Ep 102: 10 Things I’ve learned in Over 100 Episodes of Podcasting

Verity Sangan [00:00:00]: Hey there, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the lazy girl's guide to podcasting with me, Verity. I, well, I'm always start with my episode saying I'm really excited, but I am Verity excited. We're re recording another podcast episode. What's not to be excited about? But 4: episode 102 which is so exciting it is bear with me on my excitement but episode 102 of the lazy girls go to podcasting we are talking about what I have learned in over 100 episodes of podcasting. And we're well over a 100 episodes at this stage. Because even though we are on episode 102 for this particular podcast, before I started lazy girl's guide to podcasting, I had a previous podcast, which is called the competent CEO. And that podcast got to nearly 70 episodes, I want to say, before I felt that the podcast had kind of run its course. And I didn't feel like I was adding anything new to the conversation. So I decided to take a hiatus on it, which has kind of turned into a long term pause. But anyway, if you are new to this podcast, it is amazing to have you here. Welcome. Make sure that you hit follow, subscribe, whatever the button tells you to do on whichever platform you're listening to. You'll be following us on Apple Podcasts, I think it is. You'll be subscribing on YouTube, whatever it is. You know what I mean? Just hit that button so that when the new episodes come out, you are ready for them. And for those of you who this is not your first episode, welcome back. It's amazing to have you here. So without further ado, we are cracking on with 10 things that I have learned in over 100 podcasts, 100 episodes apparently in over 100 episodes of podcasting I haven't learned how to talk yet but what I have learned in over 100 episodes of podcasting so the first thing is that podcasting has no rules and you might be like, oh, Pharisee, that just doesn't make any sense. But it's so true. You can literally podcast about anything and nobody is going to tell you that you can't podcast about that thing. It's not like when you have a YouTube channel and YouTube is saying that you can only talk about certain topics or whatever. I mean, I know that that is still pretty wide what you can talk about on YouTube, but, you know, if you don't meet YouTube's guidelines, whatever, you can have your videos taken down if they're, like, you know, overly offensive or whatever. But there are just no rules in podcasting. Equally, there's no rules in, like, the format of your episode, the format of your podcast. So many podcasts have got intros and outros to their episodes. You will know that I do not have those in my podcast. I can't remember when exactly which episode it was, but I talked about that and my decision to get rid of intros and outros. But I will make sure that that episode is linked down in the show notes so that you can listen to that afterwards. The second thing that I've learned in over a 100 episodes of podcasting is that you don't need to give up your day job. I think there are too many people out there who say things to you like, oh my god. So when are you gonna take your podcast full time? When are you gonna take your podcast coaching business full time and stuff? I'm not. I have got no plans on taking podcasting full time. And there are probably some people listening to this and dying inside of thinking, but you've got such an amazing business opportunity. Why are you not doing that? And the reason is is because I work part time, and I love my job. I absolutely love my job so, so much. I don't want to give it up. So I do my podcasting as a side hobby, almost as a side business, because at the end of the day, Ladygirl's Guide to Podcasting, we are a registered business and I do make money coaching others in podcasting, etcetera. But I don't want to take that as my full time job. So you don't have to take podcasting as your full time job if you don't, if you don't want to. Number 3, the world won't end if you miss a week. I think there are so many people out there who are like, you've got to be consistent in your podcast. There's got to be consistency unless you do need to have consistency. I mean, I don't know how you'll maintain an audience if you put out you know, 2 episodes each week and then all of a sudden your audience get nothing for 6 months. Then you put out, like, another couple of episodes and then, you know, there's got to be some consistency. But at the end of the day, if you miss a week or a couple of weeks of your podcast episodes, that's fine. The world is not going to end and neither is your podcast. And if you listened to last week's episode, I talked all about how I took a break from my podcast over the summer of 2024 and that was just the thing that I needed to do. And do you know what? My episode downloads didn't do badly because we'd built up so much of a community in The Lazy Girl's Guide to Podcasting. And shout out to all of you who still kept coming back to new episodes or to previous episodes, I should say, of the podcast and were still listening to those episodes week on week to just catch up with previous episodes that maybe you hadn't heard before or you wanted to, you know, listen to again or whatever. So if you don't have an episode come out 1 week, if you miss a week, it's fine. You know, your community and your audience will still be there. You know, people aren't that fickle to just completely disappear. Yes, okay. They might replace your listening slot for a few weeks. But at the end of the day, if you're if they enjoy your content, if your content's good, they will come back to you. Number 4 is oh, my gosh. This is controversial. Do I even wanna say this? I feel like I'm gonna be shot. But point number 4 is I find that half the gurus out there, the podcasting gurus, don't really know what they're talking about and are actually just rehashing advice, sometimes really outdated advice of things that they've just been told themselves. Oh my god. I literally feel like I'm about to be shot for saying that. But hear me out here. I just find that there are so many people on so many platforms talking about podcasting, and they're just giving out the same, quite frankly, kind of shitty advice. But, like, your podcast is gonna fail if you don't have a really good intro. Right. I don't have a podcast intro on my episodes. Haven't done for God knows how many episodes now. My podcast does alright. Like, you know, I've got an amazing community. I have got returning listeners. I've got really good retention rates for listenership throughout the episodes in terms of, like, the percentage of the episode that's listened to. So, I don't know. I think that there are some amazing podcast gurus out there. You know, there's some incredible people who really know what they're talking about and some people that immediately spring to mind is Adam Scheible. We've had him on the podcast for was it 3 or 4 episodes we've actually had Adam on for? There's Chris from Podtastic Audio. Again, we've had him on the podcast. I'll link all these episodes below. These people know what they're talking about but I just find that there are some other people who are just giving out really shitty advice but, you know, you you get that in you get that in anything in any industry, don't you? Okay. Number 5, before I get completely shot. Number 5 is podcasting is fun and the community just wants you to do well. What I love about podcasting is that I don't find that there is a competitiveness that there can be in other media creation and other media points. I just find that the podcasting community is just so welcoming and everyone just wants to help everybody else despite even if, you know, despite what I just said about, you know, giving out shitty advice. I just find that if you talk to somebody, other podcasters just want to help other podcasters. And I just think that's really, really lovely. Number 6, the phrase podcasting strategy is overused and doesn't mean the same thing to different people. 100%. So I find so often and I'm guilty of this as well. I talk about podcast strategy. I've talked about podcast strategy in terms of what I do and what I suggest in previous episodes of this podcast. But I think that quite often people throw around this phrase podcast strategy but don't actually have any thought process behind what that means and how podcast strategy looks different to different people. And what I mean by that is if you are going to monetise your podcast, then your strategy is going to look very different to if you are reviewing and critiquing recipes or episodes of a certain genre of a TV, you know, TV series or whatever. Your strategy is going to look really different. And even if you're monetizing, if you're monetizing through, you know, paid advertisements versus sponsorships, again, those strategies are looking completely different. So I find that quite often people throw around, do you have a podcasting strategy? But then there's not really that much of a thought process behind, well, what does that strategy mean for an individual? Number 7, you don't have to monetize your podcast. I said it. I said it. I said it. I said it. Okay? And I know that we have talked about monetizing on this podcast a lot. If you want to monetize your podcast, no hate. I monetize this podcast. I've tried a few different things for monetizing this podcast. Some have worked amazingly. Some have not worked at all. Some have been a complete waste of my time. Other ones, I've just been like, yeah, hit the nail on the head with that particular, you know, venture money making venture. But, fundamentally, if you do not want to monetize your podcast or you have no drive to, whatever, you don't have to. Number 8, podcasting does not need to be, expensive at all. I did an episode a while ago where I talked all about how expensive my podcast was to produce. And, oh my god, the comments that I got from you guys. Again, I'm gonna link that in the, in the show notes if you want to know exactly how much I was at the time spending on my podcast episode because I'm gonna be doing an episode later in 24, which will either be September, October. I'm not entirely sure when that's gonna come out, but I'm gonna be talking about how I have completely slashed my podcast production costs. But, basically, podcasting does not need to be expensive if you don't want it to be. Number 9, you don't have to do video. This seems really controversial. Everyone seems to think that you need to do video with your podcast, but the statistics tell us or the statistics that got bandied around on the Internet tell us that only around 20% of podcasts have got a video implementation, a video addition. That's the word I want. A video addition to their podcast. You don't need to do video if you don't want to. I am currently recording this, which actually then links into pod 0.8 really about how podcasting doesn't need to experience expensive rather. Because I'm not in a studio recording this. I am sat at my dining room table. I'm actually doing some work. I'm lesson planning at the moment but I decided to take a break, record this episode quickly before I go back to what I am doing but you don't have to do video at all. My hair is in a messy bun. It's literally just holding itself there at the moment. It really needs a wash. My dining room is actually, it's quite clean because I tied it up yesterday. But the point is, you don't need to see my dining room. I don't want you to see my dining room. So therefore, you don't have to do video if you don't want to. And it probably won't affect the download rates to this video, to this episode anyway. And number 10 is a successful podcast varies depending on who you are talking to. And I feel that this kind of links back to 0.6 where I was talking about podcasting strategy, where people talk about what you have to do in order to have a successful podcast. And I did an episode, episode 6, so that's crazy to think that that was nearly 100 episodes ago. Wow. But episode 6 of Lazy Girl's Guide to Podcasting, we talked all about how to have a successful podcast. And I talked about how it probably isn't what you think because we broke down in that episode that success varies from podcaster to podcaster. It could be monetizing, it could be getting in the charts, it could be having, you know, clients. It could be so it could just be showing up every week and producing an episode. But a successful podcast varies depending on who you are talking to. And I think that is so important to remember that a successful podcast is whatever you define it to be. To me, I think my podcast is successful because every time I put out a new episode, I get amazing I just I'm so grateful to you guys who listen to my episodes because I get people on Instagram, on Twitter mainly, avarice Sangan on both, messaging me and saying, Verity, I listened to your latest episode. Oh my god, it was so good. I took away X, X and X from it. I got from last week when I released the episode all about taking a break, that was episode 100, I got so many messages on LinkedIn. I don't tend to get that many messages on LinkedIn, but I got so many messages on LinkedIn just from people saying, oh my gosh. There's not enough people talking about this kind of thing. You've got to take more of a break and it's so important for you and thank you for just being so honest and sharing your journey. So as I said, success for your podcast depends on who you talk to, who you are, and what your goals are for your podcast as well. So those are the 10 things that I have learned in over a 100 episodes of podcasting. I want to know regardless of how many episodes you have or have not produced, recorded, whatever up to this point, I would love it if you could get in contact with me at Verity Sangan on Twitter, on Instagram and on what's the other one that I just said? LinkedIn. And send me a message. Let me know what are the biggest things that you have learned in however many episodes of podcasting that you have done. I would love to hear that. Otherwise, thank you so much for joining me for another episode. It's amazing to spend time with you. Thank you so much. I will see you next episode.