Welcome back to Podcast Insider. I'm Dave Clemens
from the support and media team here at
Blueberry.
And I'm Mackenzie Bennett, director of marketing at
Blueberry.
Today, we're gonna talk about something that probably
doesn't get discussed enough in podcasting,
your confidence as a host.
Yeah. That's fun. So, yeah, we're we're gonna
we're gonna pivot a bit and focus on
you behind the microphone. We're not gonna talk
about downloads. We're not gonna talk about gear.
We're not gonna talk about growth strategy. We
talk about those things a lot.
Yes. Because if you don't feel confident when
you hit record,
all of that, everything else just feels so
much harder than it needs to be.
You're listening to Podcast Insider
hosted by Mike Dell, Mackenzie Bennett, and Dave
Clements.
We're bringing you weekly insights, advice, and insider
tips and tricks to help you start, grow,
and thrive through podcasting,
all with the support of your team here
at Blueberry.
Welcome. Let's dive in.
Hosting a podcast,
isn't really just about having something to say
because we all do, but it is it
is about making it an art form and
saying it clearly,
comfortably, and consistently.
So you definitely have to have confidence to
make that possible, and and we all mess
it up sometimes.
We're human.
Yes. Yes. We all mess that up. That
is absolutely true.
But but I think this is a good
thing to remember
that the confidence is not a personality trait.
It is a skill. It is a skill
that you have to,
to train
and and use very much like a muscle.
You use it, you lose it.
Yeah. I've I'm running into that doing this
show, and I hope nobody can tell. I
hope I'm faking it well enough.
I think so.
I I don't I I don't
I don't make as much content as I
used to. I still love doing it. I
just don't make as much as I used
to. And I'm used to hosting
my own show, being the person
behind the microphone.
So,
a lot of this is very much an
act because I have not
polished that skill
of of being confident.
And,
you know, I think I think most introverts
know how to do this pretty well. We
can mask
pretty well. Yeah.
Because I think a lot of podcasters, not
all of them, but a lot of podcasters
are actually just introverts that are like,
I have this really cool thing I wanna
talk about.
So I'm gonna try. And it's easy to
do when you're home alone
in your little
space.
Yeah.
But, yeah, it's definitely a skill. It it
does not come naturally. Do not go back
and listen to
early episodes of
any of my shows from, like, twelve years
ago. Please don't do that.
You know, actually,
I think,
yeah, definitely, podcasters can probably have this, like,
reputation of maybe being extremely extroverted
and outgoing and stuff like that. But also,
at the same time
yeah, the podcaster is just, like, super chatty
about this one thing that they wanna talk
about, not about necessarily everything.
Right.
So I think that,
a podcast is a good way for that
to shine through.
But
it's definitely true for the two of us.
You know?
I can be very chatty, but at the
end of the day,
I'm gonna need to go
hang out by myself for a while.
Exactly.
Yeah.
And a big thing to remember is that
this confidence that you might hear,
yeah, it's put on a little bit.
But
that
there there is kind of this core confidence
that we have where, like, we know what
we're talking about.
But
the more we do it, you know, the
more repetition
and the more familiar it is, like, the
more
the two of us get used to talking
to each other in this format rather than
just meetings
or or, you know, throwing Mike in here
or whatever the configuration is, the better the
show gets. And that's why you've probably heard
over the last little bit as we've changed
things. I'm growing into my role as a
cohost.
You know? So so it's just that that
repetition and familiarity
that that really helps.
Yeah. Especially
since we do this show every week. You
know, we have a regular publishing schedule,
and so that means we gotta get episodes
out
on on that schedule that we've set and
and people can expect.
So I think that definitely helps as well.
It's
everything to do with podcasting.
If you have not already worked in some
type of content creation,
especially when you're put in front of a
microphone, can probably feel intimidating
just because it is so unfamiliar.
But
I've
been behind the microphone in some capacity on
a regular basis since,
2010.
So I I don't I literally don't really
think about it anymore.
Yeah.
Yeah. And those those first episodes,
while I joke about please don't go and
listen to them,
like, they're supposed to be awkward. They're supposed
to be weird because
this is where you're learning. Well, what is
your pacing? What is your tone? What is
your rhythm? How do you transition?
We
still,
like,
Mike and I recorded an episode recently,
and Kate, our editor, was like, yeah. You
guys are the kings of
you knows. Yeah. And I was like, yes.
That is my middle name. And I've been
doing this for,
you know, almost a decade and a half.
So,
yeah.
Be be weird and be awkward and figure
out who you are because that is what
your show becomes.
Yeah. Your your podcast can absolutely feel like
you're phoning it in sometimes, so
that's not the,
that's not the quality that you wanna put
out. So Right.
Your first episodes are supposed to feel awkward.
Everything about them is probably gonna be a
little bit different. You know? But if you
if you wait to feel confident before publishing,
you're you're just never gonna do it. Mhmm.
Like, you have to,
accept that movement
or the the improvement
that happens with your podcast is gonna happen
publicly.
That that Yeah. That is true for any
type of content
creation,
I think, is that, you know, people are
gonna know that it's happening. And and it's
not gonna happen if you
don't actually publish.
Yeah. I think that's one of those things.
I I've I've said it before whether
on episodes or just
in one on one conversations with people where
I'm like, we are such at this age,
in culture, you know, in society where it's
like, I have to automatically just be good
at the thing that I wanna do.
And it's like, you don't develop that skill.
Like, I'm I'm working on writing
in my personal time. I wanna write a
book. I've wanted to write a book since
I was, like, 13 years old. Mhmm. I'm
well past that now.
And
I find it so hard to
put in that
work even though I wanna do it because
I just think that I should be good
at writing
a 500 page novel
right off the bat. I've read a bunch
of them. Yeah. And
it's like, if you read what's in my
notebooks right now, it's okay. But it I
should not be publishing it. So
I think we all have to kinda realize
that no one
starts
smooth. No one's perfect. It is very bumpy,
and you start to iron out those wrinkles
the more that you do it.
Yeah. And
I think, the next one that we wanted
to talk about was that structure will reduce
those nerves over time, I think. Mhmm.
Similar, you know, similar to
like, we have to do this every week
because we said we're gonna put an episode
out every week. So that's what we do.
So there is that type of structure that
just
you get in the groove of things.
And instead of, you know,
being anxious about it, you're just doing it.
And you're getting over it, and
and there is less and less anxiety from
the uncertainty
of your podcast because, like, you know how
it works. You know what to do.
Yeah. I've
you know, when I was starting to do
my show ages ago,
I've I remember just being like, yeah. I'm
gonna talk about this one thing, and I
just went for it. And it was not
great. And I learned pretty quickly that
having an outline, just a super simple outline,
you don't have to go in a bunch
of detail, but it's like, this is my
main topic. Here are points a, b, and
c that I wanna talk about.
And you go through those,
and that kind
of that's that's that structure.
And you just kinda calm down, and you
get into it, and you get to be
yourself,
and you refine that over time.
Yeah. And
it's
it can be
as simple or as complex as you want
with that outline.
But I think
my
my biggest one is, like, know the purpose
of the episode before recording.
Mhmm.
That's Yeah. That can definitely be where something
goes off the rails if you don't have
that
because
especially if you're doing it by yourself.
You know, things evolve with other people when
you're in a situation like Dave and I
where, you know, if if you go down
a rabbit hole, I'll go down with you.
Sorry. But if
I do it to you guys too. But
if someone
but if there's no one else to go
there with you, then it's just you dragging
your audience into that rabbit hole. Yeah. And
and you don't know how they're gonna take
that.
Yeah. Yeah. Being a solo podcaster is,
sometimes incredibly difficult Yeah. For that reason alone.
I mean, even even doing,
you know, like, I'm going to review this
movie.
I know that's the purpose of the movie,
but the or the episode.
And you just, like, okay. Well, now we
need to add a little bit more structure
so that we don't go off of on
some rabbit trail about
how camera lenses work. You know, because that
doesn't matter, really. I yeah. Like, do I
care about camera lenses? Actually, genuinely, yes. But
I'm here to learn about this movie and
if I should go see it. Right. Right.
So yeah. The keeping keeping focus, I think,
is important as well. But there's also,
there's a there's a performance,
and there is talking, and there is,
you know, there there is a difference between
the two.
There's a lot of pressure that I think
podcasters put on themselves to feel like they
need to sound like a podcaster.
And
there is nothing that you need to follow.
You can follow certain
styles and journalists and, you know, like NPR
kinda has this whole thing. And
and new things have evolved in the past
five to ten years of, like, what you
can expect. But at the end of the
day,
you're recording.
You're you're just talking,
and that is a podcast.
Like, it's it's kinda one of those get
out of your own own head thing.
Yeah. And I kinda look at this as,
you know, like,
there's ad read mode, and then there's
talking
to real people mode. Definitely.
You can hear that.
And I've I've I've done it on this
show before. Because we're, like, we have our
our outline and things like that, and there
are times where I'm literally just reading from
our outline
because I know I need to read that
thing.
And,
yeah, like, even even
the lines,
make them you. Rewrite them so that they
sound like you. I do that. I know
there's a lot of times when Mackenzie's like,
hey. Outline's ready. Look it over. I will
rewrite something and just be like, yeah. This
sounds a little bit more the way that
I would say it or something like that.
But, again, you
you develop
the skill, and then you're able to ad
lib just a little bit without losing your
place too much.
So, a couple of things that you could
think about doing is imagining
one person listening
rather than
a 100 people listening.
I know the early days, I always had
to pick, like, a friend
that was interested in the topic that I
was talking about and be like, I'm gonna
tell you about this book that I read
because I want you to read it. Mhmm.
And,
another thing that you can do is,
again, use that conversational
language
because
as much as we try to not do
the umms and ahs,
it's pretty human. Even if Kate cuts it
out for us,
it they're still human. You can you can
feel it in the cadence when somebody's talking.
And then kind of your
your last
thing, here in the outline is letting small
imperfections stay in. You will probably notice that
Kate doesn't cut out all of those umms
and ahs
because it's human,
not AI.
Yeah. Exactly.
And because we
told her, you don't have to because it's
gonna sound weird if you take out every
single one of them. You know, we're not
robots.
Yeah. We really aren't. It's,
you gotta trust your gut at some point
as a podcaster.
You really do.
And when you're not doing that anymore, that's
when you stop overthinking. That's when things just
flow out of your out of your mouth
as opposed
to every two seconds. You know, it makes
it easier to record episodes. There's less anxiety
about doing that in general if that is
something that, you know, freaks you out.
Your your gut is maybe undervalued.
Yeah.
Yeah. I I just I tell people because
I've had people
as guests
on shows that I've done, and I'm like,
it's just me and you. Like, don't worry
about the microphone. Don't worry about who's gonna
hear it or what they're gonna say. I
can edit something. If you don't like it,
I'll edit it out. That's fine.
And and you become more confident
the more you do it. Like, that's that
is kind of the core of this episode
is
I can tell you how far away you
should be from a microphone,
but it doesn't actually improve
what you're delivering.
Yeah.
Yeah. It's
practice makes perfect. And Mhmm.
You know, perfect is ever evolving and from
person to person. But,
we just want you to
be happy as a podcaster.
Yeah.
It shouldn't be a stressful thing.
No. There is there is gonna be some
stress involved that is every facet of life
at one point or another. You know?
But that shouldn't be the main thing. The
the focusing on,
oh my god. I feel like
I can't do this or I'm not cut
out for this or, you know,
it's there's a difference between
having
low confidence as a new podcaster
and still doubting yourself, you know,
six years in.
You gotta let go sometimes.
Yeah. And
here's a here's a trick for you.
If you're recording by yourself or even if
you're recording with other people, just stop and
do it over again. We've done that. It's
so easy.
Just like, I messed that up. Let me
just redo that. We'll we'll we'll cut it
out and replace it. No worries. And that's
also a confidence booster because you can be
like, okay. I know where I messed up,
So now I'm gonna try again.
And, like, that just do that. It doesn't
have to be perfect on the first take.
If it is, great. If not,
just do it again. Move forward.
Don't overthink it. Don't second guess, and trust
your gut. Yeah.
You
know, there's a there's also something
that
I was doing the other day with some
friends, and I was like, oh, this might
help some people.
I just send my friends voice notes. Like,
we there's there's, like, a handful of friends
that, like,
especially if there's, you know,
we're just, like,
hey, I need a life update.
I'm just gonna send you guys a ninety
second voice note as opposed to typing all
of this out because, like, also, you know,
my friend lives a thousand miles away.
I wanna hear their voice every once in
a while. That's not necessarily a phone call.
Yeah. That might be good for for people
to do as a podcaster.
That's actually really cool. I had never thought
about that at all. It's just fun. I'm
like, okay. I have a lot of information
to tell, and I could,
just word vomit this in a fun way
as opposed to trying to type this out.
So give it a try. Yeah. Yeah. And
then and then it's not misconstrued by, what
do you mean this thing that you said
that I took it way more personally than
I should have? Yeah. Exactly.
Exactly. So just a fun little thing that
you might wanna try. But if you are
overall struggling with confidence in your podcast, you
are not behind, you're probably just early in
the process of your podcast.
Yeah. So just keep recording. Keep refining. Keep
improving. Just keep on keeping on. Yeah. Remember,
the goal is not to sound perfect. We
did not sound perfect in this episode, but
we hope that we did sound clear, helpful,
and genuine.
For sure.
So thanks so much for listening to Podcast
Insider.
We will see you next week.
Thanks for joining us. Let's meet up next
week. And in the meantime, for more information,
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