Hey there! Dachia here. You may not know that I’ve wanted to start a podcast for 4 years..or more. I first heard about podcasts in 2014. I immediately jumped into facebook groups and dreaming about making my own one day. And like my businesses, I went through a lot of ideas… but unlike my businesses, I didn’t move forward on any of those ideas. Not really.
I spent time on getting the artwork done, and writing up strategies and business plans… and looking at microphones… yada yada yada.
But … I never actually recorded anything.
In the meantime, I went to a couple of podcast conferences like Podcast movement, and I bought a membership to or in Podcasters Paradise… I even wrote a post on casterbating… which is what I was doing.
I also started listening to a few people regularly on podcasts, like Amy Porterfield, who would tell me that she was using her podcast as a marketing tool. And I knew she was… I was listening.
In July, 2018, I learned about Alexa Skills and Briefings nd tough… this is it… I can easily create something her. And I crated a brief podcast.. hence the name briefing and I published it. There it was… for all to see. I was off… I was going to take on the world now.
But… Dec came alone and I still hadn’t done anything more. In 2018, I said several times I was going to get my podcast started… and in Dec… coming up o the new year… I hadn’t moved. I was still figuring it out in my head. The artwork.. the topic, where to host the files on and on and on.
But I was also watching, reading and listening to people like Gary Vee, Amy.. Marie Forleo and others and some of the folks I was listening to were not polished… didn’t have a team… and somehow I was inspired to just do something.
I was no longer stuck on what my perfect topic was. I got the idea to do a daily affirmation for the small business owner which I could do easily and quickly. I grabbed a free image, some free music for an intro and outdo, bought a $10 plug in mic off Amazon and note up a few episodes… and recorded them early in the morning… from my bed… when the furnace wasn’t running.
The next morning, I turned the furnace off and recorded the guts of several more episodes. I got an idea for another show, the national Day of, and downloaded a calendar.
My goal was to just do something. Stop analyzing. Stop waiting for a better time. Stop trying to make it perfect. I grabbed another free image from pixabay,com and free music from the youtube music library, and started recording.
I edited the audio on screen flow, because I already had it and was used to it. I didn’t want to complicate this. I wanted to publish.
What I learned was that the best learning comes from doing. I decided to have my file hosted by Libsyn because I had heard of them over the years. They were not new (I’m not an affiliate… yet) . And I decided to just publish everywhere.
What an experience. I cannot encourage you enough to just do it. stop thinking about it.. stop working out all the bugs beforehand… jump in and do it. Even if we are not talking about podcasting… if you are thinking of starting a blog… just do it. Dn’t wait for the photoshoot to get the perfect image for your header. Don’t research for hours or days or weeks where to host it… grab a topic… anything of interest to you… and start.
Yes… it will change. It will morph. It will evolve… that’s the point. You have to just get in there and do something.
Before Jan 1, I had a coupe months worth of content already scheduled. And.. I was much more comfortable starting the podcast that I thought I really wanted to do. These other two podcasts were my guniea pigs… my trial and errors. And I’m totally ok now that this podcast, focus on your small business with have trials an errors too. I’m over it now.
Read how I should have a particular microphone (which by the way, I did buy… it’s still in its box) and to damped the echo where I’m recording… and don’t use free music for the intro and outro. And I’m here to tell you… NONE of that is really important to start. None of it.
I’m recording this with a $10 lapel mic plugged into my mac, and it is clipped to the lid of mac. And I’m in bed. This is my office. I don’t have a recording studio… I live in a camper with 5 dogs and 2 cats. So there are times when a dog sneezes or they start to play and if it is super loud and distracting, I’ll edit it out… but straight up… my goal is to do as little editing as possible. I have a membership site to work on. And other business tasks. This podcast is just a part of a big picture. It is not my be all and end all.. no one thing is.
Whatever you have been being yourself to get started… just do it. Just start Yes. it will not be perfect in the beginning… if ever. It could suck for a while. But that’s ok… just start. Don’t build your business in your head… get it in front of you… don’t over-analyze. Throw something against the wall. Throw a bunch of stuff against the wall. Repaint the wall later.
Just do something today. Right now…