Two Important Questions to Ask Yourself Before You Start a Podcast

Today is a quickie episode but something I've been asked about A LOT lately!

I know its hard to NOT jump on a trend when you see everyone else doing it, but before you do, make sure you know WHY you're jumping on it.

Podcasting is no different. Its popular, trendy and a bandwagon everyone is hopping on these days. But before you start yours, I encourage you to answer these two questions.

Transcript

Jessi Cabanin: 0:04

Hey girl, hey, are you ready for some real talk? If you are a female entrepreneur who has ever felt like a total failure, or maybe even a frequent flyer of imposter syndrome, this podcast is for you. I'm your host, Jesse, a millennial business owner, boy mom and creative genius helping women bring their business dreams to life. After 10 years of building numerous creative brands from the ground up, I'm ready to get real about what actually goes on behind the scenes of building your very own empire feel you're opening up brand new mindset for me. And I really want that for you too, because honestly, I am just so over society's definition of what it means to live a successful life. So together, we are going to create and navigate a version of success that works for you. Together, we can redefine fabulous. Okay, welcome back to another episode of redefining fabulous. I have a quickie episode for you today. And it was something that's been on my mind lately, because a lot of people have been asking about the podcast, a lot of people have been asking, was it hard? What kind of equipment do you need? How much is it to maintain? Like, so, so many questions about podcasts. And, you know, a lot of people are jumping on the podcast bandwagon right now. And there are plenty of reasons for that. Obviously, I jumped on that bandwagon, too. But I had reasons for that. And I want to dive into those reasons a little bit. Because I want you to understand that I did not start a podcast just to start a podcast. And you know, I feel like society and all of these social media platforms, you know, they kind of make us feel like if you are not on this platform, you can't sit at the cool kids table. Like if you're not on tick tock, who even are you? You are trash. Okay? And that's such bullshit. Because whoever decided that we had to be everywhere all the time, whoever said that we needed to put our entire lives on social media on every social media platform. Okay. So, you know, the one, the one reason, the main reason that I started this podcast, there's a couple of reasons. But the main reason I started this podcast was to develop a place of resource, okay, so as I scale my business, both vertically and horizontally, obviously, it becomes harder to be in 100 places at once, it becomes harder to be able to service more and more clients, because I'm only one person, I can only be in one place at one time. And, you know, I was getting a lot of questions from a lot of clients. And there were a lot of the same questions. And so what I wanted to do was I wanted to develop an area where I could say, that is a great question. I have an entire podcast episode all about this topic. Here's a link, check it out. And then if you have any questions, let me know. And let's like get on a on a power call. Okay. Because most of the time, those questions are answered when they listened to that podcast. Now. I also repurpose the podcast into a YouTube channel. Because a lot of times people like to watch, especially when it's conversation. So my solo episodes right now are not actually on YouTube. But all of the interviews I do with people, I repurpose them to YouTube, because one thing to understand about marketing is that everybody retains information differently. Okay. And it's more important, like, this is kind of like a jumped the gun. But it's more important that your content is absorbable in different ways than it is for your content to be on every social media platform. Okay? Because let's think about it, a lot of us are on multiple platforms. So if I'm seeing things on Instagram, and then I see it on Facebook, I'm gonna scroll right through it on Facebook. So like why I'm hurting your metric by by just scrolling past day, you should have certain clients or certain followers on each platform specifically for a reason. That is the way that platform is the way that they retain information. So I choose to repurpose to put my stuff on YouTube. Now I also repurpose it on my blog. And my blog is another resource that's, you know, in construction, it's currently being built to be a resource, instead of reinventing the wheel. I'm taking one piece of content, I'm taking this 110 15 minute episode, and I'm using it three to six times. Okay, so the main reason just kind of backtrack here. The main reason I started this podcast was to build a resource for myself internally to be able to send clients customers potential customers to answer questions without actually having to answer questions in person, I also find that my clientele at least, is more likely to listen to a podcast episode than they are to go to my blog and read a long ass thing of words like, guys, it's 2024 Nobody wants to fucking read a lot of words, they just don't. Okay. Now, obviously, I'm probably the my the minority, that's probably a unpopular opinion. But we live in a world where we want everything right now, yesterday, even five minutes ago, even, we want it right now. And the quickest way to retain information is to see it is a visual, okay? Now, even if that visual is a very vague description, we retain information visually better than we do via words that we just do. Okay? And so it's really important for me to be able to have a 10 or 15 minute episode for somebody to go listen to, to answer those questions. So when I made the decision to start interviewing people, the basis behind that was really to allow other women a platform to tell their story, and a conversation, to not feel alone, because a lot of us are going through the same things. Okay. And we talk a lot about success, we talk a lot about what success means to us what has been successful to us, but we also talk more about the struggles we talk more about the journey that got us there. Okay, and so in, in trying, right, so I started the podcast as a resource, but then decided, I'm gonna like to try this interview thing and like, see what happens. Now, I have almost totally transformed the interview process into this really, really meaningful conversation. And I have been so much more aware of the world of my surroundings, I have my eyes have been opened to seeing things from such a different light from multiple different lights. Because the reality is, none of us are the same. We all view things differently. We all work differently. We all wear different clothes, we all, we all just see the world differently. And it has been an incredibly humbling experience to bring these other women in have these genuine conversations, and to really be able to dive in to what got us here. So if starting a podcast is something that's on your mind, something you you know, you're feeling like you want to do it, I want you to ask yourself two questions, right? First question is, am I doing this? Because I want to? Or because everyone else is doing it? Am I jumping on a bandwagon here? Or am I doing it? Because I want to start a resource because I want to do this. Okay. And then question number two is, are you in a position to create more content than you already have? Okay. Now, the reason I'm asking you the second question is because obviously, it takes time to record. Obviously, it takes time to produce, obviously, all of those things play into this. And yes, there are plenty of ways to repurpose this content on social media, like yeah, this is a great outlet to develop social media content, because it can be repurposed. But you have to remember that you still have to go and create it. Okay, you still have to spend the time have the discipline to record produce, publish. Okay, so if you're starting a podcast, or you're thinking about starting a podcast, I want you to ask yourself these questions. Because if you're starting in thinking, this is what everybody else is doing, I need to get on this platform. I'm just gonna wing it. I didn't, I'm gonna figure it out as I go. If that is the mentality you have, I strongly urge you to take a step back and think about it a little bit deeper before you dive in. Don't get me wrong, I am all about trying things and jumping in to new things. But I want you to make sure that jumping into a new thing is something that you want, and not something that you feel pressured by your peers or society or social media. I don't want you to put yourself in a stressful position because you feel like it's something you need to do. Okay, it is not something you need to do. Being everywhere, is not what you need being everywhere is exhausting. Okay, so before you jump into something like podcasting, make sure that you have the space for it in your business, make sure you have this space for it in your life and make sure that you're doing it with a purpose. Because jumping in with no purpose is not a good use of your time. Now, if you have answered those questions, and you have a solid answer of Yes, I am doing this because this would be great for my business. I have a plan of how I'm going to purpose Isn't my business, I actually don't care that everybody else is doing a podcast. If you are answering these questions with full, full authority, feel free to reach out. I am happy to answer any questions that you might have about starting your podcast. I 1,000% do not regret starting my podcast. But if I'm being truly, truly transparent, and I'm sure that you've noticed this, I took a big break over the winter. I was gone absent from this podcast for a good couple months. And the reason is because I started to freely feel the overwhelm. I started to really feel like I missed one week. And now I felt like well, it's over. It's it's over. Because I have to do this every week, society says I have to do this every week to be successful. And then that turned into two weeks, and it turned into a month and it turned into two months. And you know what, coming back was hard because I had those feelings just like you do have? What is everybody going to think? Are they even gonna remember me? It's been months since they've heard from me, are they even going to remember me? And then I had to backtrack and say, You know what? That doesn't matter. Because if I'm putting useful content into my podcast as a resource for when people ask me these questions, who gives a flying fuck if the general public was like, wow, she Yeah, she's not really serious about podcasting because she was gone for a while, like, Who gives a shit? I am showing up today on this podcast for you, but more importantly for myself and the purpose that was driven behind this. Okay, so happy to answer any questions. Feel free to DM me, email me, whatever is your jam, and I will chat with you soon. All right, boom. I hope you really enjoyed today's conversation. I'm super curious to know what your biggest takeaway was from today. So go ahead and share this episode on social media. Make sure you tag me at this way to fabulous and let me know what you connected with. What did you learn from the episode and what action item are you going to take today? Until next time, guys, keep pushing, keep dreaming. And let's keep on redefining fabulous chatroom guys