Mastering Podcast Momentum: Overcoming Accountability & Discipline Hurdles

Want your podcast and videocast to be seen, heard, found and rewarded in this noisy digital world, you are not alone. Join the nonprofit community at Podcasters United and podcast industry experts Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard as they debunk all that outdated and bad advice you've been getting from the podcast gurus and find out what actually works. Today, get ready to finish Feed your brand with smart cut tactics proven to cast your original voice to the world.

Hey everyone. Welcome to Feed you'd Brand. I'm Tom Hazbut along with my co host Tracy. Today we're going to talk about mastering podcast momentum, overcoming accountability and discipline hurdles.

Your favorite subject.

Yeah, maybe not so much so, but this subject, I mean it is a very good one. And boy do I have these hurdles to overcome myself. This is why it is isn't my favorite subject, because it holds up a mirror to what I am challenged with. So I do fully admit I need support for certain things to be able to show up. Like I can tell you, not only because we're recording this podcast, we do it at the same time every week. That's great. It's on my calendar. I know I'm going to show up. And even recording another podcast especially. I was actually, believe it or not, co host on a show that ran for a couple years where I was the more organized of the two hosts.

I'm really frightened right now.

It really is. If we didn't have that session recurring booked on our calendar, the time when we were going to do it every week, it probably wouldn't have happened. And I actually don't recommend most podcasters do that. When you and I, Tracy, our very first podcast, we would take one whole day a month and binge record all our episodes in one day, sometimes in two days. Depends on which show we were doing because we were publishing a lot of episodes really frequently. But if we didn't set aside those times, it wouldn't happen. But we would binge record in one day an awful lot of episodes. And that's what I think most podcasters in business are best served to do.

But that would have never worked for you, because even to set aside that one day would have never worked for you if you did not have an accountability partner with a great amount of self discipline who would organize all of that? Right? That's how it works. So I want to talk about this topic and frame it up for us. Our good friends over at Pod Pros, Alex Sanfilippo, who's been on our show before and who is a partner that we do a lot of work with through their Pod Match program which we love. And Alex did some research and he calls them actively established podcasts for those that are reached kind of like that good milestone of 25 episodes or more and they post every single week and they're really consistent. And the pod faders. Right. And so he did about a thousand podcast host research program where he did that. Now there were about a hundred only of the actively established. Most of them ended up in the pod fade realm. And which is not unusual to fact a 90 to 10% like that is pretty common out there for a lot of companies. And it just so happened that the people who participated in the research were only about 10% of them were active. But between the two sides of them, he came up with a list of things that were overlapping and what some of the biggest problems with staying organized, keeping organized, self discipline, accountability were actually two of the items on both sides as to why they quit or why they that are critical to keeping going. So it works on both sides. So that's why we've grouped these together. It's because of his research. And we'll link to that and share that with you or those of you who are listening to the podcast after the fact, it'll be in the description. And for those of you who are in zoom with us right now on our coaching side, you're seeing it already, but that is really the key factors to how to focus and get going and keep going with podcasting. And so I found that these two things go hand in hand. Self discipline and accountability. And that and I am obviously that piece in our partnership, in our co hosting partnership. And I'm going to say that is that co hosting may be necessary for some of you. So I'm going to throw that out there. It is a necessary for Tom, you're.

Saying it is necessary or is not necessary.

It is necessary for you. It is. When you have to do a solo show, it is not. You have trouble getting it started, staying accountable, doing that. When you have a co host or you have a partner in the preparation side of things, you have some kind of accountability partner. It makes all the difference for you.

That for me it's the accountability piece, right. That I need to show up to stay in integrity for my co host or the other person I'm involved with. And that can also happen with a guest though I think too when you have an appointment with a guest, that's an accountability piece that makes you show up and do it.

But in our system and in Our process, you would never go seeking those guests. You wouldn't make the time for that if I didn't already do that on our behalf. And that makes a big difference. The topic preparation, because feed your brand here is almost all topics with an occasional coaching crasher popping in right, like Alex did at one point. And we had Angie Lyle and we've had Fran Asaro, which is one of my favorite ones recently. I've referred to it so many times on YouTube optimization. So we have those because I handle that and our team handles that. And if we didn't do that, then you wouldn't have something to show up to and be accountable for. But we know that that's critical for you. Now, this weekly coaching call though, is accountability for you because it's built into our system. So you're going to show up for our clients. There's no way that you're not going to show up and do what you need to do and talk about what you need to talk about. And you're always prepared for that because you're going to show up for our clients. So we created in the system accountability that fits with you.

And it's interesting because I talk with so many podcasters every day in a one on one sense. And I will often find some people who don't need that accountability piece to show up get overwhelmed with the idea, oh my gosh, I have to do this every single week. I don't know that I could do that. Or I have to schedule this and show up at a certain time to be able to do it. That scares off some, some people. And of course we support them to set up systems. So no, you can allocate one day a month or two days a month, or one afternoon a month, whatever it is, you need to be able to batch record episodes. And that's one thing they do one day a month and not something they have to work into their schedule every single week. And then there are the people that would not do it if they didn't schedule a time to do it every week. And I will admit I am more in that camp personally. Although when something inspires me and I have the time, sure, I will go record episodes on my own. I did that for a little series in a completely different subject. But I will admit I started recording those more than a year ago and I've recorded about a dozen episodes and I've never turned that into the publishing that series I wanted to. It's not related to podcasting folks, so you're not missing out on that it's completely different subject matter of something that I was passionate about. So I recorded them. But then there's that accountability piece of actually getting it all done and putting it out there for the world.

Right, Right. And so that's the way I look at this. Self discipline is an internal thing and accountability is an external thing. And so if you can look at how do I create internal and external success, what am I going to do in those formats? That's how you're going to stay consistent and constant with podcasting. And you have to figure out what those are for yourself. They could be different. They're very different for. Than they are for Tom. So from a self discipline standpoint, this is. It's fairly easy for me to say these are the tasks that I have this week and I knock off my list. This is something that I do. However, I don't have enough time in the day. Right. And you may find that as well. And what is the first thing that's going to slip, the thing that isn't outwardly accountable? I don't owe this to a client. I don't owe this to our investment partners. Right. Those are the things that are going to come first on my to do list because they have an external accountability component. So when I create that in my, my system, then I help myself. And so that's something. What we've done internally here is we act in order to get enough resources and tips into our tip library, because that is a. We just record that privately. We don't always do that on the call here. Sometimes we've added it to the call here because it's an easier way for us to make sure it gets recorded. But we have an internal team member make an appointment with Tom and knock them all out. He'll show up for that team member. Because we owe our team. We are accountable to our team. They have a job to do and we have to be a part of making sure they can get their job done because we're measuring them and holding them accountable for doing that. So when they show up on our calendar, we sit down, we record those things, we're done, we did our piece of it, and now they can go off and do theirs. So we created an internal accountability piece in that. So maybe that's what you need to do. Have your assistant have your VA make an appointment on your calendar and set that up for prepping you being ready, making the recordings happen right there on the call.

I truly need that for especially doing those tip videos or anything regarding our client. Portal updates, going over every little aspect. The analytics we've created actually quite recently over the course of the summer until now, a lot of new resource videos, which is very similar I think to recording solo podcasts because it's actually just me on there recording them and screen share demoing. Actually I have a really cool video set up for it. I really like those videos, they're neat. But yeah, I do need the support in the organizational sense. Okay, what is it we're recording about today? Oh yeah, okay, great. I can do that. You know, sometimes I have to prepare in advance and make sure I'm really prepared to know what I'm doing. It's not just spur of the moment, but that's important for me. And it's interesting, Tracy, I think the people there, you know, you and I know people have different strengths in their how they think and in how they work. And there's sort of four real quadrants of that. Creative and visionary people, more emotional and heart centered people, more logistics and organization. And then people that are more numbers, bottom line, black and white maybe sort of thinking. And there are some people like you that are really strong in all four of those. And that's your typical CEOs of companies are really good at that. And then the rest of us can be dominant in two or three of them, but one is our kryptonite and this one is my kryptonite. And I will freely admit I need support or systems in place to be able to do those things that are just not in my nature naturally. Right.

And that's what we've come to discover, is that if we can have a support system and a support team, we have both things because you're high, high integrity showing up for people, including our internal team, especially our client base. Right. You would never not show up. I mean you really have to be unable to speak to not show up. Like that's who you are. Yeah, it'd have to be bad. So knowing those things, we actually structured our system around that because it work to get you into the participation, into the process. So that's what you need to do in, in sort of that self discipline side of things is break down the things that are not your strengths, break down the things that are missing and break down the things that make it when you sit down at the microphone and we can get you going that you're missing like the pieces that you're. The preparation that you maybe didn't have or need in order to be effective while you're recording. And so this is something that we do when we book our, our coaching calls. Here we have a topic list, but over on that topic list there's a description, there's a title that starts to link, there's any outside resources that we had. If we have a guest, there's all the information about them is already over there. So the preparation for it means that there's very little time that you need to do before you sit down to this call. You can take 10 to 15 minutes, take a look, preview all of this. It's stuff we probably already know, but we're refreshing our memory as to why this is on our calendar this week and what we're going to talk about and then we can go through. Tom and I could do a little prep in the pre call part of it, sitting in the waiting room. That's what we're doing over there. And we're setting and prepping that up and we're just making sure we're aligned with what we're going to say on the show today. So we've done our prep, we've kind of done it over the course of a month actually in little tiny pieces. And our team has supported that and finished them out for us. So it makes us sitting down to hear really effective use of our time. That goes to that brilliance part. Right. We need to show up and be brilliant. We need to not be sitting around agonizing over like, what links am I going to share and where did this idea come from and what are my bullet points for what I'm going to speak about today? Like those things we just don't need to do, but we do need to come up with what is our message. We need to be that because it needs to be a message that comes from Tom and I authentically, to all of you out there, because you're holding us accountable for giving you good advice. So we need to show up in integrity in that. And that means some bit of preparation and some bit of support that's coming from outside. So it's not somebody saying, here's what you should say. That would never work with us. We would never do that.

Right? No. And the reality is it really doesn't take that much time. You're right. I mean, we have a meeting. I forget how often to go through the topics, but my experience with. Since this is a show about podcasting and tips and support to help people make progress with their podcast, I meet with so many new podcasters every day. I will often experience something like, oh, that's a really good topic. For an upcoming show and I'll just put it in the parking lot, save it, add it to the list. We decide where it makes sense priority wise. To me, that's the fun part is. Part of the fun part is coming up with the topics. And then even though, Tracy, this is. I do think it's easier with a co host because. Or a guest, like you said, to have to be accountable. But even on weeks of this show, when you're traveling and unavailable, or I'm traveling, I mean, you recently, not to put too much out there, but you recently had a family member pass away and you couldn't be here for something. I think you actually did show up for the recording. You were just on the road.

Actually, I ended up showing up for the recording because I was available, but I had a horrible camera. So everybody please excuse the last episode. The camera is awful.

But there are times when you can't be here, I can't be here. And you and I show up solo. But that topic is here, the what we want to talk about. And it's not scripted. It's bullet points. It's certain key points we want to make. And it's so natural to what we do. And then we show up and wonderful. It's a great episode on its own as a solo. Although the two person dynamic, I think any podcast host will admit, is really easy for them. Although I did come across someone recently who I think has been doing mostly solo casts for 50 plus episodes or something. And then bringing in more guests is a bit of a shift.

So here's the thing. So Tom and I have a podcast that we do for our investors. How many of you recorded?

Do you know, it's not a whole limited series. How many have I recorded or we've recorded? Are you trying to call me out or you're saying how many have we done?

Yeah. So this is what I found is like we would make appointments to try to do this and we can't show up for each other. Co hosting sometimes doesn't work. If you're going to show up for each other and you still don't have a mechanism, it doesn't always work. Right. And that's what I found is so I actually recorded probably at least 10 episodes, which you have never even heard for the investors. Because I need to put out one a month. And that's my accountability is to those investors. And when I couldn't get you to sit down and record them with me, I just recorded them anyway.

Well, the problem was the time of day to Record them. I have. There were things that got in the way. But when. You know what, When I would record with. For the other show that I was participated in called Purchasing Truth, that we would do with someone outside of our business, I'm actually was the more accountable one of the two of us just because of that person is. But we picked a time of day that we were both early birds and we both have no problem waking up early. We would record at 6 in the morning in our local time for an hour. And that was easy for us and it was also fun and enjoyable for the two of us. But if we hadn't done that, and I was the one who was responsible for taking those episodes and submitting them for production, which is another accountability piece. And I would do that, although I would admit sometimes I would be a week or two before and then I would submit like three or four together. But we were so far ahead. We were so far ahead though, that that usually wasn't a problem.

Right. So that's really where you're thinking about. It's like, can you be accountable to your spouse? Not always. Can you be accountable to your siblings? Not finally not. Can you be accountable to your kids? I hope so. But sometimes that's hard too, right? It's easy to slip. We just had this like massive meltdown last night because we were too tired to take her to yogurt land. And so our nine year old. You made a promise, dad. Right. You know, this can be hard for us in general. And I just. If it is for you, find somebody else to be your accountability partner. Find out what's working for you. For Tom, that is always an outside. So if I decided that I was going to record my investor podcast with one of my investors on a call, Tom would show up. Like there would be no question about it. It would happen.

It's really interesting how context and perspective changes our priorities when it comes to accountability. And look, human beings are not perfect. And I'm the first to admit I'm not one. That's why we put systems and processes in place to help. It's not about lack of desire. It's interesting what it is. And I know we may be sort of getting a little off topic here.

But what the last thing I really want to leave everybody with is you start to break it down and you understand where it's not working for you. And if you cancel an appointment, if you say I'm going to record at this time and then you don't really think that through, why did that happen? Well, it happened because I needed to take a sales call because my clients are more important. Okay. My clients are more important. What if I set up a coaching call in which I record my podcast in? Okay, now I have something. So when you start to break that down for yourself, you're going to be able to find the accountability pieces that work for you. Or maybe it's the support. It's like I wanted to record, record, but I didn't have all the information about the topic or I didn't have all the information about my guest and I felt unprepared and it. It frustrated me. What do I do about that? Well, we have a whole system reach out to us, right? We're here for you. That's what we have. So if it's not in feed your brand because you're listening to this live and you're not a productized client, there's a whole tip library available to you. We have a whole process for setting up, getting all the details from your guest in your calendar, so it happens in one fell swoop. And the guest does all the work to give you the preparation that you need so you don't even have to have a support staff do that for you.

That's the genius one. That's really the most important one, I think, for any podcaster is having a good booking calendar link that not only is scheduled for those times that you're willing to be available to do an interview, and it doesn't open up your entire calendar, folks. And hopefully those of you that use a booking calendar know this. You can limit a certain type of appointment, the windows of time that you're available or willing to be available to do. It doesn't mean you're going to have all them booked up, or you might get them all booked up. So be prepared and be willing to be available during those times. But that's not even the best part. The best part is you have a whole booking form that collects all the things so you or your staff don't have to chase them down for it later. It's fantastic. That's something every podcaster really needs. And, and that's also honestly why our production service exists. I mean, we have really perfected the post production process so that folks, obviously means once you've recorded, a lot of the things Tracy and I are talking about here are really around the one thing that we cannot make our customers do, and that's record.

And so the accountability piece is in the beginning. But another thing is like, look, if you do not have staff if you do not have the right people, reach out to us. Let us know what you're looking for. We have partners. One of my favorites is Faith and the team over at Masters and Clarity. They're fabulous. If you need somebody to sit down and do 10 hours to set up your calendar and get your guest booking in place, they follow our format. They know exactly what it is. They'll do it for you. It'll be done. And it's just out of the way for you. There are people and resources that we can share with you. That's what we want to really make sure that we're here for you. If you have a question, reach out to us. Even if you're not a client, if you're a feature brand listener, reach out to us. That's what we're here for. If you're following us on LinkedIn and YouTube, put a comment in place. We'll share one of our tips for you. We'll get them out. We'll get you the resources you need. There is no excuse for you not to be able to use the podcasting industry and all the data and information that is out there to your advantage and help that community provide you the support, the self discipline, and the accountability ideas that might work for you.

Critically important. It really is what we're here for, whether we're going to break down a very narrow topic and address a little issue or a bigger issue. And this one can sort of snowball because it can go a lot of different ways. The whole accountability piece can be one of many potential things.

Well, here's the thing. I cannot stand to be nagged. That will never work. Like, there's people who put accountability partners in place, who send you reminders. That drives me crazy. I can't do it. It makes me not want to do something. So you have to understand yourself at the end of the day, what works for you and what doesn't and set up your system and process and team.

That could be, if you haven't gone through that as an individual, to really understand how you think and what you do well and what you don't. And that can be tough to hold up a mirror to yourself and really understand that. But I'll tell you, I've been through it. Tracy's been through it. Incredibly valuable. Not just as a podcaster, but if in any way you're in business for podcasting, understanding your strengths and your weaknesses. And I know we don't like to think about our weaknesses. What do you mean? I'm not weak, right? I don't want to talk about that now. It's not a character flaw, it's just really understanding. I'm sure all of you listening to this are brilliant in some way. You need to understand where your brilliance is and where you need some support. And part of that support may be getting help with like what we do with our customers. Getting help where you record, you upload and you're done and you don't think about it. But that's post production again, we're talking a lot about some pre production things here, here today. And you can get support for that if you need it and you can even get support for submitting your episode for production. We have some people that need that. I mean that that's available too. And more importantly, you know where I would need serious support for after the recording is done? Social posting.

That is not your strength either, right? That's.

I do engage in social media, personally, I do, and I enjoy it. But. But it's not. I don't really generally post my own podcast. We have somebody that does that for us. And I wouldn't do it on every social platform. I might do it on the one that I really care about and I'm.

Engaged in, which we know is a mistake because that doesn't necessarily. Where your clients are. They may not be on the platform you like.

Correct. It may not be where your audience is. So a lot of things to consider there.

But break it down for yourself. That's the message that we want to have. Break it down for yourself. Start to understand where are the things falling apart. So when you don't show up to record, when you say you make a plan to record and then you don't look at that and think that through, just do a little reflection on that and understand why that happened. And when you get to that deep why, it's going to come to ideas for how to put something in place that can. That can hold you accountable. Put something in place that gives you the prep that you might need, gives you the ability to be more consistent and constant. Because. Because whether it's social media, whether it's podcasting, whether it's YouTube videos, it doesn't matter. Consistency and constancy are the one thing that sets apart those active podcasters who get the most out of it from everyone else.

I agree 100%, Tracy. From someone who is logistically, I would say challenged is fair. I can tell you showing up and publishing an episode every single week at least. And. And we have some customers that do more than one a Week I. We even have one podcaster on our platform. This is going to scare all of you, but really it's his full time endeavor. Literally publishes three episodes every single weekday. How about that?

Three a day. Wow.

But he has a reason. It's a very unusual podcast. This is not a goal. I'm not suggesting this for anybody else, actually, I would really not suggest it for, for everybody, but it works for him. And boy, he's got a serious podcast. You talk about wanting to get half a million downloads a month or more. I mean, that's one way to do it. Anyway, the point is, whatever your cadence is, and there's not a right or wrong answer to this, although I will say publishing less than a weekly episode makes it very hard to grow and maintain that audience and get the return.

Out of investment for your time either.

For your time and to provide real value, people are looking for you to show up weekly for them. Them, they really are. But that is the most important thing. So whatever you need to do to show up consistently, it is super critical. And even if you are logistically challenged, you 100% can do it. Just get the support you need. And we're here as a resource to help you figure out what that might be if you're struggling with that.

And so speaking of accountability, integrity and consistency, we will be here next week for you. That's we can, you can count on it. In fact, we even show up over the holidays for you. Now we pre record those messages.

We might pre record that Wednesday when we're live, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. We may prerecord that. But honestly, in the past when we've talked about pre recording it, we've always found it easier just to show up live anyway. So I know we want to test that out because that's a feature some of our customers are asking about doing a SIMU live. And I do think we should experience it, but I'd probably be there live as it's playing to answer things in the comments anyway. So I don't really understand for us what the point would be. I think if it was truly, if Christmas Day were a Wednesday and we wanted to show up, then we'd pre record. But I also don't think anybody would show up live to watch it or very few people would.

Yeah, well, anyway, but the point is, is that that's what you can count on from us. That's our accountability, our accountability to you, our listeners, to our clients who are here live, and to making sure that the podcast industry has resources like us. Who should show up every single week for you. That's what we're here for. That's why we do feature brand. So thanks everyone for listening. I appreciate you. Tom appreciates you and we will be back here next week.

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