In this episode, I sit down with Diann to discuss her inspiring journey of launching and growing her podcast to 200 episodes. Diann shares her early struggles with overthinking and procrastination and how she finally overcame these hurdles with accountability (and it didn’t hurt that she had extensive blog content to kickstart her podcast.).

We talk about the challenges of podcasting, the importance of realistic expectations, and the need for experimentation and consistency. 

Diann also emphasizes the power of finding and using your unique voice and shares insights on how her podcasting strategy has evolved over the years. 

This conversation is a treasure trove of advice for anyone looking to start or sustain their own podcast.

00:00 Welcome Diann Wingert, Host of The Driven Woman Entrepreneur Podcast

00:50 The Cringy Origin Story

02:47 Overcoming Overthinking

03:36 Finding Accountability

06:45 Launching the Podcast

08:45 Evolving the Podcast Format

11:01 Experimenting with Podcast Formats

12:56 Adjusting Strategies and Overcoming Perfectionism

18:30 Overcoming Fear of Public Criticism

18:58 Embracing Your Unique Voice

22:46 The Power of Podcasting for Your Business

23:48 Effective Podcast Marketing Strategies

26:33 Guesting on Podcasts for Growth

31:04 Building Trust with Your Audience

32:32 Advice for Aspiring Podcasters

Get all of the details on our website at https://sarahscottstudios.com/overcome-fear-and-procrastination-and-get-your-podcast-launched-with-diann-wingert/ 

Well, hello, everybody.

I am so excited today.

I am interviewing Diann.

We are going to be talking about her launch for her podcast.

Now we had to have a really great conversation before all of

this started and what I really.

Attracted me to your story was your launch.

So before we get started, can you just let everybody know about your podcast?

Give them the name, the feedback, all of that fun stuff.

Well, I know this episode is not going to be

released until next month or later.

However, tomorrow.

At the time of this recording, we are releasing episode 200.

And now based on

that, that's almost, that's almost, that is a BFD friends.

And that means every single week for in may, it'll be four years.

However, I have a very cringy origin story.

And That when you hear 200 episodes, wow, she's a boss.

Well, it wasn't always true.

As a matter of fact, I knew I wanted a podcast several years ago because

I had already been a guest on a number of other podcasts, including

a regular guest expert on a podcast.

Every couple of months I was coming back.

So I thought, I have a degree in communications.

I've been a public speaker.

I do a lot of interviewing in my job.

So I thought, I think this is really the medium for me.

And I know I need to create content.

So I made the commitment.

I came up with the title, I got the show art, I bought the equipment.

I even got on a hosting platform account.

I literally had everything I needed.

And then I decided I needed to listen to a bunch of podcasts

about launching a podcast.

And of course, I also needed to read numerous blog posts.

About launching a podcast, read several books about launching a podcast.

And I even hired not one, two podcast launch consultants.

It was really cringey and shameful.

And I, really had to feel bad about myself for a while, but

I realized, you know, what?

You, you need something different than more of the same.

You do not need more books.

You do not need more podcast episodes.

You do not need more blog posts.

You do not need more faffing around and reconsidering your show

art and your show title and your categories and your description.

You don't need any more of that.

You need something different.

I needed accountability.

And once I got that, everything changed.

It just makes me laugh because as much as I would

love to say, Oh, I'm different.

I'm not any different.

Like you can go back through my LinkedIn posts and you can see,

I have pictures of my microphone when I bought my fancy microphone.

And I'm like, I had people taking bets.

How long is it going to be before I do anything with this.

And so I don't think it's unusual for people to really sit back

and we overthink it, right?

Overthink.

That's what we're doing.

We're overthinking overthought what the show is gonna be about.

Overthink what the title's gonna be, who am I gonna reach out to?

What am I going to do?

And before you know it, an idea that came to you and should have probably

taken a couple of months to launch, it's suddenly, like you said, two years.

And all of a sudden it's yeah, I still haven't done this.

And, now you start feeling guilty because we can't keep talking about it.

Cause everybody's saying, well, you keep talking about this thing.

And it's well, I'll get there eventually.

Like it's gonna happen.

But, and then it's that feeling too, if you don't know what you don't know.

We were talking about this before and that's the over reading and

the over learning and the, and really the only thing that's going

to teach us is action, right?

So what happened with your accountability group?

How did you find them?

Was this specific for podcasting or was it just general?

Nope.

What I realized was I had everything I needed, but.

I didn't have accountability.

I didn't have anyone, but my own inner voice, which I ignore all the time

telling me, what are you waiting for?

Girl, let's get busy.

So we had moved from Los Angeles, California to Portland, Oregon.

We didn't know anybody.

I had already made the transition work to working from home.

My husband changed careers and was now in a remote position.

So here we are in a new city.

We know no one.

We are accustomed to being apart most of our waking hours because we both

worked a lot and now we're both at home full time in the same house.

So I needed something to do.

Because he was driving me nuts.

So I started writing blog posts.

I just started depositing my knowledge, anything I wanted to talk about from

my field of expertise and interest.

And next thing I knew, I said, honey, do you have a ream of printer paper?

Could you just print it?

I don't know how many pages I've got, but I written some blog posts.

So could you print these out for me?

I just want to take a look at what I've got.

Cause I would prefer to just look at them on paper instead of on the screen.

Girl, there were 350 pages.

It's a textbook.

I know, except for it was written in the form

of a blog post and not a book.

But what I thought was, hey, wait a minute.

If I've got all this material.

Like one blog at a time, maybe I could start that podcast by reading a blog

post and turning it into a podcast.

So I had that idea to take the barrier to entry down a little bit because

one of the things that was hanging me up is, I know a lot, I have a lot to

share and how am I going to focus it?

What am I going to talk about?

Am I going to?

Create seasons.

I'm like, and next thing you know, you're back into the overthinking.

So I took the idea with the blog posts and then a group that I'm part

of a membership that I'm part of for female solopreneurs twice a year,

they do an accountability challenge.

You can decide to sign up for whatever kind of thing you want

to challenge yourself to do, but it's very highly structured.

It's four weeks.

So you announce by the end of these four weeks, I will have, and for people who

benefit from a little friendly competition with others, they structured it so we

are in teams of four or five people.

So we have an identity.

We have a group with which has a name.

So it's go team kind of thing.

And then there are other groups, each person in each group.

Has to say at the beginning of the challenge, this is what I will have

done in the, at the end of four weeks.

And because many of us will work harder when others are looking, duh, we could

assign a good, better and best outcome.

Wow.

So I said, okay, I've been faffing around with

this thing for two solid years.

I now have a plan for the material I'm going to start with.

I announced it publicly and I committed to by the end of the four weeks and the date

at the end of the four weeks was May 19th, 2020, which might ring a bell because

that was the early stages of the pandemic.

And I launched on May 19th, 2020.

And the first 25 episodes were those blog posts and

episodes for that.

I told you it was 350 pages, girl.

That was a whole lot of writing.

How long were those episodes?

They were anywhere between 10 and 20 minutes.

And what's funny is now, it's almost four years later, my episodes generally

run between 35 and 55 minutes, but by lowering the expectation, In two ways,

I was finally able to get myself out of the starting gate that plus the

accountability one, I know that most people do interviews, but doing interviews

adds a lot of lift to podcasting.

It's way more complicated.

There's a lot more moving parts.

Guests cancel, they show up on the wrong day.

They don't know how to have good sound quality on there.

And it's just, it's just a lot more to deal with.

So I thought I'm just going to do these solo episodes.

They were 10 to 20 minutes long.

And that meant it was a low barrier for my audience to, they, they

weren't committing like a whole afternoon of their life to listening.

They could just, while they're folding the laundry or while they're

rinsing off the dishes or while they're taking the dog out to pee.

So by the end of the 25 episodes, Sarah, I realized, okay, I can do this.

I had enough tread on my tires to realize.

I have created a routine.

I've created the cadence.

I've created some systems that make it a little bit easier.

I can batch record, which means, I'm not constantly staring down

another deadline, but I'll be honest with you after 25 episodes of just

be talking to myself in my closet.

I started getting a little bored with that format, and episode

26 was my very first guest.

And ever since then, every other week has been a guest.

That's amazing.

That really is, what do you think about 25 weeks worth?

That's almost half a year's worth of content.

Now, did you let that 25 weeks slide before you started getting into

doing the new formats or did you start pretty early on with the guest?

You know what?

I I didn't I didn't give myself a very long runway to introduce guests

because again I have ADHD and one of the challenges for ADHD is that I have a lot

of great ideas, like so many, and every new idea is better than the one before.

In fact, any new idea is the best one I've ever had.

I fell madly in love with it and I want to do it immediately.

And so I go off and running in a new direction.

But once the dopamine starts to wear off and I realize, Oh, there's work involved.

This is not all fun and games.

This is not all creativity and excitement.

Then I tend to drop it like yesterday's news.

So unfortunately a lot of people like me are really good at starting and

really suck at sustaining and finishing.

Because I know this about myself and because most of my clients

are female solopreneurs with ADHD.

I realized I had to give myself a little bit of a transition, that the

solo shows had just become boring.

Cause I don't want to just talk to myself.

I want to talk to other people.

But I didn't want to like book out a whole year or even six months worth of guests.

I thought I'm just going to start to wade into the pond and reach out to people

who were a experienced podcast guests.

Because that meant they knew how to show up.

They knew what was expected.

They had the professional equipment.

I wasn't trying to get used to doing guest interviews and

teaching them how to be a guest.

So I started by reaching out to people who are already very experienced

and who were part of my circle.

And I just decided I'm just gonna for the next quarter, 12 weeks.

That's six solos and six guests.

I'm just going to plan out for those six and then I'm going to reevaluate.

This has probably been one of the most valuable things I have learned

about living with the ADHD brain.

Instead of just letting myself like jump off the high dive before I even

check if there's water in the pool.

I do experiments and they usually are six weeks or three months

because that's enough data for me to say, are you still loving this

as much as you thought you would?

Not so much.

Maybe it was just another one of your ideas that's run its course or is

this something that I'm still liking?

I still want to do, and I can start building some routines into

it to make it easier to sustain.

And that's exactly what happened.

I love that.

I actually gave that advice to a client this morning who is teetering on what

to do with her podcast because she's talking about, well, maybe I'm going to

change my focus or do something else.

And my advice to her was just that if you want to change the focus,

just do something short term.

Try a different content format for six weeks, 12 weeks, whatever that happens

to be, and just see what happens.

See if you like it.

See if you get traction from it and then move forward from there.

Once you can make those decisions, rather than having to look down this

really long, like you said, look down the path of a year and be like, Oh, how

am I going to sustain this for a year.

Don't think about that.

Just think about, all right, can you do this for three months?

Can you do it for six months, whatever that happens to be,

whatever feels realistic to you, and then move forward from there.

I think that is such brilliant advice for people that are dolled on this idea of, I

want to do something, but when you talk to somebody like you who's got 200 episodes

in the can and going, Oh my God, four years of having to maintain this momentum.

That's a lot to, to try to live up to and to, to work through, but I think

it's really interesting too, though.

How many times in that four years have you adjusted your strategy throughout

all of that to keep it more interesting?

I really appreciate you asking this because I think, listen, what

we talked about in the pre talk, and I think we need to definitely hammer home

now is that Women have been culturally conditioned to avoid making mistakes.

We all, even if we don't identify as a perfectionist

or people

pleasers, we've been culturally conditioned from a very early

age to be good girls, to be nice, to be sweet, not to be bossy, not to be greedy,

not to be selfish, to let other people.

Take the lead, go along with the flow, let's do what other

people want to do and so forth.

So I think we have all treated life in many respects, like one big game

of mother, may I, where we look to others for permission to proceed.

I think this is directly related to the overthinking, to the procrastinating, to

the perfectionism, to thinking that if I can't be absolutely certain That I'm

going to do it right and I'm not going to make any, I know you're laughing because

this is me.

Like I had this conversation with myself this weekend,

but it's if I can't, well, it's, it's like what

I say, I don't half ass anything.

It's full ass or no ass.

So if I cannot do it like to the ultimate degree, then I don't want to do it at all.

Yeah.

You know

what?

That's not a sustainable mindset.

It creates a lot of unnecessary suffering.

And now I think I, I I mentioned to you before I happen to be Buddhist and

there's something in Buddhism called the middle way and the middle way is

basically, I don't need to go to extremes.

The middle way is I do not have to have this all figured

out for the next 200 episodes.

But I do need to have some of it figured out because if I have no plan, if I

don't even know why I'm podcasting, if I don't know what is my passion,

what is my purpose, what is my path to profitability for the podcast?

That's a lot of peas, sister,

then, then,

then why, why don't, why am I even doing this?

So I don't think it's really good to be impulsive.

I have many regrettables in my life from impulsivity.

I can go from one extreme to the other.

Like I can go from impulsive jumping in, which I think is what a lot of

people do who end up pod fading.

And then the other extreme is the overthinking and the perfectionism

and the procrastination.

So what is the middle way?

What is a plan, that is enough data enough experience enough tread

on your tires that you can test.

Is this the platform for me?

Is this the medium for me?

Do I have the bandwidth and the capacity for this?

What format?

Experiment with different formats.

Nobody.

I have three different formats.

I have solo shows.

I have guest interviews and I have client success stories, case studies,

and nobody gave me permission.

I just figured out that's what I wanted to do.

Nobody gave me permission to change my.

Title and my description, which I did after a while.

I just thought, you know what?

I don't think it's clear enough that this show is for female entrepreneurs.

So the original show was called the driven woman podcast.

I just added the word entrepreneur after I think about a year and a half.

I didn't even change it in the show art.

I haven't even gotten around to doing that.

It's Oh, well, but I changed it everywhere else.

I refer to it that way.

I changed the categories from self improvement to.

To entrepreneurship, I changed the description and I kept right on

going and I think if anyone listening is thinking, Oh, I really want a

podcast, but it just sounds so hard.

It is a heavy lift.

It's not something you jump into because you're expecting overnight success

and anybody who told you otherwise is blowing smoke up your skirt.

It is a heavy lift, but it can be a very profitable way to gain leads

and clients for your business.

If you know what you're doing, and most importantly, you're willing to experiment.

Yeah.

And you're willing to make mistakes and you're willing to fall on your

face and get up and try something else because nobody's going to

remember but you and no one's going to care half as much as you do.

Amen.

And that's the funny thing too, right?

If you didn't hear that, let's repeat that one more time.

Nobody is going to be caring more than you care about what is happening to your show.

And here's the thing I think that happens because of all of these, we were talking

about this before, like all of these.

Marketing messages that go out there that tell you you're

going to make a million dollars.

You're going to do this and everything's going to blow up overnight.

Nothing actually blows up overnight.

As as much as I've hesitated with starting mine, because somehow I'm

like, Oh, I'm going to make a mistake and everybody's going to know about it.

More than likely, nobody is going to know about it.

Like this will get dug up from my archive somewhere down the line and

somebody's going to say, Oh, this is where you started, but it's not a

million people are going to be watching this episode, the minute it hits yet.

Somehow in the back of my head, the messaging that we've received Is

that I'm going to put this thing out on the internet and it is going

to blow up somehow, in good or bad.

And I only think about it, by the way, blowing up in bad ways.

I never, like it's going to blow up and everybody's going to

love it and come follow my show.

But this is all we think about, right?

It's oh, it's going to be this thing and everybody's going to, Pick on me

and they're going to say awful things.

I'm going to get all these bad comments.

I don't know why my brain is conditioned to go in that direction.

I'm sure there's perfectionism and all this other stuff that goes

behind that, but that has been such like, that I think is one of the

other things that holds us back from taking on these media, especially

these more public mediums, right?

Like where it's, we want to go on YouTube.

We want to be on a podcaster where writing blogs.

I still feel is a little bit more behind, like your face isn't there.

Your voice isn't there.

Yes.

It's still your voice in the writing, But I think that there's that, that thought

in the back of our heads though, that the written word, we can hide behind

a little bit more where, when we are putting ourselves on video or we're

putting our voice out there, there's more for people to critique, especially

the things we can't change, right?

Like our appearance or the sound of our voice.

I can change how I write, I can modify how I write, but I'm not

going to really be able to modify.

I can learn to be a better speaker, but my speaking style is still my speaking style.

And how I look is how I look.

That's not going to change.

But I think that there's this fear that that's what people are going

to hone in on versus honing in on the actual goodness of the content

and the things that we're creating.

I have so many thoughts about this.

Okay.

First of all, I haven't actually never met either a podcaster or a

public speaker who actually likes the sound of their own voice.

Oh, never.

Nobody.

I've

never liked the sound of my voice.

My voice is very low for a woman.

I sing like tenor.

And yeah, I do too, but I, I don't, I would prefer it was a more feminine

voice, but believe it or not.

I have had people DM me saying, I love the content of your podcast, but I really have

to tell you how much I love your voice.

I could listen to you.

Somebody said, I could listen to you read the phone book.

I'm like, ew.

Ew.

Hi.

I don't know why, but I just thought that is the weirdest thing.

And I realized we hear our own voice from inside our skull.

It sounds different to us than it sounds to other people.

Yeah.

And plus we've all internalized.

I'm.

If I mention I'm very ADHD, so I'm, I'm very chatty.

I'm loud.

I laugh really loud.

Like my kids won't even go to a funny movie with me because I laugh so loud

and I get the joke before anyone else.

So I'm over laughing.

And then they're like, mom, shut up.

But I realized that, well, as long as nobody likes their own voice, that

means all these people I admire, all these people I respect, all these people

I can't get enough of, they probably don't like the sound of their voice

either, and it ain't stopping them.

So I'm just going to decide, even if I don't like the sound of my voice, if other

people do, I'm going to run with that.

Yeah.

You, you couldn't possibly know if you don't try, I

also think that, something we were chatting about earlier is how many

people in the female entrepreneur space are really selling magic pills.

They are saying, start a program, have a course, start a business, start a

coaching business, start a podcast, write a book, like whatever their schtick is.

Based on that.

It's easy.

It's fast.

It's fun.

It's lucrative.

A F you will make money in your sleep and it's simply not true.

So a lot of people come into this unprepared.

What's also true is I think because this has been going on for a good little while,

I'd say for the last decade and a lot of us have felt duped and burned people

now more than ever before are so hungry.

For the real deal.

And that means you showing up as your authentic self, how you sound

in some cases, how you look and how you think we're beyond the time where

people I think can be successfully self employed if they're hiding.

Nobody's going to find you,

nobody's going to attach to you.

No one's going to care what you have to say and look forward to it.

And I think because podcasting has proven itself to be the most intimate of all.

Think about this.

You're right in their ear.

You're

right in there.

Like you, you can sit down and watch a YouTube video.

It can be very passive.

You can read a blog post and go great.

More information podcast.

Most people listen to podcasts while they're on the go.

They're living their life.

They're commuting.

They're dropping their kids off at school.

They're walking the dog.

They're doing the laundry.

They're at the gym.

We're literally whispering in their ears.

That is a very intimate form of communication and the statistics

show that people are more likely to feel an acceleration of

the no like and trust factor.

Through the podcast medium, which to me makes sense for those of us

who use our podcast to generate leads and clients for our business.

And let's talk about that for a minute too, because I

think that that's really important as well, in terms of you have found

that this has been a very successful medium for you and your business.

How does that work for you?

And how.

Again, I know this isn't an overnight success kind of thing.

So share with, our listeners here, how has that evolved for you

into that know like, and trust?

And you made the statement at one point to me that most of your clients come from

at some point your podcast, which I know is like a dream statement for a lot of

people to be able to say, so how have you made that work so successfully for you?

Your point about it not being an overnight success is well taken.

And I think, we do need to do some homework.

We do need to have, in my opinion, that not everyone

agrees with this, but a definable

niche who has a problem that they want to solve.

They are looking for solutions and.

The solution is in your wheelhouse.

It is in your body of work.

It is in your expertise, your knowledge.

This especially true for coaches and consultants.

If you are a coach or consultant, also true for creatives, service

providers, independent professionals, like you are a sole proprietor.

And your podcast is a marketing medium to generate interest in your business.

I do not think that a podcast is top of funnel.

If that's an expression that you use, top of funnel is more like social media.

Top of funnel is like little snippets that we put out into

whatever platforms we're using.

So for example, I create one piece of content per week.

It is a podcast episode from that podcast episode.

It is repurposed into a blog post.

Into a linkedin newsletter into an email for my list and into

multiple social media posts.

And I do that through AI.

And I also have a part time virtual assistant, but it's 1 piece of content.

Now, people may find me on social media, they may see a one minute snippet video

that points to the podcast, but then they're going to go listen to the podcast.

You're not going to hire me after seeing a post in your Instagram feed

or a one minute video on LinkedIn.

That's.

That's beyond impulsive, but if you see my stuff, because I use the right hashtags,

I use the right keywords, it is targeted to a specific group of people, then

they're going to go check out the podcast.

But I also, it's like a, I do use social media to get the top of funnel, but

the other main point is that I do a lot of guest interviews like this one.

So how it typically has worked is someone will hear me on an interview.

On a podcast that they have discovered or been referred to and go, huh?

I, I like what she has to say.

And I think I might be, I think I might be the kind of person that she works with.

So then they're going to go, Oh, she has a podcast too.

Sweet.

Then they'll go check out a few episodes of my podcast.

And then typically from there, they may, if they need a

little bit more Information.

They may go follow me for a bit on social media.

They may grab a opt in, get on my email list and start getting nurtured that way.

But what oftentimes happens is if it's a very targeted episode where I

am literally speaking exactly to them right where they are right now about

a problem they're literally having now and want to deal with, they will go

from hearing me on a guest interview.

To binging through a few episodes of my podcast to booking a

consultation to hiring me.

And it's happened many, many, many times,

but

getting on other, getting on it's, it's, it's a two,

it's a twofer because if it was just me recording my own episodes, Sarah,

and I was never a guest on other shows like this one, I'd have to do a ton.

Of marketing and probably spending money on ads to drive traffic to my podcast.

It's so hard.

And it can be expensive and you can make a lot of mistakes.

Plus I'm a social person.

I'm always wanting to grow my network.

So being a guest means.

I'm recording quality content.

Some people may find their way to my show, but I'm also making valuable connections

with other female solopreneurs.

So that's my strategy.

I am sticking to it.

That's a great strategy because I do know a lot of podcasters

too, that I've worked with before that.

Hesitate on the whole idea of guesting saying that, well, it

doesn't really work as well, or, Oh, I don't know if it's going to work.

So when I'm really curious about this though too, when you do your guesting.

At the end, when people ask like, how do we contact you?

Which I will ask you anyway, do you typically point back to your podcast

to have them come listen to the podcast or do you point somewhere else?

I sent them to the podcast.

In fact,

that's key.

I, I think it's because I, I think we really get

one shot at a call to action.

We do.

And

if someone has listened to an interview like this one, all the

way to the end, they're very interested.

Many people will pop off.

They've heard enough that they're going on with their day.

Or they get busy or distracted or whatever, but if they stay all the way

to the end and the hosts like you will say, so how can people connect with you?

I typically say, if you like the sound of my voice, see, I've come a long

way from hating the sound of my voice.

I will say, if you like the sound of my voice and what I have to say with

it, I would love for you to check out the Driven Woman Entrepreneur podcast.

Once they're listeners, then we can start to have a relationship.

The only thing I don't like about podcasting is that we don't

actually know who's listening.

I know.

So I also have a couple of private podcasts because then they only get access

to that by giving me their email address.

Oh, that's brilliant.

I know.

I've thought about that too.

The idea of having that private pod so you know, like who's really, really listening

to the things that you're, you're saying.

Cause that is, it's one of the worst parts to being a podcaster is, well, a, I

would go on about how poor our statistics are, but we don't right, we have

listeners, we have no idea who they are.

Oftentimes it's hard to tell if they're repeat listeners.

Are we always driving in new people into the podcast?

What is all of that?

And that, unfortunately.

I guess that's not going to change anytime soon, but

probably not.

And if I was, if I wasn't so confident that people need to hear me,

people need to spend some time with me.

People need to allow me into their ear holes and, and allow me to.

Convince them if I'm the right coach for the right reason at the right time.

So they need, it needs to have a little investment of time.

And when you're creating quality content that people are looking

for, they're searching for, they're interested in that helps them.

It's one of the best ways you can do that.

I think it's also why I'm very strategic about my guests.

And I'm becoming even more strategic about my guests because what I found is

that people who are regular listeners of my podcast, they will do business

with people who come on my podcast as a guest because they trust me.

They trust you.

So I have to be really careful about who I have on because if

I don't really know them very well, I've literally given them access to an audience

that I've worked really hard to build.

who show up because they trust me.

And if I don't really know this person, I literally, I'm saying you can stand

under my umbrella and come out from the rain, giving you my audience, which, I'm a

very generous person anyway, but I didn't fully appreciate how valuable that is.

Yeah.

Until I started hearing from guest after

guest saying, Hey, thanks.

I got, I got a new client.

I got some new people into my program after appearing on your podcast.

So I'm like, and now what I say is this, I don't want to be an influencer.

I am not an influencer, but I am influential.

I am influential and exactly the way I want to be by

slipping into your ear holes.

Giving you valuable information, straight shooting.

I'm not going to promise anything that I can't deliver.

I'm hardcore against that.

And I'll also try to be a little snarky and funny.

Cause that's just my personality.

Oh my God.

I love it.

I could keep this conversation going forever because I have

so many other questions, but we'll go ahead and wrap this up.

I do have one more question though, for you.

For those of us in the, for those of us, for those in the audience that are

listening and have been debating starting their own podcast, given your experience,

what one piece of advice would you give to encourage folks to get started?

I'd say the most important thing is having realistic

expectations because a lot of people underestimate that it is a long tail.

Marketing strategy.

You do need to be consistent.

You do need to find your voice and get really comfortable using it.

It's okay.

If you're like scared, shitless and peeing your pants, just use your voice.

And the more you use that, the more you find your unique

way of expressing yourself.

But having realistic expectations means you're willing to make mistakes.

You're willing to take time to master your craft.

You're willing to experiment and you're, and you understand that the runway is

not leading you to overnight success.

It's going to take months, if not years, to really get everything

that this medium has for you.

But if it's the right one, it is so worth it.

Oh, I love that.

All right.

I know you've said it a couple of times already, but how can we find you?

Well, I know I already said it, but here I go again

because I've heard, I've heard that repetition, repetition, repetition,

people need to hear things.

People need to hear things seven times before they act on it.

You're only going to hear this twice.

If you like what I have to say and the sound of my voice, I did it backwards.

I would love for you to check out the driven woman entrepreneur podcast.

It is for female solopreneurs, creatives, independent professionals,

coaches, and consultants, especially those with ADHD traits.

I love it.

And folks really go over and take a listen to our podcast.

She's amazing.

The conversations are great.

You'll want her in your ear hole cause it's just a lot of fun to talk to.

And take a listen to, and Diann, thank you so much for being here.

And honestly, like you are the first official interview that we are

recording for the bizcasters podcast.

And I am so excited that I've.

Had you here and then I had the opportunity to connect with you

because I think you're amazing.

Well, I love being first, so you are welcome.

Thank you so much.