Guest Blog: What I’ve Learnt From Starting A Podcast - Part 4

CONTINUED FROM PART 3…..

HAVE A VISION & BELIEVE IN IT

It sounds cliche, but often things are cliche for a reason, because they’re true! 

Now when I say have a vision and believe in it I don’t mean come up with an idea blindly and just go with it.  This point ties back into an earlier point I made of put in the work before you start.  

When I started A Beer With I knew the end goal and while I can never compare myself to Joe Rogan, he is and has always been the model I am aiming for. 

His podcast is based around comedy/comedians, he does comedy shows and has a few other things he does also (UFC Commentary etc.). For me that's the goal, but for it to be music based. 

I want to podcast and speak to people (not just musicians) for my podcast, produce music and play gigs.  For this to be effective I knew I had to continue to work at all three of these things at the same time. 

I also however knew that I had plenty of DJ experience, a good amount of music production, but no podcasting.  So for the last year, podcasting has been the main focus for myself.  

Now without knowing my vision of what I want to do I couldn’t possibly know what I need to focus on and how I should spread my time out amongst the things I want to do.  

I guess you could say this is a goal and I’m setting goals here, but to me goals are measurable and this particular “vision” isn’t exactly a measurable goal.  That’s why it’s the vision.   

Now maybe it’s time to talk about goals

SETTING GOALS. I DO IT AND MAYBE YOU SHOULD TOO. BUT ONLY MAYBE?

Now I know this title is confusing. The title is confusing because goals can be a confusing topic too.

Up until recently I only knew about goals having a positive effect on people, but there are actually two effects that goals can have.

Goals can have both a positive or negative effect on different people.

For the overwhelming majority of people goals are amazing.  It helps them stay motivated, know where they are going and what’s next. But for some people it creates anxiety & sometimes if goals aren’t achieved they can cause more anxiety or lack of motivation.  

I still recommend you set goals.  If you have tried this many times & it causes the above results then skip this bit.  For everyone else here are some ways I effectively set goals.

MAKE THE GOAL MEASURABLE - Make sure you can measure it or know when you’ve achieved it. 

SET A TIME FRAME - Set short, medium and long term goals.  These goals can all be for one task or topic or different ones.  The point is you have to know the time you are meant to achieve the goal.

THE GOAL SHOULD BE REALISTIC - This is a big one and also the hardest.  The goal has to be realistic for the time frame you set so you don’t get discouraged if you can’t achieve such a large task in that time.  I didn’t set out to become the “Joe Rogan of music” in 6 months.  I have that goal at more 5-10 years cause that’s a more realistic time frame for such a big goal (hell Joe Rogan wasn’t who he is today 10 year ago).

REASSESS YOUR GOALS REGULARLY - Revisit what goals you have set and how you’re progressing so you can see if you need to do something different or focus on a particular goal to make sure you achieve it by your time frame.

<<EXAMPLE>>

GOALS FOR THE PODCAST MEDIUM (HOW ITS PRESENTED & CONSUMED).

I started the podcast audio only using a room recording zoom microphone/recorder.  My goal was to start to upgrade my equipment as I knew I always wanted to move to video eventually.  So I set some goals.

HAVE INDIVIDUAL MICROPHONES (8 MONTHS)

I knew for video that individual mics was a must.  With one room mic the post processing to get the balance between the guest and I was a lot. 

It was also different every episode. 

So I set the goal of 8 months in to have individual mics sorted. This gave me 2 months to focus on setting up the podcast and figuring all that out.  Then 6 months to practise and get better at podcasting itself and then have the individual mics.

I achieved this at 6 months in which was a great little motivator for me.

DISTRIBUTE IN VIDEO (1 YEAR)

This was a major goal.  Far bigger than the mics, but I knew I needed them for the video first and they also look rad. 

The first video podcast was published on March 2nd which is 1 month before the year anniversary.  Another great motivator for me.

ACHIEVE A MULTI ANGLE SETUP WITH AN ASSISTANT (2 YEARS)

This ones hard to explain because it’s about a vision for what I want the video to look like. I want a face on camera angle of each person and when they are talking the shot is focused on them.  To do this I will need an assistant & I would hope they could look things up for us too like “young Jaimie” on JRE.  This goal has been set for 2 years in as I know there are a lot of pieces to work out for that to happen.  But I’m still working towards it so look out for it soon.

VR PODCAST (3-4 YEARS)

Okay this ones a bit futuristic and to my knowledge has not been done before. 

I want to be able to produce a podcast where you can choose to put on a VR headset and sit in the room with the guest and I while we have our conversation.

It’s totally possible to do, but obviously might be a bit ahead of its time right now.  This goal is pending Technology & consumer behaviour cause who knows if this will ever be something people wanna do. 

If you haven’t set any goals before then I’d highly recommend taking some time out and sitting down to try setting a few today.