Note: this transcript was generated automatically. Its accuracy may vary.

[00:00:00] If you’re starting out as a podcaster, or even if you’ve been doing it for a little while, but still feel imposter syndrome or worried that you’re not doing it right because you’ve been listening to podcast experts. Well, I’m here to call BS on a lot of what the podcast experts say. A lot of the advice I’ve heard, I’ve just rolled my eyes and thought.

[00:00:20] Serious. It just makes me wanna tell some people to just, you know, calm the F down. Hey, my name is Olivia Deza. I’m dedicated to helping multi-passionate entrepreneurs turn their dreams into reality by building a career and a life they love. And making a positive impact in the world. I’m a podcast and social media manager, a singer songwriter, a kids music creator, a a wife and a mum.

[00:00:46] I’m the secret weapon behind many six and seven figure entrepreneurs helping them shine a line and call in the people they are here to serve. And now I’m here to help you. This podcast is here to help you learn and be inspired. You’ll learn [00:01:00] about podcasting, lead generation, business, and all about the real life stories of people behind the businesses.

[00:01:06] Just like you think of it as a place to hang out with your like-minded business bestie who gets what it’s like. So grab a cup and hit subscribe so we can hang out. Again, this is Magnetic Pod, the podcast I

[00:01:24] every.

[00:01:35] Whether it’s podcasting or any kind of industry, could be arts or it could be acting or law or whatever. I feel that whenever someone is a long time in an industry, a lot of the time, not every person, but as a culture, sometimes you can get. So far into the weeds that you can’t see the wood for the trees anymore, and I do believe in meeting people where they’re at and that [00:02:00] a lot of the advice is a bit over the top and unnecessary.

[00:02:03] So today I’m gonna go through five bullshit myths that I’m gonna bust here today. So stick with me and I’ll give you the solutions to meet you where you’re at, and so that you can have a successful podcast. Let’s get into it. Myth number one, that you have to have all the right equipment came. Yet. I’m not saying that it isn’t good to have all the right equipment, but it’s not necessary to get started.

[00:02:26] I’m a big believer in starting where you are at and making progress. Progress, not perfection. Okay. A bit like the yoga mantra. So I have helped people who, and they’ve had very successful podcasts with tens of thousands of downloads. And for a big, big chunk of that time, they were just doing it straight into their phone, so with no microphone or anything.

[00:02:49] And their listeners loved the content and the sound quality was good. Could it have been better? Yes, but most people wouldn’t have noticed it because it was still a [00:03:00] clean, clear sound and. People listening. If unless your target market is sound engineers, then sometimes good enough is good enough. Now bad sound is annoying and people will switch off.

[00:03:12] So I am not saying crap is something that you shouldn’t try to avoid, but these podcasts were recorded in people’s bedrooms or wardrobes with lots of soft surfaces around with the doors closed. There’s no background noise happening and in a good acoustic space, and we got some good recordings out of it.

[00:03:33] So, and I know from my own podcasting journey that I learned along the way how to avoid certain sound problems and what equipment to get. But starting is more important, not being perfect, just get started and you can approve things as you go. So, Sound quality is important and I will do everything I can to improve sound quality.

[00:03:54] You do have to have some thought about it. I have been given audio where people have recorded it [00:04:00] on a beach just into their phone, and the wind is going nuts. And you know, you can’t polish your turd, so you do have to take care of your audio. But I’m just saying you don’t need everything to get started.

[00:04:14] And just think the very basics is phone microphones are pretty good these days, and if you have soft furnishings and and closed doors and turn off your air conditioner and things like that, anything that might go hum, don’t do it in the kitchen. If you’ve got a noisy fringe that hums a lot, that kind of thing.

[00:04:31] But you can still get started wherever you are at with number two. Zoom is not good enough for podcasting. There are better platforms. I know this, but some people already have Zoom. They’re familiar with it. They find it easier to organize meetings with it cuz the person at the other end will know what to do and they’re testing how they feel about podcasting and they don’t wanna try too many things or they just don’t have.[00:05:00]

[00:05:05] Done podcasts for people who were generating lots of leads from their podcasts who were making 10 K months up to a hundred K months or more. And so they were doing very well and some of them did interviews on Zoom, so, It’s fine. If you do look, it’s wanna say it’s fine. It’s not the best quality. If you use something like Riverside FM or zencaster, you get better quality audio.

[00:05:31] You can get wave files instead of just a compressed MP3 and better specs and all that kind of thing. If you’re getting video out of it, again, with Riverside, you can go up to 4k, although in most cases, most people don’t. Because most people won’t have a 4K camera set up. Most the webcams generally are up to hd.

[00:05:51] But to get started, I have done very successful. I have helped people with very successful podcasts that did podcasts on Zoom. If you do use Zoom, [00:06:00] please go into the settings, look for the recording tab, and go and tick the thing that says separate tracks for the two people, two or more, or however many people separate tracks for each person.

[00:06:11] That is something I will say. Please do that. Because sometimes you’ll have someone with a better microphone at one end than the other, or there’s some issue on one person’s side, and you can have one person with a loud voice and the other person with a quiet voice. And if you really wanna be able to get it, Up to matching the levels and get the best sound quality you can.

[00:06:33] Having the separate tracks for each person makes a big difference, so please do that if you’re using Zoom, but this is your permission slip. I mean, I’ve even heard, I haven’t heard a podcast expert say that if you’re. Invited onto a podcast and they’re having it on Zoom that you should decline. I mean, really, really?

[00:06:55] Oh, so precious. So, yeah. I, I [00:07:00] interviewed, oh no, it wasn’t on I, that’s right. I interviewed Neil Donald Walsh, the author of Of The Talk Conversations With God series, and I was trying a platform they hadn’t tried before the internet died. And he said, oh gosh, everyone’s trying to use all these new fangled platforms.

[00:07:21] Why can’t people get on good old Zoom? And like, he’s sold millions of books and he’s happy with Zoom. So, you know. Get over yourself. You can get better platforms. When you’re ready to level up, go to one of the ones I mentioned. Uh, but you can be on Zoom and it’s not the end of the world and people have been successful just doing it the bad way.

[00:07:41] Bad and inverted commerce. Okay, with number three, free. Podcast hosting platforms are the devil. Alright, so there’s a lot of suspicion around having free podcast hosting platforms, and I don’t think whether it’s free or [00:08:00] not should be the deciding factor. It might be a factor. But it doesn’t have to be a deciding factor.

[00:08:05] What should be the deciding factor are the features. So, because there’s a suspicion that if they’re giving it for free, then what’s the product? What are they trying to, what are they trying to get outta me? They’re trying to, there’s a persistent rumor with anchor, which is now. Recently changed recently.

[00:08:25] It’s been a little while now, but they’ve changed to Spotify for podcasters. So there’s a persistent rumor that keeps cropping up that anchor or AKA Spotify for podcasters. Own your podcast and own your content. Because this kept coming up, I researched it, I looked into the terms and conditions, and I found the bit that relates to.

[00:08:49] To ownership, and I also messaged support to get clarity on this. And it was confirmed that they do not own your content and it [00:09:00] was in writing. And so I just think it’s a bit of fear mongering and just because it’s free, we use TikTok that’s free. We use YouTube that’s free. We use Facebook, we use Instagram, or some of them are trying to charge.

[00:09:12] Now, but you know, we have used things for a long time for free, and it’s not all bad. So what I. Uh, the reason my clients mostly don’t use Anchor anymore is because of their specific needs. So, for example, we stopped using Anchor when we wanted to put the podcast on the website because the embed code.

[00:09:35] Wouldn’t be available to publish and put on the website until the podcast was actually live. And we wanted to be able to set up the webpages in advance and have it all ready to go and happen and publish at the same time, and we couldn’t get the embed code without a big, big stuff around. So that was one reason for going away from anchor, uh, a k.

[00:09:57] Uh, and the other reason we went away is [00:10:00] because I have clients that wanna be able to do dynamic ads. So you can put dynamic. So we like Buzz Prout. So you can put dynamic content into Buzz Prout, your own ads, deliver ads for the own, your own products or services or whatever amount announcements you want to make.

[00:10:18] And they can be updated and they’re not in there forever. They’re not burned permanently into the episodes. They are something you can. Put up and take down and change an update, and you could sell sponsorship directly to people by having the ability to do those dynamic ads without having to meet minimum requirements and that kind of thing.

[00:10:37] So that was a feature that wasn’t available for the clients that wanted it through Anchor. So that’s another reason. So it really depends on the, at the actual features that you’re looking for. But apart from that, there’s nothing really wrong with Spotify for podcasters. You have to have thousands of downloads before you can make money from podcasting.[00:11:00]

[00:11:01] I think of podcasting as a marketing tool, and it has to make sense within the ecosystem of your business and what you are trying to achieve. So for example, if you, for for me, I want to create my ideal client is an entrepreneur. Someone who is following their passions or doing something that matters to them who does something positive in the world who?

[00:11:26] Often it’s female. It doesn’t have to be, but they’re doing it within school hours and time poor, and they want to have an online presence everywhere and they have a big message. So podcasting really suits them. So, and they need some support. Emotionally and guidance wise as well as time. So the content I create is for those people, you don’t necessarily have to have a big following.

[00:11:56] You just have to have a [00:12:00] targeted following. You have to have an engaged following. If you are in a room with 50 people and you are speaking to them and they’re listening to you, That’s a win and that’s impressive, and you could go on to get sales out of that. You can also use it for sponsorship, even with a small following, as long as you are with a platform, say like Buzzsprout, where you can control and not have to worry about someone else’s eligibility criteria.

[00:12:22] If you’ve got a highly targeted audience that somebody else wants to get in front of, then that’s an opportunity for sponsorship. But also podcasting allows you to create content that you can push out to. All the platforms, you can push it out to TikTok and YouTube shorts and YouTube if you wanna do YouTube podcasting.

[00:12:41] But what’s more important is the strategy. So I use podcasting besides the content and besides the listener that I care about deeply and has to be number one, and I have to make sure that I’m delivering content that transforms and helps and inspires so that I can see what’s possible. [00:13:00] There’s other aspects too.

[00:13:01] I can use it as a tool to network and I do. So if there’s someone I wanna meet who I think I love what they do, and I would love to expand my network, I drop in the dms and I invite them. And as long as they’re also a fit for, for this podcast and my listeners, then I get to expand my network so that person could.

[00:13:25] Potentially to be a client, but not, not necessarily. I don’t think in that terms, those terms. Otherwise, all my podcast guests would be like, ah, you’re trying to sell to me, which I’m not doing. But we open relationships, so it means that they know me and I get referrals, or it means that we start having a conversation and we might.

[00:13:45] Do a collaboration, we might go, Hey, let’s go to get, let’s get together. And I am actually speaking with someone at the moment, but I can’t say anything until we finalize some details. But basically, if you’re expanding your network and talking to people, you can go, Hey, I do this, you do [00:14:00] that. We’re both kind of doing something that is directed at the same target audience and we could do something that works together really well.

[00:14:07] So it’s thinking outside the square, is what I’m trying to say. With podcasting, you can make money if you are thinking strategically. About how you are using it and how it works for your business. You don’t have to have so many people. You just have to have ati, a highly valuable, highly targeted audience, and then deliver something valuable that they want.

[00:14:29] With number five, you have to post weekly and you have to post every single week without a break. So it is ideal. Yes, it is ideal. It is ideal if you post weekly and it is ideal if you’re consistent and never miss an episode, and that people can expect to see, to hear your episode drop a particular day of the week, and that you’re there.

[00:14:52] Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. However, I also believe in meeting people where they are at, [00:15:00] and I also think of it like going to the gym. So yes, we should go to the gym every day. Or exercise every day. Yes. Or it doesn’t have to be every day, but whatever you commit to, you should stick to it. Yes, of course we should.

[00:15:15] Whether it’s seven days a week, five days a week, three days a week, we’re gonna exercise and we’re gonna stick to the plan. And we are never gonna, we’re never gonna deviate from that. So if you had this mindset that it was all or nothing, then the moment that you dropped the ball, missed an episode. Or found weekly overwhelming or too much.

[00:15:39] From for where you are at for what you can afford as far as outsourcing and that kind of thing. Then you might go, ah, it’s all too hard. Put it all in the bin. I’m a failure. You’re not let you, podcasting is different. You have to always be consistent. Well, yes. You should be consistent. We aim for consistent, but there is no actual [00:16:00] rule book.

[00:16:00] There is no law. There is no one that’s gonna come down from the sky and say, you have failed at podcasting because you missed an episode. You don’t have to throw it in the bin. Just treat it like exercise. How you going with your exercise? Is that a good analogy? But true to how you ideally would treat exercise.

[00:16:19] You know that if you wanna keep fit, that it’s what you do most of the time that matters. So that’s where I’m going. It’s what you do most of the time that matters. I do know that, for example, Steve Bartlett, the host of Diary of c e O, played around with his podcast for a while, but then made a decision at one point that he was definitely committing to every single week, and he shows that from there.

[00:16:43] Yes, it did improve his podcast. He was consistent. So yes, you get there faster. It’s great. It’s ideal if you do, but also he also spent $40,000 on the setup, which is great. And wonderful if you can do that. But what I’m saying is I believe in meeting people [00:17:00] where they’re at. So treat it like the gym. I think I’ve made that point.

[00:17:05] What you don’t use it as an excuse to stop altogether. Give yourself some grace and believe in your yourself. It’s like if you don’t exercise sometime, still believe in yourself and get back on the horse and get back in that direction. Don’t just give it up altogether. Because you weren’t perfect. So in summary, I believe in meeting people where they’re at and progress, not perfection.

[00:17:33] I think a lot of it is to do with mindset and believing in yourself and momentum. Believe that you are going in the right direction and that it may not be a straight line. It might be more of those, like those graphs that, that have that jagged line, but it’s generally the trajectory is upward. That’s what it’s like.

[00:17:56] So be as consistent as you can be. [00:18:00] Get back on when you fall, believe in yourself, get the support you need and go out there. There’s no such thing as perfect. So podcast imperfectly, continuously in the direction of. Excellence. So what are your thoughts? I’d love to know. You can slip in my dms, live music media, and on Instagram live in music media.com, L I V V I.

[00:18:24] Let me know what you think and what you want me to talk about in future. And happy podcasting. See you next time. So what were your key takeaways from today? Did it raise any questions? What would you like to know more about? Let me know. You can contact me via social media or email. I don’t care which way you use.

[00:18:41] Just reach out to me. I’d love to chat with you. And remember, you can get access to lots of free podcast resources that’ll help you get started or help you improve your podcast@libbymusicmedia.com slash freebies. Hit subscribe cuz I wanna see you again, but for now, go forth. Be the [00:19:00] awesome person you are.

[00:19:01] Live the life you want to live and have fun. You’ve got this. See you next time.

[00:19:10] Unavoidable.