Don't just dream about paradise, live it with Fiji Airways. Escape the ordinary with Fiji Airways Global Beat the Rush Sale. Immerse yourself in white sandy beaches or dive deep into coral reefs. Fiji Airways has flights to Nadi starting at just $748 for light and just $798 for value. Discover your tropical dreams at FijiAirways.com.

That's FijiAirways.com. From here to happy. Flying direct with Fiji Airways. Today on Radical Personal Finance we celebrate 300 episodes of the show. And last week we hit a pretty cool milestone, over 2 million total downloads of Radical Personal Finance in the time that we've been doing this show. Almost two years, about a year and, what are we at, a year and 10 months or so.

And so today we're going to set aside the normal financial content and we're going to talk podcasting. I'm going to talk to you about the business of podcasting, the technology of podcasting and the opportunity of podcasting because it's my hope that each and every one of you listening to this voice will start a podcast.

Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance podcast. My name is Joshua Sheets and I'm your host. Broadcasting on location today. I guess podcasting on location. I am in Nashville, Tennessee attending a conference and I've pulled myself aside into a side room, found a table to sit at, got my iPhone on the table and I'm going to share with you over 30 lessons on podcasting.

Things that I've learned the hard way and I'd like to save you some time. Normally on Radical Personal Finance we talk day in and out about how to live a rich life now while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. That is the theme of this show.

And although today we're not going to be talking about IRAs or investments or stocks or real estate or any of that stuff, we're going to talk about podcasting. This may serve you toward that goal. I probably shouldn't have scared you away in the beginning by saying no financial content today.

Podcasting has been the cornerstone of my financial freedom plan. That was a major part of it. Not the only thing, but a major thing because when I set out to do this show, I did it very intentionally while building a plan for financial freedom. And frankly, I have, thankfully, thank you to every, thankfully to every one of you who have been a part of this.

I've been able to achieve some very satisfying initial measures of financial freedom based upon this podcast. I'm able to support my family and meet the needs of my family based upon income from you, my listening audience. And I'm able to do it in a way that is very gratifying for me.

It's very enjoyable for me. I get to talk about things that I love to talk about and it provides a lifestyle that is just really, really cool. And so I owe a debt of gratitude to those who've gone before me and I want to pay that forward and just share all the lessons I've learned about podcasting.

And I don't want you to think that I think I'm not the world's greatest podcaster. I'm learning. I don't know all there is to know about podcasting. Many of you listening perhaps know far more about the techie side, but I know something about the business side and I know something about building an audience because this show has not happened by accident and you'll hear that in today's show.

I have many listeners who have listened to all 300 episodes of the show and you can ask anyone in that situation and they will attest to you that this has not happened by accident. So I do feel confident that I've got some lessons that I want to share with you and I hope these will help many of you do things a little faster and better than I have.

So let's start with lesson number one and it's really this. I want each and every one of you listening to this show to start a podcast. And the most important reason for you starting a podcast is not so that you will be able to say like Joshua, "Hey, I'm on 300 episodes and I can make my living from a podcast." It's not so that you can make lots of money on a show.

It's so that you can transform yourself from a consumer to a producer. We are in this fascinating time in the world that we live in of a complete transformation of society where many of the means of production, the methods of production that have happened in the past, the way that people have shared their content, these are radically changing.

And the most important thing for you, for your career success, for your business success is for you to transform yourself from a mere consumer of content, consumer of information, consumer of entertainment into a producer. And I know of very few ways that are better to do that than a podcast.

We're in this wild and woolly frontier of podcasting right now where there's tremendous opportunity, which means there's a lot of things that won't work and a lot of things that will work. But if you get started now on building and developing a podcast, you'll start the process of transforming yourself from a consumer of content to a producer of content.

And if you'll transform yourself in that manner, I promise you it will have a measurable impact on your life. Now, it doesn't have to be a podcast. It could be written content. You could submit articles to the publications and journals that are influential in your industry. You could write a column for your local newspaper.

You can write a blog and publish it online. You can write inspirational and thought-provoking posts on your Facebook page. You can also create YouTube videos. You can create Vine. You can do something, but you've got to transform yourself from a consumer to a producer because the future belongs to those who are producers.

Podcasting is a really great way to do it. The fundamentally most valuable thing that has happened for me with podcasting is I've been able to make that transformation. And sitting here from almost two years after, I spent, for those of you who are just tuning into the podcast for the first time just because of the title about podcasting advice, I spent six years working as a financial advisor.

And as a financial advisor, I was barred from being able to create public-facing media based upon the industry regulations. Now, at the time, I submitted myself to that voluntarily. In retrospect, I don't know if I could ever go back behind that curtain simply because it's too damaging to your career.

It's too damaging to your brand, to your business, to your job prospects, or to your just enjoyment and entertainment prospects to be stuck in a place where you can't produce interesting, compelling content because the future belongs in many ways to those who are producers. So my challenge to you is today, first and foremost, are you doing something that is transforming you from a consumer to a producer and that is enabling you to help some other people with your content?

That's lesson number one. Number two, there's a lot of talk in podcasting about finance and about making money. And I hope that that talk about finance and making money can have a positive influence. Even I led and I said, "Hey, I make a living on my podcast." But I want to be clear.

I am not today going to talk about the financial opportunities of podcasts. I'll talk a little bit of the business of podcasting, but I don't have any reason to tell you about all the financial opportunities of podcasting because I don't have anything to sell you. And I'm going to tell you straight up, the biggest benefit that I have received from podcasting is not financial, although I'm very thankful for the financial benefits, but it's rather the people that I've been connected with.

I have built from podcasting relationships with many of you who are listening to this show right now that I hope will continue for the rest of my life. And those are relationships that would not have been forged if I was not creating some form of public content. So we've got to consider the finances.

I'll give you more lessons on finance, but recognize that the biggest benefit you will receive from podcasting is probably not going to be financial, but rather the people that you will be able to connect with. Next lesson, if you are interested in getting into podcasting, do not get bogged down in the tech.

The tech of podcasting is the easiest thing for you to solve. And I'm going to tell you in just a couple of minutes how to solve it. But the biggest problem that I see in talking about new podcasters is that they are incredibly focused on the tech. They focus on what microphone do I buy and what software do I use and what mixer do I need and where do I host my audio files and all of that stuff.

Don't get bogged down in the tech. That is the easiest thing to solve. And it has gotten immeasurably easier in the last couple of years since I've been doing this than it was two years ago. And in a year from now, it'll be easier and easier and easier. Don't get bogged down in the tech.

The tech is not your ticket to success in this business or industry or endeavor. Spend 80% of your time focused on your editorial plan and 20% of the time focusing on your tech plan. Because if you are a podcaster or aspiring to become one, your audience does not care what microphone you're recording on.

They don't care how you process your audio file. They don't even particularly care about the quality of your ums and ahs removal. They care about your content. So spend the majority of your time focusing on your content. Don't try to copy somebody's ideas about their format. Focus on your content and fit your format to your content.

Get very clear on what you're trying to do and why you're doing it. And then plan your podcast around that. When I started Radical Personal Finance, I sat down in the middle of my guest bedroom with a, I don't know, I keep saying $10, $15, with a cheap audio recorder, a $10 or $15 audio recorder.

It was a handheld MP3 recorder that came with my Dragon Naturally Speaking software. I held it in my hand, I hit record, and I started talking for 45, and it was for about 40 minutes, 30 minutes, something like that. And I laid out what I thought the vision of my show would be.

If you are interested, go back and listen to it. It's episode one of the show. You can find it in the archives, radicalpersonalfinance.com/archives, or it'll be archived in the feed. So you can go back and listen to it today. And to this day, there have been times I've gone back and listened to it, the vision of what I am still building with Radical Personal Finance, it has not changed.

And I have fit everything that I've done based upon that vision. And I've had all kinds of people come to me and say, "Well, you should do this and you should do that." And my response has been, "This is my vision." Now I have changed many things that I've done.

I've realized many mistakes that I have made, but I have been single-minded and focused on here is the vision of what I'm going to create. So don't worry about tech and don't get bogged down in some kind of magical format. Focus first on your content and your vision, and then ask yourself what would be the most effective way for me to accomplish this vision?

What format fits this content, fits what I'm trying to do? Now let's talk a little bit about podcast formats. There are a few major, very popular podcast formats in today's market. That's number one, interview shows. There is a massive proliferation of interview shows. The way this works is you're the show host, you find someone to interview, you sit down with them in person or virtually, and you record an interview.

So let's call that an interview show. Another podcast format would be a co-hosted show. You and a co-host or multiple co-hosts sit down together, you have a conversation, a recorded conversation, and talk about those things. Another format would be solo shows where you just sit down with a microphone and you talk.

And then another format would be what I'll call the carefully edited NPR-type shows, the things like the—I'm blanking on all the—but the big This American Life type of shows, just these beautiful masterpieces of audio engineering where there's interviews and there's story and everything's woven together. Now the natural inclination of many people is to jump onto one of those formats.

I've done three of them. I have done interview shows, I've done co-hosted shows, and I have solo shows. So Radical Personal Finance is a combination of a solo show, me speaking directly to you, it's just me on the microphone, and interview shows. I usually do about two interviews a week.

I also have an additional podcast called Encouraging Christian Fathers that is a co-hosted show with—I actually do it with me and my dad. So I have experience in those three formats. I have zero experience in the carefully edited NPR-type shows. But what I would encourage you is to ignore what's working for someone else and focus on what will work for you.

Don't worry about what other people are doing. Do your thing and create the show that will best fit your vision. I have seen shows be successful in every format, almost every format imaginable. I'll just name a few podcasts that I'm aware of or that I like or that I think are cool.

So the most popular podcasts seem to be these carefully edited, beautifully produced masterpieces of audio engineering. This would be a show like Dan Carlin's Hardcore History, where it's just an incredible story built together, or the shows like This American Life, things like that, with these just masterpieces. Those are extremely popular because they're extremely accessible to many people.

You may or may not be able to create that kind of show. I have zero ability to create that kind of show when I started, so I just completely ignore that segment of the market. I don't ever think my show will be as popular as those types of shows, but that's okay.

I don't have the ability currently of doing that type of show, and I don't particularly care to develop that ability. That's not what I want to do. So I kind of write those things off. There are interview shows that are short. There are interview shows that are long that are popular.

There are solo shows that are short. There are solo shows that are long. There are co-hosted shows that are short. There are shows that are long. One of my favorite podcasts is a show called Peace Revolution. It's very popular. You'll find it very thought-provoking if you ever listen to it.

The longest episode I've ever listened to on that show was a 19-hour podcast episode. So those of you who are regular listeners of Radical Personal Finance, if you think I do long shows, the longest show I listened to was 19 hours. But in that context, 19 hours was the amount of time that was required for that show to be successful with its purpose and its mission.

And so 19 hours was appropriate. So focus on the format that will fit your content and it will accomplish the vision. Don't get bogged down in copying anybody else. Almost everything you do or almost everything you're told with creating a podcast is irrelevant. Your intro music is not very relevant.

Is it a little bit relevant? Sure. But that's not going to make the difference necessarily. The logo, is that important? Sure. You need a logo that's going to show up in iTunes. But beyond that, you don't need a lot of that stuff. What matters is the fact that you're creating a piece of audio content or video, if that's your thing, but you're creating content that's appropriate to your objective.

And if your vision is being fulfilled by the content that you're creating, then you'll know that you are being successful. Next lesson, let's talk about frequency. I am convinced that quality trumps frequency. Better to create higher quality content than more frequent content. But the problem with this is frequency is probably more likely to lead to quality because you may or may not be able to control quality.

Realistically, probably most of our productive work is driven by a Pareto distribution. I have not gone through my content archives and checked to see, but if I did, I would guess that 20% of my shows are covering 80% of the downloads or 80% of the popularity. We can't produce all of our stuff as being hits.

But what we can do is focus on producing. So here's how I have handled this in the history of my show, Radical Personal Finance. In the beginning, I committed wholeheartedly to frequency. And I did that intentionally, knowing that I couldn't control quality. I would do my best, but I didn't have any former podcasting, broadcast skills.

I didn't have a lot of practice. I never did know what I was doing. And I knew I would need to do a lot of something in order to learn those basic skills. If you're interested, there's a show in the archives of Radical Personal Finance called Why I Do a Daily Podcast and Why You Should Model but Not Necessarily Copy Me.

And that lays out that whole argument of why I was focused on doing a frequent show, trying to do a five-day-a-week show. At this point in time, I'm convinced it's more important for me to do a show that's quality than necessarily a frequent show. So I'm still trying to do frequent shows.

I probably at this point am averaging about three to four per week. But quality is my number one goal, trying to create higher quality. So quality will trump frequency, but you've got to balance that with the fact that frequency is probably how you're going to learn to do quality.

So commit yourself to lots of production. Next lesson, enjoy the journey as you get started because as you get bigger and bigger, the stress is just going to grow. So focus on enjoying the steps. I thought when I started, I remember the first day I had 100 downloads and the first day I had 500 downloads and the first day I had 1,000 downloads and those things.

I thought, "Oh man, it's going to be awesome when I get to a day when I have 10,000 downloads." Well, I've gotten days where I've gotten over 10,000 downloads. It doesn't feel any different. In fact, it was probably more exciting in the beginning. Now I'm thankful for the downloads.

You hear that by any means. It's an honor for people to pay attention to your content and to your message. But I also have so much work associated with it now that often a little bit of the joy has gone out. I host these two shows, Radical Personal Finance, but my best guest probably has somewhere between 8,000 to 10,000 regular daily subscribers.

Some shows have gotten far more downloads than that. That seems to be the regular base of shows a couple of weeks in the background. We'll talk about stats in a minute so that you can interpret stats because you need to do that. You need to learn how to interpret stats.

So, 8,000 to 10,000 listeners per show. I have another show, Encouraging Christian Fathers. That one gets, most of those episodes now are about 700 to 800 downloads on that show. I often get more joy out of seeing the nice little spikes on Encouraging Christian Fathers than I do from Radical Personal Finance simply because I've gotten a little bit immune to the large downloads.

So, my point is to simply say, focus on enjoying the journey and the process rather than focusing on the hard numbers. Next lesson, a podcast is not a business. A podcast is not a business. A podcast might be a great marketing tool for your business. A podcast might form the foundation of a business.

A podcast might be a useful component of your business, but a podcast is not a business. So, give careful time and attention to the purpose of your podcast. A podcast could be an awesome hobby. It could be an important occupation. It could be important ministry. It can be something that you're doing for reasons that are important to you.

But if you desire to use a podcast as a component of your financial endeavors, recognize that a podcast is not a business. You need to recognize that the vast majority of shows are not going to be numerically successful. Most shows get perhaps a couple of hundred people who will listen to each show.

The median number, I don't have the stats in front of me, but it's something like 400 to 500 downloads per episode is the median. 50% of shows have less than that. 50% of shows have more than that. So, recognizing that's the reality, you're going to be fighting and building a show.

You're going to be fighting against that large marketplace. So in order for you to be successful, I'm convinced you need to want to do your show even if nobody listens. You should want to do your show even if nobody listens. So here's my advice. Create the show you want to do and listen to even if nobody listens.

When I began Radical Personal Finance, I made an intentional commitment. It's written down. I make very few commitments, but this was an intentional commitment. I said, "I will do 1,000 episodes of Radical Personal Finance even if nobody listens because by doing the episodes, I'm building something that I want to do.

I'm creating something that I think should exist. If nobody listens, I'm okay with that." Now, I would certainly not have as much energy behind it. I certainly would not be as excited about doing it. I'm not saying that. Of course, numbers matter and I'm much more excited to do the show if people are listening, but that was my personal commitment.

So create the show that you want to do even if nobody listens. Next lesson, don't worry about your brand if you don't yet have one. One of the major things I see people falling apart on is spending so much time on the things that are difficult, building a beautiful brand, a beautiful website, a great world-class logo, building a brand when they don't have anything that exists in the first place.

So just get something to the marketplace as quickly as possible and your brand will grow as you go on. I've never figured out up until the last month or so, I've never really figured out what is the tagline of my show. I didn't have that perfect, succinct synopsis of what is the tagline of my show.

So therefore, my branding efforts and marketing efforts have been inferior, but I didn't know what it was. I had a lot of things I wanted to talk about. Now I'm more and more conscious of exactly what it is and I know why I have chosen it. But if you don't have a brand, don't worry about that.

There is, of course, for some of you, a corollary to that. If you have an established brand, you need to worry about and protect that brand. So not everybody should just go out and start a fly-by-night podcast on a cheap budget, on a shoestring budget that doesn't sound very good.

The other day, an example of this, this can really reflect poorly on you. Best example, there's a book, a popular book called The E-Myth. The author's name is Michael Gerber. It's an excellent book. If you've not read it or you're not familiar with it, I recommend it. It's an excellent book.

Well, I went to see if he had a podcast. And he does really high-quality work in his writing. He's got all these great books. I went to see if he has a podcast and downloaded the podcast, and the podcast was terrible. It was hosted on BlogTalk Radio. It was totally informal.

He's calling in from a cell phone, and it just really reflected poorly on his brand, in my opinion. And I didn't stick around as long as I would have to see if the content was good, just simply because the whole formatting of it was so terrible. So if you do have a brand, then you should make sure that you are protecting that brand.

But if you don't have a brand, just get busy and get started. Next, you've got to be confident. If you've got a vision, and the reason that's so important is you've got to be confident in what you're doing because there will probably come a point in time where you've got to ignore the advice of other people.

And I have had to intentionally ignore personally many pieces of advice that well-meaning, knowledgeable experts have given me because I was convinced that there was a different opportunity, that I had a vision of something that I could do. I believe it's valuable to listen to experts. Experts probably know what they're talking about.

I will never be able to prove that I would have done better off if I had followed... If I had... Let me figure out how to phrase this. There are pieces of advice that I ignored, and I can't prove that I should have ignored them. What I know is that I had reasons for ignoring them, and I focused on my reason of what I was going to do, and I have built more success than many other people.

Would I have been more successful if I followed the expert's advice? I don't know. Time will tell. But I've built more success, and I knew the reasons that I ignored those. Let me give you an example. Figure out which example to give here. The best example would probably be, should I focus on marketing a show or should I focus on creating a show?

The general advice is, in media creation, is to spend a small amount of your time producing and a large amount of your time marketing. You should spend 20% of your time producing and 80% of your time marketing that content, or 10 or 90, whatever. It doesn't matter. The point is, spend more time marketing than producing.

When I sat down and built Radical Personal Finance, I had never actually done online marketing. I'd studied it, but I was never actually able to do it. And I decided that my unique selling proposition, the differentiating factor that I could bring to the marketplace, was I had a depth of knowledge and ideas that many people didn't have.

And I saw a marketplace that was hungry for deeper content, more content, and across a broader range of topics. So I single-mindedly focused not on marketing, but I single-mindedly focused on creating more content, deeper content, and trying to do better content. That was my decision. And I felt that if I focused simply on what I could do well, my hope was that the internet would work and that you all who are listeners of the show would help me with advertising the show.

If I could create something that was useful, a piece of content that solved an important problem or presented an important idea, my theory was that you would be able to find that useful and you would share it, and that that would lead to a better outcome rather than me buying ads or guest posting somewhere or something like that.

So I focused single-mindedly on creating more content, better content, and broader content, and I intentionally ignored marketing for the first year of the show. I didn't have the capacity at that point in time to do both. That doesn't mean that marketing is not important. At this point in time, I am working intentionally on doing more and better marketing because now I've built a little bit more capacity than I had before.

But I had to have the confidence in my vision, and I had to have the confidence of creating what I wanted to see exist, creating what I would have wished existed, and ignore a lot of the advice because I wasn't able to put it into practice. So be confident in what you're doing, and if you have that vision and you're consistent with building something toward that vision, you will likely have more success than if you just follow what everyone else is telling you to do.

Next lesson, your website is really not very important in the beginning. In the beginning of a show's creation, your website is not important. For over the first year of Radical Personal Finance, I had the basic theme of WordPress, whatever that was installed. I had a cheap logo at the top of the page, and I didn't put any pictures.

I just put text on there. Just a little bit of text. It was boring. But the reality is, a podcast, people connect with you through audio. So I tried to focus on creating good audio, and I ignored the website. I didn't have the capacity to build a world-class website at that point in time.

The show succeeded in spite of the website. On the back end, your website is very important in the long run. So since that point in time, as I was able to build the capacity, once I had traction, I've since substantially upgraded the website, tried to make it much more beautiful.

I'm still working on trying to make it work better, make it better, make it more beautiful. And before I say the but, it is important. I have gotten many great opportunities that I can specifically trace toward having a good website. But in the beginning, it was not so. So website is not all that important in the beginning.

Frankly, in a moment I'll tell you how I do the shows and what I would suggest to you. Don't even set up a WordPress site, because it's just a hassle. We'll get to that in just a moment. The best thing that you can focus on, and here's the next lesson, best thing for you to focus on is focus on improving your broadcast skills first, foremost, and always.

Focus on improving your broadcast skills first, foremost, and always. Because the tech will come and it will go. Five years from now, we will not even recognize what we're doing today. But if you've built skills, you'll be able to adjust to the technology that is changing and apply those skills.

Tech comes and goes. Skills, talent, and knowledge don't come and go. This is a major mistake. I hear so many people talking about, "Oh, how can I improve my podcast? Is there a way that I can market it more? Is there a way that I can get a better microphone, a better audio quality?" Frankly, for many people who are asking those questions, the key thing to focus on is to say, "You're not a very good broadcaster." I'm not saying this to you as someone who has arrived.

Some of my early episodes were painful, are painful for me to go back and listen to. I would love nothing more than just to strip them off the website. I refuse to do that because I want to have them there as a light post that somebody can go and listen to my old episode and say, "Wow, Joshua was bad, and hopefully I'm a lot better now than I was then." And they'll say, "Wow, if Joshua was that bad and he's gotten this good, then that means that I can start something bad and become good," because the key is to start and to improve.

Focus on the most important things, which are your broadcast skills. I am still—I'm not satisfied with my own broadcast skills. I'm working hard to try to say, "How can I get better?" I go back and listen to my shows sometimes and I get upset with myself. "Joshua, why did you go down that tangent?

Why did you not make that point more concise? Why did you not hammer that emotional point home? Why did you not build more enthusiasm? Why didn't you tell a better story? Why didn't you get a better hook?" I'm still working on those things, and I will be working on those things for the rest of my career.

I'm not working on the tech so much anymore. The tech is easy to hire. You can hire the tech, Don. You can't hire the skills. So focus on the broadcast skills. So tired of reading tutorials and whatnot of how to plug in a microphone and how to set up an RSS feed when that stuff is so easily solved today.

And when I started, I couldn't find a good instruction on how to do great interviews. That was the thing I was struggling with, was how do I create great interviews? I'll talk about some interview tips in a moment, but I didn't know how to... Why aren't people writing articles about how to be a great interviewer?

All this stuff about the tech and no one's about how to create great content. Focus on your broadcast skills. The digital media that we have is amazing, and the opportunity for podcasting is incredible, and we're just getting started. I very seriously pursued and investigated the idea of taking radical personal finance to the radio waves at the end of last year.

I may do it in the future. I still think there's an opportunity. I still think I could do it. I still think I would do well at it. I'm convinced the timing is not right. If it ever is, I don't know, but it's not right now. But I seriously consider it.

Let me give you the finances though. In radio, I don't want to go into all the business models, but you can buy airtime. It's possible to get airtime without paying for it. Some of you can even possibly get your podcast content distributed to the radio for free. But many times, the way that much of radio is moving is towards the buying of airtime.

This will depend on the market, depend on the station, depend on the signal. But I looked into starting a two-hour-a-day show in a local market on an AM station. Basically, the net cost for a station with a decent footprint would have been about $6,000 a month here in my local market.

One radio station, $6,000 a month. My podcast hosting fees for just my podcast hosted with Libsyn total for a show that gets – I don't know. I can't remember what it last month was, but somewhere in the north, almost about 200,000 downloads a month, $60. That is incredible when you compare $6,000 to $60, and I could probably reach about the same amount of people.

That's why digital media is transforming the world. Because when people can create content with a cost of $60 for hosting fees versus $6,000, it opens up the world. So recognize that medium, jump into it, enjoy the low risk and the low financial risk of it, and get busy. Next, advice for you.

Don't follow – when you're setting up a podcast, do me a favor. Do not follow the free tutorials that you see online. Do not follow the free tutorials on YouTube. My opinion, they are wrong. It's not that they can't work. It's that they're going to not be ideal. Very simplistically, I won't hammer this point.

It's a very unpopular point in the podcasting space. But when I set up Radical Personal Finance, I set up the show with a – get a little geeky. If you're not a techie, just tune out for about three minutes and we'll be done with this. But what I did was I set up a WordPress site and I signed up with Libsyn for my podcast hosting service, set up a WordPress site, set up my RSS feed through the site, was hosting the files on the site.

Everything broke. One of the most difficult days in podcasting for me was in November of 2014. I think it was episode 96 to 97, 98, something like that, right before I was getting ready to launch a membership site. I wound up making my WordPress site broke because a WordPress plugin broke my feed, took the podcast down, and then I went through the process of trying to adjust that.

I made a mistake in fixing it and I wound up deleting all of my iTunes subscribers. I sent all of my iTunes subscribers right before I'm launching my big membership site to an empty dead feed. That problem plagued me still to this day. There's still today two listings in Stitcher for Radical Personal Finance because of my mistake that I had made.

My tech guy is taking care of that at this point. I'm going to delete the old listing. But I've had immeasurable problems. In fact, it hasn't even stopped there. I watched the free tutorials online. I signed up with a Bluehost WordPress thing. For a while, Bluehost was terrible. I finally switched away from Bluehost.

I use WP Engine now for my website hosting. But even still, for the last four or five months, we've thought that we had a new website built and I built a contact form on the site. Finally, I was like, "What is wrong? There's something wrong." We had tested the contact form.

It was working. I just figured out this week with my tech guy that for the last four months, I have not received a single contact through that contact form as far as listeners, you who are listeners have been putting in messages. That is extremely upsetting to me because I've worked really hard over the years of giving a personal reply to every single note or email that I've gotten.

I've tried really hard to respond to all the feedback. Sometimes I've been weeks and months behind, but I've tried really hard. Well, it's an issue with Bluehost. So finally, we're fixing it. It has been fixed now. The contact form is working. Since then, all of a sudden, we went from sparse communication, a few emails here and there, to all of a sudden now about five messages a day consistently in the last few days since it's been working, messages that are important.

Listeners, you who are listening, sending me feedback. That's so important to me. So it's incredibly frustrating. I'm a little bitter about how bad the advice I got watching the free tutorials online was. I really wish some of the people who've created those would pull them or adjust them and update them.

It's frustrating to me, but ignore that. So here's the deal. I'll do it at some point. I'll do a new thing. If you want to start a podcast, here's what you do. Go to Libsyn.com, L-I-B-S-Y-N, stands for Liberate a Syndication. Contact them, follow all their free tutorials, and do exactly what they say.

I got in touch with them, and I got them to set up, I asked them to be a part of their affiliate program. So they're setting up an affiliate code. Just use the affiliate code Radical, and they'll give me a commission, and they'll give you a month and a half free basically.

I'll detail that at another time. But just don't follow the free stuff online. It has taken me two years to finally get all of that stuff out of my issues. So contact the people at Libsyn and just do what they say. Next, listenership matters, but the size of the listenership is far less important than the right person listening.

Always remember that. The size of the listenership matters, but it's not as important as the right person listening. I would rather have 100 people who are the exact appropriate fit for the purpose and the vision of my podcast than 100,000 who are not a good fit. All goes back to the vision.

Ignore listenership size. I'm sorry that I did a little bit of a marketing hook myself of, "Hey, Radical Personal Finance has 2 million downloads and 300 episodes." I'm sorry. In our modern society, we're doing that because we have to do that. It's good marketing to kind of get people to pay attention.

My hope is that you'll pay attention to the title, but focus in on connecting with the right listenership, keeping your message exactly on your purpose. Next, you are going to have to learn to develop in media a thick skin. Media, if you're going to create media, is not like personal interaction.

In media, you need to stand for something. There's a reason you're creating the content you're creating, and you're going to have unpleasant interactions with people because of it. You're going to get haters. Anybody who stands for something, anybody who dares to have an opinion on the subject is going to get haters.

You need to commit right now, especially if you're at the beginning stage, you're going to develop a thick skin. You have to recognize there's something that happens in interpersonal media. I can't remember somebody ever walking up to my face, putting their finger in my face, getting angry at me and just telling me off.

Part of it is I get the advantage. I'm a big guy. Most people don't mess with me, so I get that advantage. Maybe some of you don't have that advantage, but people in real life, they don't do that. I don't walk into your house, walk into your living room and just say nasty things to you and about you.

In media, it's going to happen, so you've got to prepare for it because when it happens, it won't be pleasant, but you'll have to build new skills, and you're going to have to adjust. Recognize that the relationships that you have with a small minority of people in your audience are not going to be the same as normal relationships in real life.

People on the internet, for some reason, get a strange joy out of telling you you're stupid. Just deal with it. That's life. Don't let that dissuade you from impacting the people who care about your message because what happens is sometimes you'll get some communication. Good people, generally, it seems like people that want to say unpleasant things are far more willing to say unpleasant things than the people who want to say positive things, but then you'll start to receive positive interaction.

You'll say, "Wow, I had no idea that somebody's out there listening to your stuff and their life is being improved from it." Develop a thick skin and plan for that now. Next, people have asked me, "What's the best means of promotion?" My best and really only means of promotion that I've used has been focusing very, very hard on trying to create great content.

That's been what I've done up till now. That was intentional and it was purposeful, but that doesn't mean that other means of promotion aren't important. I am working on additional means of marketing. I'm going to answer some interview, some listener questions at the end, and I'll talk more about that during one of those questions.

Don't worry about podcaster bragging metrics. iTunes is important, but it's not as important in real life as it is for impressing your podcasting friends. Your iTunes ranking is not an indicator of how large your audience is. Don't worry about iTunes. Now, I recognize that it will be tempting and you will do whatever you want to do to check your ranking.

I can give you the reasons of how iTunes formulas work. I've researched it. It doesn't matter. It's not important. Basically, at this point, I check iTunes rankings once a month, and if somebody tells me about something I try to go and snag a screenshot in case I ever need it.

But once a month, I check iTunes rankings. iTunes rankings are not a reliable indicator of how popular your show is or how impactful your show is. You should be going for impact, not popularity. You're not going to be as popular as the Kardashians, but you can have a way bigger impact than they get to have.

Next, new and noteworthy does not matter. There has not been in the history of radical personal finance, we hit all the stuff. We hit new and noteworthy, all that stuff. There's never been a significant spike from anything, including new and noteworthy, including being featured on top lists and all those things.

I've had one listener who, when I've inquired, "How did you find me?" I had one listener who's ever corresponded with me and said, "Oh, I saw your show in new and noteworthy." One. Now, I'm sure there's more than that, but only one person has ever told me that. Don't worry about new and noteworthy.

Focus on content. Another little just thing, iTunes reviews don't really matter. They don't affect the rankings. They just don't really matter all that much. In the beginning on radical personal finance, I've tried to focus on asking people for reviews, asking people for reviews. I thought it was important. That's what I thought at the time.

In retrospect, it really doesn't matter that much. They do matter a little bit in that when somebody's looking at your show, if they can see that you have more reviews, they're likely to say, "Okay, let me check this out." So they matter a little bit, but they don't matter that much.

That said, of course, any listeners who want to review the show, I'm happy to review it, be happy to have it. It's fine. I'm thankful to have it. But they don't matter that much. So don't worry about that. I'm trying to stress, sorry, for new podcasters. Focus on creating great stuff.

What I love about iTunes reviews is I love that it gives the audience a voice. For that reason, you should support iTunes reviews. One of the most incredible things we have is we have the ability, people have the ability to exercise their rights of free speech and make public commentary on what you're doing.

I love that. I love that people have the opportunity. I love that my listeners can go into iTunes and they can say they love my show, and I love that they can go in and say that they hate it. Now, of course, it's not particularly pleasant to read the negative iTunes reviews, but how wonderful that they have the opportunity to do that.

This is what's so amazing about 2016, that people can do that. It's awesome. So don't worry about all the podcaster bragging metrics. Focus on meeting the needs of your audience. You will not please everyone. So make sure that you're first pleasing yourself in the sense that you are focused on delivering the content that you want to deliver for the reasons you want to deliver it, and decide now to be content with the process of letting people self-select.

You have to be content for your audience to self-select. You have to have a message that's important to you for reasons that you care about, and then sit back and wait and let the appropriate audience find you. Not everybody is going to like you. Remember that the most popular people are also the most hated people.

How many enemies does President Barack Obama have? How many friends does he have? So recognize that you will not please everyone, but you will over time attract to your content, the audience that most benefits from it. So decide now to not let yourself be dissuaded from your message and your content simply because your audience is going through a process of self-selection.

You will not win the popularity contest. When Shaquille O'Neal can start a podcast, you don't have any possibility of competing in that market. So don't worry about popularity. Worry about impact, worry about reasons, and choose an area where you can compete. Choose to compete on content. Choose to compete on knowledge.

Choose to compete on your style, on your voice, or on a niche. But don't worry about popularity. Little tip, I think interview shows are becoming oversaturated. So if you are running an interview show or if you want to start an interview show, handle them carefully. I'll just say handle them carefully.

But if you're going to do interviews, choose them carefully. And this is one of the most challenging things that I face with radical personal finances, trying to figure out how to select the interviews. I have things I'm trying to accomplish, but I don't want to just have interviews that I agree with.

I don't want to just have interviews that I disagree with. It's really, really challenging. But recognize that you are the editor of your interviews. You are the gatekeeper. So the question that I try to ask myself, and this is one of the things I'm personally struggling with the most in radical personal finances, does this interview serve the needs of my audience?

Does this interview fulfill the vision of my show? Very difficult to know if it does or not. So be careful doing interview shows. Interview shows are the easiest show to do, in my opinion. Easiest shows to do in order of, remember I talked about the four types of shows?

The easiest one is an interview show. Second easiest is a co-hosted show. Third easiest is a solo show. And the fourth, like the most difficult, is these audio works of art. And also in range of popularity, I'm convinced the audio works of art are probably the most popular than the solo shows, than co-hosted shows.

I can't prove that. But the audio works of art certainly are the most popular. Interview shows, be careful. Don't just try to do an interview show unless that specifically fulfills the purpose that you've selected for your show. Couple of ideas on interviewing. Here's what I've learned. Interview skills are difficult to learn.

And the best way I've been trying to learn them is simply through practice. And I try to practice the interview and then go and listen to it and see how did I do. Would I have been interested in that? At this point, what I have learned to do is to interview people that I'm interested in, interview people who have a story that I'm interested in.

And simply look for the story that I care about. I've learned to just focus on listening and just trying to follow my interests. I have an advantage in that I'm naturally interested in many subjects. There's almost nothing you can talk to me about that I can't find an interest in.

So I have that advantage from an interview perspective that I'm going to be interested in that. But I just try to listen and I try to follow the interesting story. That's the best thing I've come up with. I've found personally interviewing authors of books is very difficult for me.

And what I more and more am trying to do is just simply if I'm going to interview an author, I try not to read the book first. Because often when I read the book, I want to get the author to go through the book. And authors just don't seem to want to talk about their books in the sense that they want to hold things back.

So what I've learned to do is not read someone's book if I want to interview them. That's hard because every time I do it, I always regret it. I think, "Oh, that's not very interesting." Next interview tip for you is listen carefully to the other person. So easy to let our minds wander.

It's so easy to focus on where you're trying to take them. And you miss out if you're not listening to them. You miss out on the little gems. So I try to listen carefully to the other person and actually respond to what they're saying and not just ask the next question.

And then again, go and listen to your interviews. Let's talk a little bit about numbers. Understand how to interpret the numbers of podcasts. For example, when I say I've had 2 million downloads, you should recognize first, I haven't necessarily had somebody listen to 2 million episodes or to somebody listen to...

I haven't had 2 million people listen to the show. What 2 million downloads means is that 2 million times my audio file has been played from some source. But that doesn't know whether it's been played for five seconds or for somebody listened to a three-hour show that I made.

So you should first be suspicious of big numbers. Second, you should recognize that many podcasters artificially inflate their numbers through some different means that are available. You can do all kinds of things. You can buy... I mean, the one that's all the big scandal that many shows do is they call Twitter bombing.

You put your episode out there and you just try to get people to click the link, click the play, and that adds to your download numbers. So you should be suspicious of numbers when people share numbers. Don't trust anybody with their numbers. Just assume everyone's always lying. That'll help you to feel a little bit better by recognizing that.

So first, recognize that when I say a big number, like a total downloads, that just means 2 million times an audio file was played. Next, you should divide the number of audio files based upon the number of episodes. So this is the 300th episode. If I say 2 million, you should divide 2 million by 299.

And all of a sudden now, you recognize, "Oh, well, this is..." I don't remember what that number is, but this is not so many. That's not 100,000 people listening to Joshua's show. That is a few thousand. That's a number, and you can divide that very carefully, and that'll help you.

So understand how to interpret the numbers of podcasting, and if you're intimidated or attracted by big numbers, recognize that you need to filter those through some knowledge. The biggest mistakes that I've made in my podcasting journey are with my marketing, my back-end marketing. And this is the major focus for me at this point in time, is to improve the marketing of my show.

Now, in the beginning, I made a specific... I'm not angry at myself for making those mistakes, because I made a conscious decision, "Joshua, you don't have the capacity for that right now. Focus on your plan. Focus on building good content, and then as you build more capacity, you'll be able to go back and fix those things." So building the back-end business is my number one thing right now.

That's one thing that, as soon as possible, you should be focusing on building the back-end of the business. If you're not familiar with those terms, every business has a front-end and a back-end. The front-end is the product that you buy up front. The back-end is all the products that you buy after the initial sale.

So if you look at... and this is where many people fall apart, is many businesses are broken because they only offer front-end products. This is where Radical Personal Finance is. I only have two front-end products at the moment. I have a Patreon campaign, where listeners support my show. Thank you to those of you who do.

And number two is I have advertising. Those are my only two aspects of my front-end business. Those are the least profitable parts of the business, and I need to focus on the back-end business, which is building more products, building books, building courses, building videos, building seminars, building all these products.

That's where all the profit is. And so that's where I'm 100% focused now, and you should apply the same thing to your business. Get the front-end good, and then get the back-end great. Big lesson, do not betray your trust or your integrity in the process of building your show.

I don't think it's... I was going to make a definite statement. I'll just say it. You can't lie to your audience. You've got to be you through and through, because when you're on a microphone, you can't remember what you said 100 episodes ago. So if you're lying, you're making stuff up, if you're inconsistent with your personality, you're trying to be somebody that you're not, you're not going to remember who you were 100 episodes ago.

I can't remember yesterday's show. So you've got to decide that you're okay with being you. That's scary, because people might not accept you. It hurts when people don't accept you for being you, but you've got to do that. Don't lie to your audience, and don't ever betray your integrity, because if you do, you'll never get it back.

I'm going to skip ways to monetize the podcast right now. That was probably the most biggest question. That was the next lesson here, but let's talk about my production flow. So at this point in time, I do a podcast in two different ways. Number one, at home, I record.

I have a mixer. I have a microphone, and I record into a hard disk audio recorder. So I use an old iPhone with Boss Jock on it for my audio carts. That's where I play the show music and things like that. So I play that. I have plugged that into the mixer.

I have Skype set up with a mix minus on my PC. I have a laptop. I use a USB iMic thing that gives me the outputs from my laptop that makes it possible for me to do my mix minus pretty easily. And then I put that onto an audio SD card.

I record all of my solo shows in one take with no editing. I made the decision early on that I wasn't going to edit, simply because I wanted my point of differentiation, my unique selling proposition. My point of differentiation was more content and deeper content. Now that has hurt me.

The biggest theme of my iTunes reviews, if you go read my iTunes reviews, the constant theme "Joshua rambles and his shows are too long." Those reviews are accurate. I rambled and my shows are too long. I was not unaware of that. I didn't have the ability to do it better.

And so people would say, "Well, it's better if you edit." Well, maybe so. But what I was looking for at that time was I was looking for more content and I could deal with bad editing. If the content was good, I could just listen to a show at 2x or just skip forward when I was ready.

And so I figured, well, my audio has to do the same thing. So I made a decision. I'm not going to edit. What I'm going to focus on doing is trying to create more content. And I'm going to build the skills. So I made that decision. That was why I bought the mixer and did all of that.

That I just go straight to the hard drive and it's done. When it's done, it's done. So I do hit pause on my little recorder sometimes, gather my thoughts. I do restart. Sometimes I'll have to give two or three starts to the show to get the intros how I want them.

I make them up off the top of my head. Everything is off the top of my head except for my outline. So I record directly into the hard disk. I edit it. I export it. At this point in time, I don't know how to run audio editing software. The only thing I know to do, I use Audacity.

The only thing I know how to do is to cut out a slice out a section. And I use that for splicing together interview shows with an intro and an outro. And then if somebody curses on my show, I try to go and snip that out. I try to keep it obvious.

I don't play a beat, but I try to keep it obvious that they cursed on my show. But I try to pull out the actual profanity. I don't want profanity on my show. So I do try to do that. So that's the only thing I know how to do is to cut out things and then to cut together a lot of times when Skype misses up.

The rest of it, I use a service called Auphonic. I just upload my WAV file into Auphonic. Auphonic processes my file. It exports it as an MP3. I take that MP3, I upload it in Ellipson, and I publish it. I'll talk about my publishing process in a moment. So that's the way I record when I'm at home.

The other way I record is right now I'm sitting here with my iPhone. I use BossJock. I have learned to do things on my iPhone. My podcast, Encouraging Christian Fathers, every single episode is recorded, edited, and published exclusively from my iPhone. I don't ever put those files onto a computer.

And I do that because it's a lot easier. If I had known about the workflow that I have there before, I never would have bought the mixer. I never would have done that stuff. I would have just done it on my phone the whole way through. It works really, really well.

I'll give you a resource for that in a moment. So I have two different setups that I do. Let's talk about my publishing process for shows at home. In the past, I've done all this myself. But at this point with Radical Personal Finance, the thing that drains me personally, drains my creativity and sucks all my energy is doing tech stuff.

I'm a creative person when it comes to creating content, and I can't stand doing the tech stuff. So at this point, I've built a workflow where I take my audio file. I work in Libsyn. I publish to Libsyn my audio file. I write the headline. Excuse me, I write the title of the show, and I write a little blurb for it.

Show notes. People have a lot of opinions on show notes. They say, "Oh, you should have lots of show notes." Show notes drain me. Usually when I finish writing a show, I am absolutely physically exhausted. And so I just put a lot of energy into the show, and I want to publish it, and I can't face the thought of writing show notes.

So what I have chosen to do is to write show notes in the form of just a short little teaser, basically the equivalent of a Facebook post. They're usually about 700 words, and here's a little teaser. Here's why you should listen to it, because I'm just so drained I can't face it.

And if I spend more time doing show notes, it would take me an entire day to do show notes the way I'd like to do them, and there'd be one less episode that I could do. And I think my audience wants more episodes and fewer show notes. So that's the decision that I have made.

So I write the show notes in Libsyn. I click publish. What happens when I do that is the way Libsyn publishing works is it goes to all my different destinations. It goes to my RSS feed, which goes into iTunes. That goes into, it gets published to my apps. It gets published everywhere to all these different destinations all at one shot.

Then that file, I have a, the file's published to the RSS feed. I have a graphic designer who I've hired who does all of my show artwork. So that file goes into the RSS feed. When the RSS feed picks it up, I have an IFTTT formula where once the RSS feed picks it up, it sends it into a service I use called Glip, G-L-I-P.

And that's where I connect with my web developer and my graphic designer. And so it goes into the, it goes right into the Glip channel that we use to interact on that. Once it goes there, we create a task. The graphic designer goes ahead and creates an image. Usually takes her, because she works on it just part time, it usually takes a couple days for the image to be created.

And then once that image is created, we go back in. My web developer uploads that, a square image into Libsyn. And that's the image that gets shared through to my social channels from the Libsyn social sharing functions. And then we create a banner for the website. And then my web developer takes the file, puts it onto the website with the banner.

And at that point in time, then it goes out into the email distribution list. Now that's a little bit techie geeky complicated, but what that does, and I've worked hard to get myself out of that process, even especially recently, is now I'm out of that process. And that helps me to retain my sanity so I can reserve my creative energy for writing or for creating the products and the seminars and the things that I'm working on.

So that's been a big help to me. What it naturally results in is there's always about a two to four day delay of publishing of shows on the website. So if you're a normal listener to the show and you're not interested in all this podcast stuff, what I would recommend is make sure you're subscribed to the show, either in iTunes or on my app, and you'll always get the show the fastest that way.

It won't show up on the website until a couple days later. But a little trick, if you ever want to listen to it on the website, go to the archives page and that player that's at the top of the archives page, that player will have the show because it picks it up from the RSS feed.

So that's my production flow, how I do it from my home office. When I'm away or if I'm using my iPhone, what I do is I record in BossJock, I record in one shot, that's what I'm doing right now. When I finish this show, I'll export a wave file, I use Auphonic, there's an Auphonic app on my phone, I move it to Auphonic, Auphonic processes it and then I use the Auphonic distribution feature to send the file over directly over to Libsyn.

And there are three different options of ways to do it, but the file shows up on Libsyn and with that file there on Libsyn, I can go ahead and publish it, I write a quick thing on my phone and publish it just in the normal way. So that's the process there.

The best resources for you on podcast publishing is go to Libsyn and get their tutorials, free tutorials, do what they say in their tutorials. If you want to sign up for a Libsyn account, use the coupon code Radical. I need to check with Robert Libsyn to make sure that was set up.

I told him, I asked him for a coupon code. So I get a little commission for that, great, thank you, and it gets you a one month free offer. Use coupon code Radical and follow their stuff. The second one is the best resource for publishing, recording and publishing from your phone is a website called themobilepro.net.

That's a guy named Sean Smith. I've become friends with him because you'll see an endorsement from me, a testimonial from me right on his site. I've become friends with him because once I saw his system, it convinced me how to do it. So I use his systems. I use the Fancy one when I'm doing interviews.

The one I do with my dad, we sit down, we have two SM7, I have two SM7Bs that I sit down, we sit down across the table, put that stuff right through an ART Dual Pre into the iPhone and do the whole show together like that. Right now, this show, I travel with an ATR2100, sorry, it's actually an AT2005 because it was cheaper when I bought it, into a USB cable right into the phone and that's what I'm working with right now.

And so he's the one who taught me that whole flow. I set up at some point in the past an affiliate thing. I'll go and find it when I get back to the office and I'll link it in the show notes today and if you want to buy his guide, his $97 video guide, you can get a free ebook showing you how to set up the systems.

If you want to buy his guide, you can feel free to use my affiliate link and I'll get a commission for that. So cool. Awesome. All right. That's enough tech, man. I've never done that much tech. So I'm not stupid when it comes to tech. I do my homework on things.

I just don't like talking about it. Two quick final lessons and I'm going to answer some questions from listeners and then we'll be done. And I know this is, I just wanted to get these lessons out. This is just Joshua's. If we were sitting down, I'm giving you podcasting advice.

Here's what I've learned. I'm not trying to create a masterpiece here. You should look carefully, oh sorry, three things. You should look carefully at the negative feedback that you get. Be careful that you don't associate you with your work in a personal way. We all have a tendency to hold our creative work very close to our heart.

It's an expression of us. And so what happens then is when you receive negative feedback on it or negative opinions of it, negative reviews, things like that, it's easy to hurt. I don't know how to make it not hurt at all. I certainly hurt a little bit when my stuff is criticized, but I'm convinced it's important to recognize that you shouldn't hold your work that way.

Rather, you should hold your work at arm's length and say, "This is not me. This is just my work. I've created this piece of work," and hold it out there and try to get it away from you where you don't get so associated and wrapped up with it where you can't read the negative feedback.

You should look for the negative feedback as if it's sincere, if it will help you get better. So read the negative reviews and try to get help, let them fuel you to help you get better. Now you're going to get people that are going to just say things about you.

Our society, we have a disease of the ad hominem attack where people just feel better by attacking the person instead of attacking the person's ideas. Ignore all that stuff. Recognize it's a logical fallacy. Just ignore it. You can know if you get an email or a voicemail or a comment or whatever, or someone just says, "I can't believe you're so stupid, blah, blah, blah," just hit delete or hit approve.

I approve them and I just move on with my day. But when you get someone who sincerely says, "I appreciate your message, but here's how it could get better," that's what you need to know what to work on. So I need my negative reviews. I need the views to say that I'm rambling.

Those are the things that have fueled me to help me get better. So in the beginning, I didn't do extensive outlines. I got all these rambling reviews, rambling, rambling, rambling, blah, blah, blah. Okay, fine. I got the point loud and clear. So I said, "I got to fix this." So now I try to do more careful outlines.

I use personally, I use a website called WorkFlowy, W-O-R-K-F-L-O-W-Y, WorkFlowy. It's an outlining program and I find it to be very intuitive for me. Works on my phone. As I do this right now, I'm literally reading. I have my WorkFlowy app open on my phone and I have Boss Jock running in the background recording this episode and it allows me to move things around, to try to get an order and just, it's an effective way for me to work in bullet points.

And then once I have the bullet point, it reminds me of the thought and hopefully keeps me focused on I wanted to express this bullet point. So look for the negative feedback and just recognize you are not your work. You're going to hate your early work. So be strong and do it and recognize that anything worth doing well is worth doing poorly at first.

How good of a walker and runner is your average one-year-old child? They're not very good. But that same one-year-old child with lots of practice and lots of falls is going to get better. They're going to become one day a smooth and elegant runner. So the key is for us to focus on just the process of improving and not so much on the early outcome.

And if you get started as a producer, find a safe way to do it, you'll go through this process. And so I want you to go and read my negative reviews. I want you to go and see how difficult, how bad some of my early episodes were and then do that same thing because everything worth doing well, worth doing is worth doing poorly at first.

One of the biggest lies that people swallow is that you have to be good at something in the beginning. You're not going to be good at something in the beginning. As long as you're improving, you can be satisfied with your work. Last bullet point, I missed this a little bit earlier.

Transcripts. Everyone says they want transcripts. No one wants to pay for it. I'm in the process right now, if we're doing a test, 10 of my episodes are being transcribed and we're doing a little test. I'm not going to tell you which ones because we're doing an SEO test to see if they make an impact on transcriptions.

I'll talk about that in the future. But transcripts are expensive and I just wasn't willing to spend the money on them. I have a couple of quick questions from listeners. I put this show topic out there in some social forums and I want to answer some questions. Number one, Joshua, what is your top way to promote your show?

For me, the number one thing I've focused on in promoting my show has been trying to create the best content that I'm capable of doing it and hoping that it would be useful to people out there in my listening audience and hoping that my listening audience, out of appreciation for the good content, would share it with others.

That's been what I focused on. That was my top, that has been and still is my top way. My favorite thing that I see is when I, if I go and look in a finance forum or something like that and somebody says, "Oh, Joshua Sheets at Radical Personal Finance created a show on this topic.

You'll find it to be useful." That's what I want to see. That's what I love to see. The other useful way is I am very well located with, real quick, on the quality. If you focus on quality, your quality will be found out and then people will promote your stuff for you.

They'll include you on the top 10 list. They'll include you on, hey, five great finance podcasts, things like that. If you don't focus on quality and you're always focused on promoting a bad product, you're never going to get included on that stuff. That stuff scales. You can't write a marketing blog post every day, but if you just focus on creating something good and be patient, then it's scalable when people promote your stuff for you.

Let other people promote your stuff for you. Don't go necessarily focus first on promoting it yourself. That said, a couple of tips and things that have been helpful to me to promote the show. In addition to good content, I'm well positioned for the keyword personal finance. I chose only one keyword, iTunes personal finance.

That's what I was looking for, radical personal finance. It's good SEO in the title of my website. It's good optimization in iTunes, personal finance. My show title is very descriptive. I didn't have a name brand. I didn't have a platform. I couldn't start the Joshua Sheets show and expect people to find it.

No one knew who Joshua Sheets was, so I started the radical personal finance show. I'm going to do that likewise. Next thing of promotion is it is useful to do some interviews, interviews with authors. Also interview to review books. The third episode of the show, I reviewed early retirement extreme and that was the first bump.

What happened was I reviewed early retirement extreme. I love that personal finance book. Then when I did the link back, I did a track back to Jacob Lundfisker's website and he put it on his website. All of a sudden, I opened up my stats one morning. This was back when I was checking them every day.

I opened up the stats and all of a sudden, I saw, wow, I think it went from 30 downloads a day to 300 downloads a day. It's like, oh, wow. Even going forward in the future, one of the things that I am going to do with the radical personal finance content, I'm going to be reviewing a lot of books, partly because I am convinced it's an effective way for me to – no, mostly because I'm convinced it's an effective way for me to provide useful content to my audience.

My audience is choosing to consume content in a verbal format where they often don't have the time to read. One way I can serve my audience is I can read the books. I can pull the key ideas and I can take what would take them hours to read and I can say, here are the key major aspects of this book that you need to find.

However, that's the major reason. A minor reason is it will help me with the popularity of radical personal finance. By doing a book review, people who are searching for that book will find my book review. Those authors will be aware of me. They'll become aware of them. Some of them will listen to the show and they'll say, "Hey, I like this.

This is good." They'll promote it, etc., etc., etc. Interacting with authors and people who have a platform, doing an interview is nice. Sometimes people will tweet out an interview and some of that person's fans will come and listen to your show, guest posting, all that stuff that you hear about in all the podcast forums.

The key thing that I've just focused on is trying to create great stuff and letting other people promote it for me. Number two, do I monetize and if so, how? Yes, I have two ways. I have some ads. Some of those ads are affiliate links where I get a commission on them, on if somebody uses my referral link.

Some of the ads are based upon CPM ads where I set out a flat contract with people. So I do monetize with ads. I didn't want to monetize with ads. I started focusing on Patreon, but I had real problems with, and I have about 200, I think 235, 240 people who support the show on Patreon.

It comes out to the tune of about $2,000 a month right now. There's a whole story. I don't want to get into that. I've struggled with how to position that. I've even struggled in the last few months with Patreon, trying to figure out. I felt like I wasn't delivering everything that I wanted to deliver.

That's been the story of my life, is not being able to deliver on the stuff I want to deliver. So even just in the last couple of days, we've radically simplified the Patreon campaign. And now I'm confident that I've got a much better fit of something I can deliver.

And so I'm going to be working on that. And my hope is that the audience will step forward and many more will support the show on Patreon based upon the bonuses that I'm offering and the value that I'm offering. And that will allow me, my intention is I want to remove the advertising from the show.

But at this point, I'm focused very much on creating backend products, products that are going to solve the problems that my audience is asking me. In the beginning, I thought I could give everything away on the show for free. And I still do. I give, and I intend, I'm going to do a thousand episodes.

Whether I'll do it after a thousand, probably, but I'm not committed to it. But I'm still going to do a thousand episodes. And I think in a thousand episodes, I'm going to be able to articulate a pretty comprehensive curriculum that will help people for free. And I feel really, I love doing that.

I really feel good about that. I've gotten a little bit lost over episodes, basically 200 or 300 of content. I've struggled a little bit now. I'm feeling much better. I've got a clearer outline of the topics I'm covering. I'm much more intentional about my content. So I know what I'm doing going forward, and I'm still going to deliver the content.

But what I've realized though, is that the podcast is not the best format for me to answer somebody's specific question. And so I have to create products that are really, really valuable products, where when people have a specific question, my product is the perfect fit. And that's what I'm going to do in the future.

And that's the way that you should monetize most shows. Not all shows, but most shows. Not every show has to be monetized directly. Next question. How do I flesh out a topic when I'm a little short on ideas? I'm not short on ideas. What I'm short on is the time to do an idea justice.

I have hundreds of ideas. First, when I set out to do the show, I intentionally chose a format that would help me to be able to articulate, to have a plan. You have to have a game plan to run. If you just sit down and you don't have an outline to work with, it's really hard.

So I decided on Mondays, I was going to do a personal finance show. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I was going to do an interview show. On Wednesdays, I would do a deep dive of financial planning. On Fridays, I would do Q&A. So the only actual topics that I needed in that situation were Mondays and Wednesdays.

But Wednesdays were easy because I set out to teach through the CFP curriculum. I just took the curriculum and that became my outline. Those are the most difficult shows for me to create because they're very time consuming, which is why they've been sparse recently. I've been busy and I haven't been able to get them done.

I'm not giving up on them. I just haven't been able to get them done with the time that I have. They're very time consuming, but I don't struggle with ideas on them because I know the outline. The reason they're time consuming is I have to take the content, distill it from a textbook, which is very wordy, and distill it to the key points for someone who's not trying to sit for the CFP, but someone who just wants the knowledge, a layperson who wants the knowledge.

I work very hard not to plagiarize the textbooks that I have and just read them. So I work and I say, "Okay, what's my spin on it?" So I can take their outline. I usually work from a couple of textbooks laid out and I try to take that and create my own outline so I'm not plagiarizing from the textbooks, but I'm getting the key points.

So those are my Wednesday shows. My Monday shows are my personal finance shows and I keep lists of topics. I use Workflowy and I use Notebooks and I write all these things down. My Friday shows are Q&A's. So every question that I get from every listener goes into a Workflowy list that says Friday Q&A shows and it's the whole text of the question.

And then I try to go through and answer those as best I can. A lot of times the answers require a lot of time and a lot of preparation and so those have been difficult to get done as well, but I'm not short on ideas. I would recommend to you if you're short on ideas for your podcast topic, it's probably not what you should podcast about.

It's probably not. Next, how did you get to 2 million downloads? Techniques used to draw that many people? Good content. I like to believe good content. Good content, a little bit of optimization of personal finance, a little bit of popularity and hopefully it's gotten better. What is different now after getting 2 million downloads compared to when you were only getting a few hundred?

What has changed? What has changed is that everything else in the business, when I began I had a single minded focus on content and I made a choice to ignore everything else. And so I was able to focus exclusively on creating content. Now 300 episodes later, I've had to build out all of those things that were ignored.

I've had to build out the website. I've had to build out the marketing product and I've had to build that stuff out. And that stuff takes time and I had to build the business. So that time takes away from creating the content. And so I feel like the content I'm creating in some ways is not as good because I'm not able to put as much time into it as when I was getting a few hundred.

So that has been a big change. The other major change is when I was only getting a few hundred downloads, I wasn't scared to do a show in the sense that if it wasn't very good, I would say, "Okay, I'm learning." But now 300 episodes in, speaking very frankly right now, I've worked on this outline and worked on this outline.

I wrote down these lessons. I wrote down these lessons. I'm at a conference and I intended to record this yesterday rather than today. And I've worked on it, worked on it, worked on it. But still I got to the point where it's not quite right, but I've got to ship the show.

And so I forced myself to do it. But as I've gone through this content, about every 10 minutes I've had to fight the urge of hitting stop and canceling this whole recording because I realized, "Oh, I should go back and adjust this flow a little bit earlier and this flow a little bit later." And that wasn't good.

And I missed these two points and I feel like the flow wasn't quite right. I'm not satisfied with the show, but I know I've got to ship the show. And so I've just got to do it. And if it's not great, it's not great. But what's hard about a show attaining popularity is it's really hard to try to over deliver.

It's really hard to try to beat what you've done before. And it's really intimidating knowing that many more people are going to hear that, and they don't get to hear your good shows. They got to hear this show. So that's what's the worst thing about starting to get popular is often it's much more intimidating.

It's intimidating to hit publish. I'll be very frank, so I want to encourage you content producers. I generally am utterly terrified when I hit publish on a show because I'm convinced it's terrible and I really only get excited when I get to the next episode and I'm getting ready to do that outline.

Then I get excited about that outline and that idea. But generally my mood goes from very excited to by the end of the show it goes down because I think that wasn't very good. That wasn't good. That wasn't good. That wasn't good. That wasn't good. But what I've chosen is podcasting format.

It's one thing if I'm going to present a speech, I'm going to practice that speech multiple times. I'm going to deliver it. And so I can do those dress rehearsals, but with the podcast I can't justify the time of recording a show four times. That's not a good use of my time.

And so I've got to force myself to publish it. And that's really hard. It's humbling because you know you're publishing something that you could do better if you did it four more times. But if you do it four more times, that was four other shows you could get done or four other things that you could do or more time I could spend playing in the park with my kids.

So there's this balance and this tension there between doing your best versus making the product as good as you're capable of doing if you just kept doing it and doing it and doing it. Is there a right move? Should I do where I spend an entire week focusing on one episode and try to make it just a masterpiece?

If I only did one episode a week, I'm sure I could do an amazing episode if I spent 40 hours on it. But the time question of it is I don't think it's worth it. I think the plan I've taken is better. So it's very intimidating once your show gets bigger because you're trying to do better, but I feel worse in many ways.

I know it sounds like an oxymoron because earlier I said I was getting better. I know that I am better now, but I don't feel better sometimes when I'm in the middle of the show. So now I'm thinking to myself, "Joshua, rambling, rambling, rambling. You just probably spent about three minutes answering this question, 'Was this valuable to the audience?'" And the temptation would be to go back and cut it out.

That's the pressure that happens as you start to grow and start to change. What processes do you use now you wish you had implemented when you started? That's the next question. I wish when I started that Boss Jock was available and I wish I had known about Boss Jock and Audio Technica ATR2100 with a USB file into the Boss Jock.

If I had known about this when I started, I never would have bought a mixer. I never would have bought all that gear. I would have just simply done it on the phone and I would have done this whole publishing process on the phone from the beginning. I publish more and more episodes of Radical Personal Finance just on the phone because I find it easier, simpler than doing all the nonsense on the computer.

So that's the thing I would change in the process. That process would have been useful to me in the beginning. Knowing what you know now, what would you have done differently in the first 50 or 100 episodes? The only thing I would have done differently in the first 50 or 100 episodes is worked harder on my outlines.

And that was the change I made to try to become less rambly and to become more concise. I would have tried to focus on my outlines more. In the beginning, I wasn't outlining as carefully and I should have started in the beginning outlining more carefully. And at this point, I cannot justify the time that it takes me to outline a whole show exactly right so I forced myself to do less comprehensive outlines.

But in order just to make the business work the way that I want it to work, I can't put seven hours into preparing a one-hour show every day because it eats up my whole day and I'll have nothing left. So if I would have done differently in the beginning, I would have made more comprehensive outlines in the beginning which would have helped me to be less rambly, cement those skills of staying focused, and then now I would have pulled back on the outlines.

As it is, I feel like I'm 100 episodes behind where I should be. Another thing that is important to that point of what I would have done differently is in the beginning, I tried to fit too much into one show. And that is one thing that limits the benefit of my show.

Still to this day, I try to fit too much. I fit 30 things. This would have been a better show if I had chosen five instead of 30. But as it is, it's 30 and I've done questions and now here I am an hour and something into it. It's still something I'm trying to simplify, simplify, simplify because I've realized I like long and complex, but the majority of people cannot process as much information as I want to get across.

And so I've got to be aware of that and keep things more concise. That is still my biggest challenge. If I had to pick one single thing to focus on above all else over for your first 300 episodes, what would it be? It would be this. Ignore the vanity metrics and focus on trying to continue to improve your competence, your skill and your quality as a broadcaster.

If you can deliver content and focus on just becoming a better broadcaster, focus on the hooks on that. I'm studying radio. I don't spend any time, I don't read any podcasting blogs, I don't listen to any podcasts about podcasting. I'm in the radio world trying to say what do the radio people do?

They're the people that we should be studying, not necessarily podcasting. Next question. I'd love to know what metrics you track to know if your podcast is truly effective as a content marketing tool. The answer to that question is Patreon. Patreon and ad responses. That's it. If you're doing this as a business, which was my intention from the beginning, then it's a matter of what revenue.

I don't care at this point. iTunes reviews don't pay my rent. It's about am I serving people with high quality content and useful things that are impactful in their life such that I can earn their money. That's how I view my Patreon campaign. I'm trying to earn my listeners' support of me financially based upon how effective and helpful am I as that.

How do you convert listeners to email subscribers? I am terrible at that. It is one of the biggest weaknesses on my business. I'm trying to change it. I am changing that. It's the biggest weaknesses. I'm very bad at converting email subscribers and I've known it's a weakness and for various reasons I've ignored it.

How do you get useful constructive feedback on your podcast? I just listen and sometimes I just read what people say. You always have to online. It's very easy to track the stuff. People talking about you on Reddit or talking about you on forums. The transparency of information is so great because I can read what people are saying when they're not filtered by me.

You have to filter that back through your image and through your perception. For example, the number one piece of feedback that people talk about on my show, there are probably three major themes that hurt me. Number one, too long. This is four. Too long, too rambly, too much religion, too much politics.

If you were to go and read what I read about the show, you would find those four things are constant themes. The problem is how do you balance that with your vision? I'll tell you how I balance it. Too long. Yes, I agree. I'm working to make it shorter but I try to make the content fit it.

Sometimes like this one, this episode is too long. Would it have been better if two? Well, whatever. I'm going to try to help people and I just say, "I'm not going to reach the people who are looking for something short but I'm doing my best to help people." As the old song goes, "If you need a speech, an hour speech today, I'm ready right now.

If you need a five-minute speech, I need a few weeks to prepare." That's the reality of it. I've worked and worked and worked on this outline but I probably should have cut it down. I need to ship the show. Too long, agree. Too rambly was accurate. My intention was not to make a show rambly but that wasn't accurate and that was due to my own lack of skill.

What a commenter doesn't understand in that situation is that I'm not capable of doing a show that's less rambly. I have to learn that skill set. It's easy for me to criticize a runner for not being fast enough but they're running as fast as they're capable of. As a broadcaster, I'm being as concise as I'm capable of based upon the time that I've allotted, etc.

Those are accurate pieces of feedback. The feedback about religion and politics, now that's feedback that filters back through my vision. I talk about religion. I talk about politics because I am flat out convinced that those are two of the most important things that affect our lives. But in our modern society, we've decided that it's unpolite somehow to talk about religion and politics.

I don't think there's anything more important to talk about. With regard to money, your religion and politics will affect what you do and how you do it with money more than just about anything else. It'll affect everything. It'll affect how much income you earn. It'll affect everything related to money.

Now I don't lead with that because I don't think it's a particularly great lead to say, "Let me do this," but I see the themes. For me, I'm not willing to sacrifice my integrity to have a popular show. If I dropped those things, I could have a more popular show, but I don't want that show because I wouldn't be able to look myself in the mirror.

As far as handling constructive feedback, that's what you have to look at. You have to look and say, "Is this feedback something that I'm willing to do something about or is this feedback not something that I'm willing to do something about and does this fit my vision?" Those would be my pieces of advice of how to address constructive feedback.

Read what people say about your show in any format. Read the emails that you get and then filter it back through what are you trying to do and what are your opinions. How should you handle potential sponsor partners or affiliate relationships? I've never negotiated a business partnership. You should handle them the way that you would want them to be handled if somebody were handling it with you.

Make a partnership deal win-win and practice making a deal. The most important words in your vocabulary should be, "Let's make a deal," and you should look for making a deal. Every single deal has to have both people coming away feeling like they benefited more. In your employment situation, if you're employed, your employer must feel that they are getting more value from you than the cost that you are costing them.

They must feel like they are winning. If they don't, you're out of a job. Now, you on the other hand, you must feel like you're getting more benefit from your employer than you're costing them, than it's costing you. You've got to feel like you've got to get the better of a deal.

The way I go to a business deal is try to find something who is going to, how can we make a deal where we both win? In my selections for sponsors, what I have said is I will only do a deal that is a win-win-win. I'll only do a deal, number one, where my audience wins.

I will not bring irrelevant advertising onto my show. It's got to be relevant. It's got to be useful because if I'm going to take a minute of my listeners' valuable time in order to do an ad for them, then it's got to be at least useful. I'm working hard to make it even more relevant.

But they've got to win. The product has to be good and they've got to win by buying it. Number two, it's got to work for me and it's got to work for the other person. So it's got to be a win-win-win deal. The business negotiation should be very simple.

And I'll tell you, my contracts for my ad deals, I wrote them myself. They're like three paragraphs. I wrote them myself. I sat down in a word process and here's what I commit to do. Here's what I expect from you. Sent it over to them and signed it. And the people I've dealt with, big teams of attorneys, et cetera, I've signed a couple of contracts.

It's not always my contract. My contracts that I've done are three paragraphs, one side of a page. Contracts that I get back from other companies, 32 pages. It's stupid. So make a deal, a win-win, and just make things simple. How do you go about sourcing new guests? I choose people that I think have a message or an idea or an experience or a philosophy or a story or something that will challenge or will educate or will inspire my audience.

I don't think so much about entertainment. I probably should think more. The most popular forms of media are always going to be entertainment. But I'm looking through people who are going to challenge or educate or inspire my audience. That's what I'm looking for. So I'm always looking for guests.

I ignore some expert credentials. I turn more experts down than I accept as far as on the show, and I look for normal people. So with my vision of the show, I'm wanting my show, my stuff to be accessible. I'm wanting it to be accessible to people. So I try to bring on normal everyday people and experts.

So that's been my philosophy along the way. Is it right? Is it wrong? I have no idea. It's working so far. And so because I'm fulfilling my vision and I'm happy with the show, I continue to do what I think is right. So those are my lessons learned. Those are my tips.

I hope this is useful to you. Radical Personal Finance is not about podcasting, but I do want to help because I was looking for information from people who were experienced and I just struggled to find it a couple years ago. So I'm trying to pay back. Many people have been hugely helpful to me, and I want to thank so many people who have been helpful.

Those are my philosophies. I don't claim they're right, but they are my philosophies. And you can judge for yourself whether they work or not. I am thankful that I have been able to build really great relationships with many people in my audience. It's really encouraging to me. And I know because I get the emails that I've been able to impact some lives positively, which is what I'm able to do.

And I've been able to build a business that sustains my household, which is a location dependent, which was my definition of financial freedom. So I've hit my goals with Radical Personal Finance. Now my goals are changing. They're getting bigger, they're getting more. I'm going to keep on working. I'm going to keep getting better.

And I will be very disappointed if 300 episodes from now, they're not way better. I'll be very disappointed with myself. But they're going to get better because this is just a process. So enjoy the process. I love doing this. It's hard work. You will go through the honeymoon phase of your business.

For two days, I've been trying to get this show out and I've had to force myself to sit down and get it done. So it's seven o'clock at night here at a conference. I haven't eaten since breakfast because I've been in meetings and in sessions and whatnot. But it's a job.

This is my job and I've got to do my best to get my job done. So you're going to do those things. But still, I wouldn't trade it. I love what I'm doing. And I really, really, really want every member of this audience to at least consider starting a podcast because, friends, we live in a time where the freedom of communication is fantastic.

But in order for us to continue to grow and improve our lives, we need to grasp it and use it as a force for good. Thank you all for listening. If you would like to support my work on Patreon, go to radicalpersonalfinance.com/patreon. I would be indebted to you for your financial support.

And I hope this content was useful. Thank you so much. I haven't said thank you so much to finish a podcast and hundreds of episodes. That's the worst ending ever. But yet still, I'm learning. Peace out. Don't just dream about paradise. Live it with Fiji Airways. Escape the ordinary with Fiji Airways Global Beat the Rush Sale.

Immerse yourself in white sandy beaches or dive deep into coral reefs. Fiji Airways has flights to Nadi starting at just $748 for light and just $798 for value. Discover your tropical dreams at FijiAirways.com. That's FijiAirways.com. From here to happy. Flying direct with Fiji Airways. (upbeat music)