With everything you’ve learned from running multiple shows, what are the biggest mistakes or inefficiencies you’d avoid if you were launching a new podcast from scratch? Would you approach production, audience growth, or personal mindset differently?

~ Asked by the LLM⁽¹⁾

Picture me smiling and chuckling nervously because, for more than a year, I have been trying to restart one of my shows. Certainly a big part of my 2024 was reallocated for health reasons, but my attempted restart of the Open + Curious podcast has had many months available to me before, and since. Still, there’s no new show. It’s all about the mindset, for me. I have a too-grand vision of what it should be. I can’t stop seeing all the things it could possibly become, and fixating on getting everything right (my vision of what it should be) from launch day.

However, the best wisdom that I have here for others, is just a repackaging of Heraclitus’s “no one steps in the same river twice” (the flowing water implies the river is different, and the person is also different.)

If someone is actually starting their first show: Once you understand how to do a podcast (it takes perhaps 10 minutes to learn that?) then do not spend more time asking people about starting. That’s hiding from the work. Rather, start. The experience of the doing is what you are actually seeking.

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(1) I’m working with an LLM instance which has access to everything I’ve written about podcasting, and all the episodes I’ve published. It prompts me by asking me these questions.