you. Thanks. You're still here. Great. Okay, so question was, Dave, do I have to have social media to be a podcaster? And the quick answer is no, you don't. My podcast editing and support show at podcast editing and support.com has no social media whatsoever. Nothing. I have no newsletter, I have no Instagram, no Facebook, no nothing. I have a website and I have the show. That's it. I am in so many countries with that show. It's outstanding. It's outstanding. I don't promote the episodes anywhere. I don't do 72 hour blitz of my episodes when they go live. I do nothing, absolutely nothing for that show. I have a good name for the show. I'm happy with it. I have a good website address I bought and it's a searched, it's a searchable term. Podcast editing is searchable. Podcast support, searchable. And it just works all by itself with no money behind it. I haven't paid anybody for anything to do anything for that show. It just keep, just works. So do you have to. Big, big capital quotes underlined, have to have social media? No. Should you? Well, that's up to you. Do you love social media? What platform do you love? Do you enjoy being on there? Do you enjoy creating content on there? Great. If you don't, you don't have to. The only thing you have to do in podcasting is podcast. That's it. That's it. The marketing people have come into podcasting and told you you have to do it. The Instagram influencers are now here in podcasting telling you you need Instagram. The people who love TikTok are telling you you need to be on TikTok. You don't. What do I do for my other shows? Podcast editing, support Again, no support, no posting of anything. And it works great. My other podcasts, instead of talking about the episodes, I talk to my audience about the topic. So my author podcast, I talk about author stuff. Not an episode, not enough. Hey, go check out episode 10. I don't do any of that stuff. I talk about things that authors would be interested in as a supplementary thing to my show. People get to know me and what's in my mind. How to podcast. I get on and just do things completely unrelated to any new episode on my how to podcast on YouTube. I just go and talk to people and I don't promote. Just like you don't like having a guest on your show that just promotes, promotes, promotes. Your audience doesn't like a podcaster that just promotes, promotes, promotes. It goes both ways. So do you have to have social media? No. Is it a good idea? Probably. Do you have to do it? No. Should you do it? It's up to you. How much time do you have? If you don't have time to record episodes, you don't have time to promote them, then you need to make some time in your day. I gave up tv. What are you gonna give up? Need help? Reach out to me. Howtopodcast? Ca I might see you online on social platforms. I probably won't, but thanks for being here anyway. Take care.