What Does It Take to Make Your Podcast Better? – TAP318

If your podcast isn't improving, it might be stagnating. This can hurt your growth and your potential. Here's what you need to improve!

If you want to make your podcast better, the best way I know (because I designed it for this) is to join Podcasters' Society. It reopens this week!

Change

Getting better means something has to change. That could mean adding, removing, or improving any aspect of your podcast.

Consider a marriage. The relationship won't get any better unless the husband or wife change in some way. That could be accepting something that's unchangeable, or it could be changing something that's unacceptable.

Doing the same things the same ways won't give you different results.

Intention

“Practice,” alone, doesn't “make perfect.” Consider a starting pianist learning their scales. They could keep messing up at the same place for a mystical 10,000 hours and still never get better at their scales.

To improve, you must be intentional. Yes, it's possible to accidentally do something better, but repeating that requires intention.

Humility

Contentment is important, and I think humility is a type of dissatisfaction about your present place while acknowledging that there is something better.

The person who thinks they can't be any better than they are has simply reached the edge of their own knowledge and can't see there's more beyond their limits.

Patience

There's no magical “10,000-hour” rule. Improving, changing, and growing all take time. You might try something new with your podcast and not see results for several weeks or even months.

I remember getting both excited and discouraged when I earned my first few dollars in Amazon affiliate income. It was so minuscule that it didn't seem worth it. Now, many years later, my Amazon affiliate earnings are very important to my business's income. If I had given up then, my business couldn't be where it is today. (That actually applies to many aspects of my life.)

Curiosity

I think the core quality of self-improvers is curiosity: a drive to try new things, discover alternatives, and test the limits. Perhaps that's innate, or maybe it's fostered.

Investment

Making anything better requires investing resources. Making your podcast better may take time or money; one often counterbalance the other. You can invest money to upgrade your tools, hire help, or invest in marketing and potentially see quick results. Or, you can invest time to learn or do things yourself.

I can hold a dollar in my hand for 20 years and—unless that dollar is a collectible—it won't increase in value or given me a greater return later.

Critique

A painful part of growing and improving is some necessary negativity. You may not like hearing that you wasted time in your podcast, something failed, or that something isn't as good as you thought it was. But such critiques (even from harsh criticisms) are necessary to find exactly what needs to be fixed.

Other people

Lastly, but certainly not least important, you need the perspectives of other people. Going back to a marriage example, I can think I'm the best husband in the world and truly believe I'm doing nothing wrong. But what does my wife think?

We each have faults we can't see. So we must be grateful when others point out our blindspots, because they see something we might have never seen.

Oh, I have countless times where I've said or done something I thought was acceptable (or had no reason to think it wasn't), but someone else had the courage and kindness to share a truth I didn't know.

You don't have to be perfect!

I've listed several things I think are required to make your podcast better. I don't think you must have all of these t