I have a challenge for you this year.
Complete your unfinished podcast episodes.
Thank you for joining me for The Audacity to Podcast.
I'm Daniel J. Lewis. Do you have any unfinished episodes?
Maybe you've already recorded them, but you haven't gotten around
to editing them.
Or maybe you've started writing the outline or even the script,
but you never finished. Then this is my challenge to you.
This year, and I'm not going to say today, this week, or this
month, although that would be great if you do it, but at least
this year, and I'm publishing this still near the beginning of
the year, this year, I challenge you to finish those unfinished
episodes.
I've got a few thoughts that I hope will inspire you for this.
First, it's a quotation I heard long ago.
If it'll keep, it'll preach.
This phrase usually applies to holding up against scrutiny, it's
often used in circles for pastors and sermons and preachers and
such.
But the first time I heard it was when I was at an evening church
service, and the power went out several minutes before the
preacher was about to start his sermon.
We had already sung multiple psalms in the growing darkness
inside of that church and the lack of sound amplification.
But when it came time for the sermon, the preacher realized the
kids were too restless in the dark.
The audience wouldn't be able to hear the message without the
sound system and even if the kids were perfectly quiet, and he
would be extremely distracted by the environment, basically
preaching to utter darkness, which that is quite a metaphor,
isn't that? That's something to think about.
So he decided to dismiss the service, and instead of giving that
sermon, he said, if it'll keep, it'll preach.
And he admitted that he had heard that phrase said by someone
else before him.
His application of that saying was that if that particular sermon
remained on his heart after the scrutiny of time, then he would
preach it again someday in the future.
And he wasn't the normal pastor, so it wasn't just like he could
say, hey.
Come Sunday or next Wednesday or something like that to hear this
sermon.
It was he was going to preach on that particular night in place
of who would normally preach.
So he said, if it'll keep, it'll preach.
So what I want you to do is look at those ideas that have been
burning on your mind or that you've had on a list for a while.
And if they've kept under the scrutiny of time, if you're still
interested in those ideas, if that script still excites you, if
you still want to put that episode out, then do it.
Actually, finish the episode and publish that episode or however
many episodes that you have that are still sitting there on the
back burner. Try and complete those episodes.
I have so many drafts in The Audacity to Podcast drafts folder
along with an ideas list. I have so many things on there.
I've often talked about when I first started The Audacity to
Podcast and I was in my planning stage.
Back in 2010, I made a list of about 35 episodes, 1 of the very
few times that I wrote something on paper during planning
processes because I usually like to type things out.
But it was late at night.
I was actually sitting in bed thinking about this because I just
couldn't get the idea off my mind to start a podcast about
podcasting. What a novel idea. Right?
And so I made a list of about 35 topics of things that I wanted
to make episodes about.
I knew that I wanted The Audacity to Podcast to focus on pretty
much 1 topic per episode and dive into that episode in deeper
detail, but really focus everything around that 1 topic.
So my list was a list of essentially 35 episodes that I knew I
wanted to do.
There are items on that list I still haven't done today.
After more than 400 episodes, which should be a lot longer if I
hadn't had to take such a long hiatus in the years, But I've been
podcasting with The Audacity to Podcast more than 15 years now,
and there's still items on that list that I haven't gotten to
yet.
And I continue adding to the items that I haven't gotten to yet
because I think about things constantly.
I'm getting ideas from random places and random inspirations, I
put them on my list.
Or I start drafting an outline because it can happen at
completely random times.
I just think, oh, these couple points would be really good under
this point.
So even before I recorded this episode, I revisited my list of
ideas and I saw multiple drafts of things that I'd started
preparing and some things I decided I want to do more research on
that. I want to think about that more.
I want to talk to more people about this before I publish content
about it. I want to prepare this more. Certain things like that.
And that's when I realized, wait a minute.
Just that, that crisis that I face with my own content is a topic
in and of itself and something that you've probably faced too at
some point.
And it might not be topics that you have a list of, but maybe
guests that you want to have on your podcast or movies that you
want to review or shows that you want to talk about or products
that you want to test and review or anything like that.
Look at that unfinished list of things, whatever that is, that
unfinished list and try to complete those things this year.
And a big step to doing that is my next point, complete the
preproduction for draft episodes.
If you're like me, you might have some episodes where you've
actually started preparing for those episodes.
It could be a guest that you want to interview and you've started
reading their book or you've started writing a list of the
questions you want to ask.
It's a topic that you want to teach and you've started writing
out your outline for that.
Maybe it's some jokes that you want to tell and you've been
trying to refine those jokes.
Whatever kind of preproduction it is that you need to do to get
that episode done that's been sitting undone for so long, work on
that preproduction.
That could be the planning, the preparation, the contacting of
people that could be scheduling issues, whatever that is.
Take action on those things and complete that preproduction so
you can actually get into that production stage of recording the
episode.
And then you can get into the post production, which is the
publishing of the episode after you edit it and do whatever kind
of stuff you need to or feel that you need to do with it.
But look at what you have in draft form, your draft ideas, your
draft notes. Turn those things into episodes.
I'm not saying you have to take everything and completely empty
your draft folder or your collection of draft ideas, but I do
challenge you this year, try to knock off some of those things,
especially the things that have kept for years, like my previous
point, if it'll keep, it'll preach.
Those things that are sitting maybe just because you've been
thinking, I want to prepare a little bit more for this.
Well, set aside the time to actually prepare for that.
If you need to do more research, if you need to schedule a call
with someone.
I was really inspired by this at Podfest 20 26 just recently, and
I did an episode my previous episode, 4 17, was about some big
takeaways from Podfest.
And something I really liked during 1 of their they called it
influencer meet and greets.
And it's a really neat thing that they have for really structured
networking where you move from table to table and each time you
probably have a completely different group of people at your
tables.
Sometimes you might have 1 or 2 people that are the same, but the
questions are different each time when you get to a different
table and the conversation is led by someone.
There's a timekeeper and all of this, so everything moves along
very smoothly.
But 1 of the things that they said is don't leave this room
without an appointment with someone.
Don't just say, let's follow-up, but actually make an appointment
with someone.
And I met a really nice young gentleman who does some podcast
editing, and it turns out he's the son of 1 of the staff and he
helps out also with Podfest.
And he has an editing service and I have a product, PodChapters,
well, 2 products, PodChapters and Podgagement that could be
useful for podcast editors and service providers, especially
PodChapters.
Boy, if you are editing episodes for other people, PodChapters
could be the perfect thing for you.
In fact, there are several features in PodChapters designed
specifically for editing multiple separate podcasts, not just
episodes, but separate podcasts.
Like, you can have saved templates that even automatically apply
based on a filename pattern whenever you upload that filename for
adding the chapters and the transcript to it.
Then it can automatically apply these presets to your episode.
So it saves you time, speeds up your workflow, plus everything
else that PodChapters does. Check it out, podchapters.com.
I didn't mean to make this into a commercial for PodChapters, but
I did want to speak with this gentleman about PodChapters and
Podgagement because I thought this could be a great service that
he could offer for his clients.
And not just something like, hey, buy my product so I can make
more money and you make less money. No.
What I wanted to do and the selling point for it was I said this
could be something that could be an extra value for your clients.
So if you have clients starting to think, I'm not sure if I'm
getting enough value, maybe you add this onto it.
Or maybe you need to increase their price, and this is something
that you can include with that.
So they wouldn't just be saying, hey.
We're increasing your price for our same services, but they could
say, we need to increase your pricing, and we're now adding these
extra services included in the new price for you.
That helps to justify certain price increases and such.
So had this great conversation with him, very short conversation,
and I realized this is someone I need to make an appointment
with. So we looked at our calendars and we scheduled it.
And we had that follow-up call and he was very excited about what
Podgagement and PodChapters could do for him and his company and
his clients editing for podcasters.
And that came from not just a, hey, let's follow-up sometime.
Yeah.
Sometime doesn't really happen unless you're really good at
following up. It was really good.
As I've heard from SAS Academy that I was a member of for a
little while, book a meeting from a meeting.
Bam fam is what they said. Book a meeting from a meeting.
Bam fam, b a m f a m.
Try to do that with your own podcast or with whatever it is that
you're trying to do right now.
Instead of just reaching out saying, hey, can we try and find a
time? Say, I would love to schedule an interview with you.
Here are some times available. Please pick 1.
Or here's my booking link. Let's pick a time for next week.
Or are you available next week on this day?
Give me some times that might work for you.
Whatever your system is for scheduling, try and make it easy on
your guest.
Or whatever it is that you need to do to finish that
preproduction for your drafts so that you can move those drafts
into ready to publish, and then eventually published.
Next, once you've recorded those episodes, move them from drafts.
Now you've recorded them or maybe you've got several episodes
like this where they have already been recorded, but you've not
done anything with them yet.
And it's not just because you like to batch record and then batch
process, but these might be episodes that have been sitting
around for a while.
Maybe there's a little bit of an inferiority complex or impostor
syndrome where you might feel like, this episode wasn't very
good. I'm not saying you have to publish bad episodes.
Although, there could be a place to do that, actually.
You could even say, and your audience might enjoy this.
You could say, maybe you've been podcasting for 5 years, 10
years, whatever it is. You could say, you know what I found?
I found an old episode that I recorded 5 years ago.
And my voice sounds completely different.
My production style was different.
I wasn't as confident, but I thought there's still some value in
this. And so I want to share this with you.
Even though you've never heard this before and I did this a long
time ago, I think we could still benefit from what was shared in
this episode. And you know what? I'm guilty of this.
Years ago oh my. It's probably been 10 years ago at this point.
I interviewed yes.
I actually interviewed someone for The Audacity to Podcast, which
I haven't published an interview in I don't know how many years
because it's just not my thing to do, which is kind of obvious
because this interview I recorded with Chris Brogan, think more
than 10 years ago. Yes. More than 10 years ago.
I still haven't published it.
And it's a very interesting conversation.
And the reason I never published it back then was I just didn't
want to edit an interview.
And interviews don't really excite me, so I wasn't all that
excited about it.
So if you're in this place where you have recorded, then consider
whatever that step is that you need to do to finish the editing,
do that.
Or maybe even consider publishing it with very minimal editing.
You could do some bookend editing where you say something at the
beginning to introduce the episode, like I mentioned earlier,
that you can let people know, this was a very old episode.
I never got around to publishing, but I thought you might enjoy
hearing it.
And then you say something at the very end, maybe you even end up
laughing at yourself. Maybe you interrupt yourself along the way.
Like, it's an episode where you shared old advice and so you come
in.
I hear Dave Jackson do this with some of his interviews or topics
that he discusses where he will interject with extra thoughts and
extra information. You could do that with your own content.
Even if it's you monologuing, you could pop in every now and then
and say and you could have a little transition sound or something
like that.
Say future me here or any whatever you decide is best for you in
that case.
But then you could say, I no longer recommend this, or I
discovered that didn't work, or now I've discovered how much
better this works and this led to this great success or anything
like that.
So you can build on the content that you hadn't released, or you
could publish it with minimal editing. It's really up to you.
The big thing is please don't feel like just because you've
recorded it, you have to publish it.
But if you've recorded it and you haven't deleted it, then maybe
there's still something there that's worth publishing.
Consider that. Maybe try publishing it this year.
And maybe you will finally this year hear the Chris Brogan
interview.
And in fact, I am going to say something to my editor, John
Buchanan, right now, and you're going to get to be a witness to
that to hold me accountable.
John, please remind me to send you my recorded interview with
Chris Brogan so that I could finally publish that. Thanks.
Next, discard what no longer sparks joy.
This comes from the book, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up
by Marie Kondo.
She said, the best way to choose what to keep and what to throw
away is to take each item in one's hand and ask, does this spark
joy? If it does, keep it. If not, dispose of it.
This is not only the simplest, but also the most accurate
yardstick by which to judge.
And that's from Marie Kondo in The Life Changing Magic of Tidying
Up, which is a book I have not read, but I've heard this
quotation, and so I found it, quoted it for this because it is
relevant.
Look at those ideas that you've had, whether they are simple
topics, whether they're unfinished episodes, maybe they are
completely recorded episodes that you just haven't gotten around
to publishing, but you just don't feel like publishing.
Well, look at that stuff and in a sense, think about does this
episode still spark joy?
Am I still interested in this topic that I wanted to do an
episode about?
Is this guest, this movie, this book, this resource, this
whatever it was, do I still care about it?
Do I still want to share this with my audience?
Even if you care about it or care about that person, is it still
something that you want to share with your audience?
Does it still spark joy to quote Marie Kondo?
If not, then maybe discard it.
I'm not saying delete it permanently because you might still
change your mind in the future, but at least discard it from your
list and clean up your list so that you can know, yeah, don't
really want to talk about that anymore.
So discard those concepts, those episode drafts, those ideas,
those unpublished episodes that you're just not really interested
in anymore, especially if it's something you haven't recorded
yet.
And you try to record an episode about something that you're not
passionate about, that's going to come through in your voice in
the podcast. Yes.
You can drum up some enthusiasm for some things, and there are
some places to do that.
The whole fake it till you make it kind of thing, which isn't
necessarily about faking it, but it's more about forcing yourself
to take action, to get some momentum going, or like I like to
refer to it as bathtub theology or bathtub philosophy.
It was when I was a kid, I hated taking baths until I got in the
bathtub.
And then you couldn't get me out of the bathtub because I loved
taking baths.
I just didn't remember I loved taking baths until I actually got
in and started playing with all the bubbles.
Then I loved the bathtub.
And that could be it for you with some of these topics that you
might feel like, I don't really want to talk about it.
Well, see if you can try.
See if you can spark that joy while forcing yourself to work on
it.
And that's a good self discipline as well to exercise your drive
and motivation, your determination, your thoroughness to work on
it anyway and get that spark of joy through it.
This is something I sometimes face.
I'm an ambivert, which means I'm in the middle of introvert and
extrovert. On my lazy days, I'll be an introvert.
And if I go to a conference or a social gathering, I might
initially feel lazy and feel like, I don't really want to go try
to meet people.
I have to make an intentional decision in my mind and kind of
like flip a switch to go meet people and decide, nope.
I'm not gonna just hang out with the people I know, or maybe I
will for a few minutes just to kind of rev up, but I'm going to
go meet someone.
I'm going to find someone who looks like they need someone to
talk to and they're not busy or find a conversation I can join in
on. And you might see me do that at conferences too.
You'll see me come into a room, kind of look around, maybe
connect first with the people I know, and then start moving
around and talking to other people and meeting people and
widening the circle of conversation as someone else comes up.
And then it's like, hey.
How about you come on and join our conversation over here?
So sometimes it does just take you that extra energy just to get
a little bit of momentum going.
And I've mentioned this in the past.
You can't even use AI for this.
This is 1 of my first uses of AI or LLMs, large language models.
Before ChatGPT was even a thing, I was talking about Jasper, or
back then it was called Jarvis and conversion AI.
It's a tool that's not so popular anymore, and it, I don't know
if it really exists in the way that I used to use it.
I now recommend Magi instead.
Magi is a super toolbox of AI things.
You get GPT, you get Claude, and Gemini, and a bunch of image and
video editors, and AI tools all in 1 subscription.
It's a great value if you like AI tools.
But I don't recommend using AI to create your content.
It can, however, help you get some momentum.
You can ask it to give you ideas of what to talk about or to at
least give you an intro paragraph about a particular topic that
you're struggling to just get started on.
And there have been many times in the past when I first started
using what's now called Jasper if it even still exists the way I
used it.
But when I started using AI back then, there were many times that
I tried it to just start something that I needed to write, and it
gave me a sentence or 2.
And then I wrote pages of content because I just needed that
little push to get started, and then the joy started sparking in
me.
And I got excited about it, And I got the momentum going, and I
started going with it.
You could do the same thing with your episodes.
Might feel a little bit hard at first to get some of those draft
ideas moving down the pipeline of your production workflow,
whatever that looks like to you, but try it.
See if once you get into it, it then sparks some joy.
And if it doesn't spark that joy for you, if you don't feel like
it's something you want to talk about at all anymore, feel free
to remove it from your list then.
Before I go, I wanna give a special thanks to Joshua Liston for
sending $5 and saying a little help for someone helping indie
podcasters. Thank you so much, Joshua.
And also $25 from Leslie Martin saying, if you ever get to
Anchorage, Alaska, give me a shout.
I'd love to meet with you and take you out to dinner.
Well, thank you so much, Leslie.
I'd love to visit Alaska someday.
There are a lot of places I'd love to visit someday that I know
would spark a joy.
It's just a matter of actually getting there and the logistics of
such. But thank you so much for those kind donations.
These have come in from the past couple of months, and I just
never got around to thanking them publicly for them.
If you value what I share with you in the Audacity podcast, would
you consider what that's worth to you and give back whatever you
feel it's worth to you?
You can do that at theaudacitytopodcast.com slash give back.
Or if you want to buy 1 of my products, the big things I have
right now are Podgagement and PodChapters.
You can go to podchapters.com to help you add engaging chapters
to your podcast within seconds or podgagement.com to help you
supercharge your audience interaction and engagement.
Now that I've given you some of the guts and taught you some of
the tools, it's time for you to go start and grow your own
podcast for passion and profit. I'm Daniel J.
Lewis from theaudacitytopodcast.com. Thanks for listening.