After speaking with Diann Wingert (host of The Driven Woman Entrepreneur Podcast), it occurred to me that one of the hardest parts of getting started with a podcast is coming up with format and content ideas for those initial episodes. And I had a few thoughts about how I think you can overcome them easily, and more importantly, quickly so you can stop overthinking your show and get started today! 

[00:00] Overcoming Podcast Planning Paralysis: Tips to Get Started

[00:48] Overcoming the Planning Hurdle

[02:36] Deciding Your Content Style (Solo or Interview)

[04:26] Content Ideas for Solo Shows

[12:34] If we have to talk about interview styles - consider this first

[16:57] Blending Solo and Interview Formats

[18:24] Final Thoughts and Encouragement

Hey there, bizcasters.

Welcome to another episode.

My name is Sarah Scott.

I am your host and fellow podcaster.

As we go through this journey of figuring out podcasting

for our businesses together.

So episode one just came out last week and I got to speak with Diann

who spent about two years researching everything she could before she finally

launched her podcast, which has just now crested over the 230 episode mark.

And so she's had this huge longevity, but it took her so long to get there.

And I think one of the things that struck me when I was having a conversation with

her about all of the planning is that.

She is not alone in getting stuck in this planning mode.

So I wanted to take a little bit of time and dive a little bit deeper into that

aspect and talk about some ways that you can get yourself unstuck from the

constant hamster wheel of planning over planning, overthinking, and just trying

to figure out this podcasting thing.

When it came to Diann's solution, it wasn't just the accountability

that I think was gorgeous.

I think she needed that accountability.

I think we all need that accountability sometimes, but really at the

end of the day, she was able to get over the content hurdle.

And I think sometimes when we are developing podcasts, we get

very stuck in what are we going to talk about on a regular basis.

So for Diann, it became really easy.

She had 350 pages of blogging content that she had created.

And so she printed it off and then read it.

At the end of the day, she ended up having.

I don't know, something like six months worth of content from her

blog, ready to go in her podcast.

And so as far as I'm concerned, that's perfect.

She got to get going.

She did it by herself.

She just did this thing and she used the content that she's already

created, that she's already very familiar with to start the podcast.

So I thought today that I would talk about what else can you do?

What if you don't have 350 pages worth of blog content to start your podcast?

Where do you start?

Where can you start?

What things can you do that would allow you to get started today or this week

on your podcast that you have been procrastinating on for long enough.

So I think that there are two ways to look at this.

There is the solo show method and then there's the interview method.

Let's talk about a solo show first.

I think solo shows are a mixed blessing.

I think they are the right way to go.

If you are struggling with trying to figure out your voice and how

to get out to market, because they are less of a heavy lift.

Now, when I say that, here's what I mean.

When you're going to do an interview type of podcast, you have a lot of focus

that has to go back into your guest.

Your timetable about when you're going to record things

is going to rely on your guests.

You need to reach out and you need to ask people if they will be on your podcast.

You need to prepare and research before you go into doing those episodes.

There is a lot more work that is going to go into those versus just

turning on the camera, turning on your mic and talking about what you know.

So that's why I say solo shows are a mixed blessing.

We tend to believe that conversations are easier and probably in the moment

of recording, yes, it does absolutely feel easier to talk to somebody versus

being able to sit back and now I'm just.

Talking to a camera all by myself, but the preparation and the aftermath of

all of that far easier if it's just you and you can do it on your timetable,

you can do it whenever you want to.

You can talk about what you want, you can script it, you can do whatever

you need to do in order to be able to develop that show content now.

When we look at that, I do understand though, this is such a mental

hurdle for a lot of us, right?

What am I going to talk about?

How long am I going to talk for?

Am I just talking to the wall, which right now I am.

I'm just talking to a wall.

But that's okay.

Cause in my mind, I am thinking about you as the listener on the other end of this

wanting and needing this information.

So mentally I could at least think about, Oh, somebody's going to

be listening to this eventually.

And that might help you, but let's talk about a couple other ways

that I think getting through a solo show would be a lot easier.

I think one of the ways we can get over the hurdle of solo shows

is first, just keeping it short.

So I had a client her name was Lucia Knight and she did the Joy at Work Summit.

And this was an audio summit, the first I've ever worked

on, the first I've ever heard.

But her caveat to all of the speakers that came to the summit was they

could only speak for 10 minutes.

And there was something really beautiful about limiting that time

to tell yourself you have only 10 minutes to get your point across.

And that is going to be the end of it.

It will so help you focus.

You'll take out all the fluff.

You'll take out all of the extras.

That aren't necessary and really it will help you focus as you're starting to get

used to the idea of doing solo shows.

So that's going to be my first piece of advice before we even talk about

what that content is going to be.

Give yourself a time limit and say, all right, these are going

to be five minute episodes.

They're going to be 10 minute episodes.

It doesn't really matter.

Just give yourself that limitation because that's going to help you

focus your content into a much smaller bucket that I Think becomes

far more manageable when we are going through and creating that content.

And it's really funny.

One of the things that comes to mind about this is that if I was to ask you to be a

speaker on a stage and you had to talk by yourself on the stage for 20, 40 minutes,

whatever it happens to be, you would have no problem standing there, carrying

that speaking gig all by yourself.

The difference of course, is that you would have an entire.

Audience of people who was giving you energetic feedback, right?

You're going to feel the audience.

They're going to laugh when you want them to laugh.

They're going to clap when you say something brilliant.

Podcasting has none of that.

And I think that is truly the hurdle that makes things so difficult

here is that it's not that you can't speak for 10, minutes alone.

You're brilliant.

You can absolutely do this.

It's the fact that we do it without any.

Energetic feedback.

So if you can find a way to mentally give yourself that energetic feedback,

like I said, for me, it's, I have this vision that I am talking to you one to

one that I am giving you this advice, that this is what we're talking about.

And it helps me think, okay, how am I going to do this?

And what am I going to say to you?

And I can see.

See you smile at my jokes and I can feel you laugh when I want you to

laugh or, Oh, that was brilliant.

When I say something that I think is absolutely brilliant.

So if you can give yourself that imagination and remember,

it's not that you can't do this.

You absolutely can.

You just have to get over that mental block that says, Oh, this is really

weird that I'm just talking to myself.

Okay.

Advice number one, keep it short, 10 minutes, five minutes.

Don't care.

Pick a number.

That's what you're going to focus on.

But once you've decided that, what are you going to talk about?

So I really do want you to take a page from Diann's book.

So Diann went and she found content that she had already created and

then just recreated it with her voice by reading those blog posts, right?

What do you have?

What do you have out there in the world that you have created?

Do you have?

Weekly emails that you're already sending out to an audience.

Are you creating social posts for your business?

Which ones were really engaging?

Can you create more content around that?

What are your questions?

Do your customers get, what do you get on your sales calls about

your products or your services?

My favorite one is what questions do you wish somebody would ask you

about your product or your services?

And how can you answer that?

What advice would you give somebody?

Those are fantastic.

Write them all down.

Give yourself a list of all of these questions and all of these points,

and I bet you could come up with 12.

That's going to be my challenge for you.

Find 12 questions, engaging social posts, email topics.

Don't care.

Write them all down.

And if you've got 12.

And you decide to do a weekly podcast that is one out of pod fade because the

pod fade happens around 10 episodes and that's three months worth of content.

So easy.

And you've already created the content.

You've already written about these things.

You've already seen the engagement behind it.

You already know how people responded to it.

So now we're just going to create it in podcast form.

We're going to put your voice to your written words, right?

Okay.

But what if you've got none of that?

What if you are brand new and you've got absolutely.

No email list that you're emailing.

You've got no clients you're working with.

You're all just starting this out.

This is brand new for you.

Then where do you start?

I'm going to have a conversation coming up in a few weeks that

you'll absolutely have to listen to.

But podcaster Carrie Dobbs said she is a group.

I forget how she phrases it for herself.

Hold on.

Let me find that.

She is.

A group program architect.

So what she does is she helps authors and coaches who have created books, turn

those into effective group programs.

Okay.

And we're going to talk a lot about what she does and how she did that and

how a podcast has helped her with that.

But what I loved about what she did in her content was she took books.

She loved books.

She's already read things that she's looked at and said, Hey, this

would be a fantastic group program.

And this is how I think you would do it.

She built an entire short series podcast on books that she's already

read and advising the authors on what she would do to create an effective

and profitable group program for them.

She didn't have to ask the authors whether she could use the books.

She didn't even talk to the authors in advance about what

that was going to look like.

She just created the content showcasing the work that she has done.

Can you do that in a podcast form for your business?

I personally love this format.

I think this is an amazing way to show your skills.

And as long as you do it in a positive light, that would reinforce and encourage

the people that you are looking at.

Now, again, maybe you do this and you do it in a way that's anonymous and people

don't know who you're talking about.

Or you're doing it in a way like Carrie did.

And so this is the book and here's what I would do.

But either way, it gives you one, a reason to reach out to those people

and say, Hey, you know what, I did this thing based on what you do, I'd love it.

If you took a look and let me know what you think, it gives that really

open door, but it also has this beautiful ability to be a solo show.

So again, you're not.

Waiting on them to approve you and say, yeah, I'd love to come on your

podcast and have you talk to me about what a group program would be.

So I think that can be really interesting too.

If you're not already creating content elsewhere, or if you're just stuck,

I think this is a beautiful way of showing your consulting skills and

giving people ideas on how to use your products or services better.

So think about that.

I think that can be a really fun thing to do.

All right.

So now go back to your list, write this down on your list.

Are there other coaching or client opportunities that

you could add into this list?

For example, could I go and review a podcast and tell people what I

think they could do to improve it or get more engagement on it or build

it better as part of their funnel?

Absolutely.

And if I'm doing it in a very positive light and I want to share that back

with the host, I am sure it would be taken with the positive energy

that it was meant to be taken with.

So take a look at that.

See if there's anything now, again, like I've said, if you keep to this

and you keep this little topic list of yours going, you're going to be

surprised that you're going to be able to get 10 to 12 topics really quickly.

And if you've limited yourself in most cases, let's say down to 10 or 15

minutes, you're going to be able to get through this content so much quicker.

All right.

Now, what if you're thinking to yourself, Hey, Sarah I absolutely hate this idea of.

My voice being the only voice.

I don't want to do it.

I literally have like physical reactions to the idea of doing this.

All right.

If you must go the path of interviews, if you must go the path of

conversations, that's perfectly fine.

Like I said, though, it is a heavier lift and Diann talked about this too in her

episode as well, about how it can become a much heavier lift to have to work on that.

Because you're gonna start to think to yourself what questions am I gonna ask?

Why are they on?

How do I keep a focus?

How do I make sure it's going to be going on?

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

There's a thousand more mental hurdles you're going to have to go

through when it comes to creating an interview style type show.

But, I will say if you're going to just get started, I would love for you

to be able to do this in a way that gets you a lot of content quickly.

And in a way that it's on your schedule.

So that way, at least you get started, right?

Interviews, like I said, can take time.

You have to coordinate with the other person.

Schedules change.

People have emergencies, things happen, schedules move, they shift.

It can definitely be a lot harder to predict in the beginning to use that

as your beginning content, unless of course you're going to go through and

do a lot of interview scheduling before you ever even launch your podcast.

Just give that a really long think and I would say, if in the back of your

head, the reason you really want to be doing an interview style show is because

you believe that by doing so, you will be able to leverage the audience of

your guests to grow your show faster.

I highly would warn you against that thought process and here's why.

For all of the clients and all of the shows that I have ever done.

9 out of 10 times, the guest will never talk about your show.

It's a really hard thing to understand and to look at.

Unless you are a big name.

And you are the reason that people are on that because they want to

say, Hey, I'm connected to you.

For example, when I was on social media examiners, a marketing agency

podcast, I shout about that everywhere.

Now, granted, I shout about every interview I'm on, but I was going

to shout about that everywhere because I was on a podcast that was

produced by social media examiner.

That's huge in the marketing industry, right?

That's a big name.

That means something.

Not just to my audience, to validate who I am and what I can do, but it also

means something to the world at large.

So for me, I had no problem going ahead and talking all day long

about the fact that I was on this episode and I still talk about it.

See, like I am now.

But for the most part, you're going to find that for most guests, unless

you really On turn, something that they haven't told their audience about

before, more than likely you're going to find that they're just not going

to share it with the same enthusiasm that you wish that they would.

And it probably is not going to have the impact that you wanted

it to have on your growth.

So if you are looking to do an interview style podcast, and again, the reason for

it is because you're hoping it's going to grow your audience faster, I would

suggest you try a different method first.

If your other question is when it comes to dealing with interview

style podcasts is why would anybody be on a show that is going to be

brand new or hasn't launched yet?

That's a great question.

You'd be surprised.

Podcasters in general are usually very understanding.

If you go outside the podcasting industry, then you're in the marketing

business or something like that.

Most folks are pretty understanding.

Other niches though, that aren't here.

Might be a bigger pull to say, or a bigger lift for them to say, okay, why would I be

on something that hasn't already launched?

So it might behoove you to start again with the solo shows so that

you have something that's launched.

I would say that if you go out to ask people about being on your podcast, if

you can tell them really specifically, this is the audience I'm hoping to

reach, this is why I would like you to come on the podcast, and this is the

topic I'd like you to cover, You will find that more often than not, people

will be willing to join because you have that specific purpose in mind.

If you would just reach out and say, Hey, I'd like you to be on the podcast.

You're then asking your guests to make the connections around why them, why would

they be there, what would they talk about.

Reduce that level of lift for your guests and tell them why you're inviting them.

Tell them what lessons you think they can teach.

Maybe that's not going to be the thing you ultimately talk about, but start somewhere

and then work your way from there.

Another idea I'd like you to consider.

That is sort of a blend between the solo show and an interview show.

And I'm stealing this from Crystal Volkitis is rooted in retail.

Occasionally she has done this with her podcast episodes.

And I think this is a really interesting idea and it.

Entirely will depend on the size of your audience.

If you already have an audience or, some people you can specifically

ask to help you with this.

One of the coolest things that she does is a call in show where she invites the

members of her listening audience or in the community of people that she has

to call in with a question that they would like her or her team to answer.

This is brilliant because.

They're just calling in.

They're going to do a voice recording for you.

There's some great software.

I'll link it in the show notes if you want to take a look, but you

can go out and have them call in.

And so you have this ability now to have their voice.

You have the question to respond to.

You can almost vision the person in your head.

Who you're speaking to and you're giving your advice, like this advice column show.

And you could do one question per episode.

You get about a couple of questions in an episode, however that works.

But it could be a really fun way of blending voices so that it's not just

your voice, but not have to have the lift necessarily, or expectations that

come from like an interview kind of show.

So again, it's just a really interesting way to do it.

I think it's something fun to be able to do.

So I hope in all of this, there's an idea or two that you can hold

on to and help you get your podcast launched sooner rather than later.

Don't get yourself hung up on the content.

I think it's really important.

Come up with those 12 ideas.

That's three months worth of content.

Record them, publish them, put them out there, see what

happens, and then reevaluate.

Did this work?

Okay.

Now you have an established podcast.

Now, maybe you want to transition into interviews or maybe you

want to do consulting or whatever that's going to look like.

But.

Give yourself that initial three months of content and then

reevaluate and modify as necessary.

Everything is changeable.

And I will tell you that for a show that runs forever or forever, then that a

lovely thought in a show that will have a long run, the content you start with

more than likely is not going to be the content that you end up with forever.

And I'm not sure that it should.

I think shows should evolve over time in small ways and big ways.

I think that we pick up episodes, we drop episodes, we increase frequency.

Things can just change because it is your show.

It is your thing.

The podcast is just a foundation, right?

I have a podcast.

What that is going to look like over time is entirely up to you

and that is the beauty of it.

There's a million ways to do it.

These are just a few ideas that I've seen people use to get unstuck.

If you need a bit more inspiration, check out some other people's

podcasts, go outside your niche, go into the entertainment space or go

into somebody else's business podcast.

See what they do.

Maybe they've got a really cool way of doing it that you'd like to try out.

If that happens, let me know in the comments.

I'd love to be able to add to this and give other people more ideas

of things I haven't run into yet.

I would love to hear what else you've done and if any of these ideas really

resonate with you as well, let me know which one you're going to try out.

I'd love to help hold you accountable to that so that you can

get launched and started sooner.

Until next week BizCasters, I'm on your side, take the action and just remember,

everything can be changed over time.

Talk to you next week.

Bye.