The Creative Reset For Podcasters

0:00I've been podcasting now for 16 years and I've been offering advice on podcasting for a decent chunk of that, and one piece of advice I've frequently repeated over the years for new folks is don't start multiple shows. This is based on the fact that it could be hard enough to run one, especially to run one successfully, and dividing your attention between two or more just seems unsustainable. At best you could juggle on but there's an argument that it could lead to having two okay podcasts instead of one great show. And none of that's bad advice, it's not like a woke-up this morning, realizing that I suddenly disagree with it, but today I'm going to go out against all of that and set you a wee task, which is to start a brand new podcast. And not just any podcast, I'm going to give you certain criteria here. We're going to call this type of podcast a microcast. It's going to be one short, sharp episode, say between five and seven minutes, where you simply talk over something that you're passionate about. For the topic I want you to pick someone that's close

1:02to your heart, but obviously not a subject that you already podcasted about or are planning to. Ideally it would be something that's completely detached from your professional life. A hobby or something you're really interested in would be perfect for this. Some examples could include your thoughts on the latest game of the sports team that you follow, or the latest episode of a TV show that you like, or things like the jersey that you're knitting, the meal you cooked at the weekend, or your plans for the garden this coming spring. This is sort of thing you'd find yourself chatting about with a friend for no other reason than you're interested in it. And in this exercise we're going to forget all the planning, groundwork and optimization stuff we've talked about, so often on podcast. Again it's not because I don't think it's important anymore, but it isn't the purpose here. Forget to any episode structure or hook, forget coming up with a target audience or avatar or that problem solution pairing or launch strategy, just take what's often on your mind, pull out your phone, open the voice notes app and talk for five minutes,

2:04no music, no production, just your voice and your thoughts. Once you've recorded, give yourself a maximum of 15 minutes to publish it, you can grab a free hosting account at rss.com through some basic cover art together on Canva or chat GPT, name the podcast an episode on a whim and write one sentence as your show notes. Hit publish and send it off to Apple podcasts in Spotify, and that's it, you're done. So what's the point? Because it certainly isn't to give you more work, I've no doubt that you're busy enough. What we're doing here is we're looking at podcasting with fresh eyes because if you're already running a show, it can feel heavy at times, it can feel a bit like your day job, you know, if you've recently found yourself overthinking every title, every intro, every release, then this strips all of that away because no one's waiting for this podcast, no one expects consistency or polish, there's no identity pressure, you're not the expert, you're just

3:07sharing something that you're interested in. And when you see four or five downloads come in over the next few days, not four or five hundred, literally four or five, a bit even feel a small spark of excitement about that, because it reminds you of some, it reminds you how powerful this medium actually is, you speak in your phone for five minutes, and someone you've never met somewhere else in the world could listen to you saying every word on dozens of different apps, will all become so used to the infrastructure of podcasting that we forget how remarkable that is. So as I say this exercise, it lets you experience it with fresh eyes, you might think of it like a musician in a successful band, the bigger the band gets, the more defined the sound becomes, there's a formula and expectations and a brand to protect. So we see a lot of musicians start on side projects, weird experimental, low stakes stuff, not because they want a second career, but because they're creative people. Your main podcast might be the band, and this

4:10we microcast is like the garage project, the messy experiment, the place we need to allow to play again. So again the challenge is this week record one microcast, five minutes, 15 minutes to publish, no optimisation, no expense, just get it done and get it out there. If it sparks something you've learned an important lesson, and if it doesn't you've lost almost nothing, but you might just remember why you started podcasting in the first place, and if that second topic refuses to leave your own, then that might be worth exploring too. Thanks for listening to this episode of podcast brought to you by Alitu, the easiest way on the planet to record, edit and publish your podcast, you could try it free today at alitu.com, that's a-l-i-t-u.com, give it a wee shot and see what you think. All right, good luck, and I'd love to hear how you got on with this as well, go and record that microcast, and we'll chat again on the next one.