Hello everyone, and welcome to this live Q&A session all about podcasting. If you have ever considered podcasting for yourself, for your business, or with your family and just weren’t sure where to start, definitely pop your questions down below.
I’m Yong Pratt, I’m the host of the In A Weekend Podcast and the Creator of the In A Weekend Series of classes where we help you to simplify, to automate, and to leverage the assets that are often hidden in your business. And this is a live recording of our podcast, answering all the questions that I’ve received lately about podcasting.
Now last week we hosted a workshop, all about the Top Three Podcasting Myths and we BUSTED them. If you’d like to take a look at that free training, I will pop the link down below once I finish up this live broadcast. I will tell you though the website you can go to is yongpratt.com/myths. You can get instant access to the Encore of that workshop replay just by leaving your name and your email address and you can watch that video in your own time. I do want to say, though, that the video is only going to be available until tomorrow, until Thursday. So if you’re curious about those myths definitely pop over there and get that instant access to watch the replay if you have ever considered podcasting.
Now as you are joining live, I would love for you to let me know where you’re tuning in from today. And if you are on the replay, go ahead and pop #replay down in the comments. And since I will be doing all of this live, if I miss your question on the live, definitely pop them down below under the comments of this video and I will personally come back and answer all of those for you.
Okay, my friends, are you ready to dive in?
This is a question that I’ve gotten a lot lately and I think because more people are becoming aware of podcasts, and there’s lots more to be enjoyed out in the world and tons more platforms on which we can listen to podcasts, the popularity is definitely on the rise.
It’s definitely kind of the Golden Age of podcasts where listenership is on the rise, the number of shows is also on the rise. NOW is definitely the best time to start. Of course yesterday would have been better, however, there’s no time like the present to get started sharing your message with the world.
Okay, question number one that I received via email was: How do I choose a topic?
And this is a really big question I’m asked all the time – choosing a topic for a podcast. If you head to a place like iTunes or even to Spotify these days or to Pandora, there are tons of different shows available about pretty much everything under the sun.
If you’re in the health and wellness space there are certainly tons of podcasts in that space. If you’re in the business space, in the parenting space, or maybe you have a smaller kind of niche. It’s all available via podcast. Because people are always on the go these days, a podcast is really one of the best tools that we can all have as marketers.
Yep, I said it, we’re all marketers. You’re a business owner, you’re a parent, you’re doing a lot of different things out in the world, but at our core we all need to be able to market our message and really share what it is that we want to get across to people, whether those people are the people that we serve as our clients. Maybe they’re our students. Maybe they’re our own kids. Maybe if we’re still working at nine to five, it’s our bosses or our superiors that we need to be able to market and position ourselves in the right way to help us move down the path that we are desiring at that point.
So choosing a topic. How do you do that?
Well, I want you to pull out a pen and piece of paper or if you’re listening on the phone on your phone, go ahead and maybe open up the notes, tab, so you can jot down a few things.
Here are some questions that you can ask of yourself to discover what topic, you really want to podcast about.
The first question is: What do people ask you all the time?
Everyone, it doesn’t really matter what we do in our lives, there are likely questions people always ask us about something that comes easily to us. And what happens to most of us is that we discount those things because they are easy. And over the past couple of weeks we’ve been really diving into this idea of Multiplying Your Message and how it doesn’t have to be so hard.
So in the coming weeks, just know I have lots of information for you on this idea of easy. We love to help people, simplify things in their lives and businesses are often over complicated. So, the word easy is sometimes a four letter word for lots of people, myself included.
When I first learned some of these easy ways to do things, it felt like I was cheating because I have learned in life and watch my parents work really hard to provide for the family who put in a lot of effort for usually a small amount of pay on the other side.
They worked really hard, and the idea of working hard and putting a lot of effort to get the result that I want was sort of an ingrained thing so trust me when I say, simplifying is definitely the way to go about things because when things are simple, they’re easy to understand, and it’s easier for us to get our message out into the world.
So that’s number one. What do people ask you all the time, including the things that come easily to you?
For example, people ask me a lot about podcasting. People ask me also about including my kids in a business because that’s something that my girls do with me. I train them on many, many different skills in order for them to be able to do that. And I’m also asked:
How can I possibly get out so much information in such with such a short span of time? What they’re really asking is, why are they seeing me everywhere across social and in their feeds, no matter where they are, they’re seeing it. They want to know about that idea of multiplying.
So for me, those are topics that I now talk about on this podcast and on this page, so we can really kind of flip the switch, and do things in a more simplistic and easy way to get them done more joyfully.
So again, thinking about what are questions people ask you all the time. Go ahead and write some of those down on your piece of paper or if you’re in your car or out walking when you’re listening to this podcast, definitely make a mental note to come back and answer these questions, because it can really help you to determine the things you may want to podcast about when you launch your own show.
Question number two and this goes back to the EASY thing – what things are easy for me to do?
Am I able to break complicated complex things down in an easy way and share that with people, maybe that comes easily to you – go ahead and write that down. Are you able to create relationships quickly and easily? Are you able to help your kids really be empowered in easy way?
These things that come easily to you are definitely things you can talk about on your own podcast.
Question number three you could ask yourself is: What do I dream about?
We’re all gifted with the ability to dream really big and really think of ways that can impact others and change people’s lives or make the world a better place. We all have that within us, and sometimes those dreams can feel really big, and really scary. I get it, it’s totally common nature. And when we are thinking about those, sometimes we often hold ourselves back from moving into those dreams because they feel too big, they feel too daunting they feel too scary.
Just a little bit of tough love here that if things feel a little bit scary and you’re feeling trepidation about them, that’s likely the next step you need to make to grow your circle of comfort. If you stay inside your comfort zone, kind of everything revolves around here as soon as you start pushing that comfort zone bigger and bigger and bigger, where you start stepping outside of that comfort zone. Those are the times in your life that things really start to happen. The momentum starts to grow and things really start moving towards those big dreams. So, your dreams and the vision you have for your life or other people’s lives, or making the world a better place – those more grandiose things are absolutely topics you can talk about on your podcast.
So those are three questions you can really ask yourself when you are considering topics for your podcast.
And I’ll just put in one more as well just kind of as a bonus, and that’s: What do you love to do?
Outside of work, perhaps you have hobbies and things that you enjoy doing in your spare time that you’d love to share with others, or let them know about because it’s so much fun. That can definitely also be a topic or topics for your podcast. Since we’re on this topic, let’s kind of talk about the question that I get a lot about.
Does my podcast, have to be related to my business?
This is kind of a hard question to answer directly so I’ll just say, maybe. A podcast is a platform for people to get to know, like, and trust us from afar. We get to guide them along this journey that we’re taking. And when we do that, people often will come in at different points, and really come to understand what it is we’re trying to do.
So maybe if you have a hobby, it could be related to your business but it doesn’t have to be. Because again, if you think about podcast, as being a place where you can send people to get to know, like, and trust you, you can definitely send them to your podcast, to share about the things that you love.
So there you have it – there are some ways to help you choose a topic for your podcast. If YOU have a topic that you’re really, really excited about, I want to know about it. Put it in the comments down below whether here on Facebook, or over on our website, yongpratt.com/218. I will comment back to you personally, and we can even have a conversation about the topic that you want to podcast about because I’m here to the tell you all that YOU all have something in your life right now – in your experiences, in the stories that you’ve had throughout your life – there is something that can benefit someone else, and that’s definitely one of the top reasons why you would want to even podcast – To help other people who are going through something you’ve been able to overcome, a challenge you’ve been able to overcome in a positive manner. Or maybe you share about the bumps in the road that you’ve had. We all have this message within us that would help other people.
When I first started my podcast way back in 2013, that’s the reason I wanted a podcast. I was passionate about, kids, and learning and really, I was feeling so badly for these kids who are in a school system and they’re getting labeled incorrectly because they can’t take the test properly. They’re not doing well in school because they just don’t test well and it was breaking my heart to hear these stories over and over and over again.
I took a passion that I learned about in graduate school and I put it together on this podcast. I started sharing with my own community, in my own local area, in my performing arts school, and quickly that that topic was one that was picked up by people literally across the world, which I wasn’t even aware, there was an audience for that. So when you start from your passions and the things you love and the things you want other people to know about that can benefit them, that’s a really great reason to start a podcast.
So choosing a topic that’s a hot question I get all the time and there are several ways now that I’ve shared that you can do just that.
One of the next questions is: What equipment do I need to start my podcast?
Well, my friends, I’m here to say that podcasting doesn’t need to be as hard as some people make it. There are lots of different experts in this area of podcasting and we all kind of have our own different unique experience on it. Mine is about simplicity and taking fast action. So when I first started talking to my students I talked about using a device that you probably right now have sitting next to you, or it’s in your back pocket or near you, in some capacity and that is this.
This smartphone that allows us to waste a lot of time. Some days on just scrolling through social media mindlessly looking at other people’s stuff, is the same tool that we all have access to that we can start sharing our message via a podcast or via video like this, with the world.
Inside of Podcast in a Weekend, something that I really advocate, is starting with video. When you start with video, you can start to Multiply Your Message, in a really simplistic way using some cool automation tools. We start with live video or even pre-recorded video and then we learn to transform it into, audio, which of course is the way that we listened to a podcast it’s an audio program. And then from there we can really Quantum Leap our message and really start to multiply what we’re offering to the world, in many, many different forms.
If this is a new concept to you, definitely make sure you head back to the podcast and listen to some previous episode where we talked about the idea of Multiplying Your Message and how it can be done faster and easier than you thought possible.
Most of it can even be automated these days which is so cool. Inside of Podcas In A Weekend, it’s something that I help my students to discover that when they Multiply Their Message and turn ONE great piece of content like a video into an audio, they can automatically reach more people because there are different people who are listening to those different platforms.
Some people like video content. Other people prefer audio content. Maybe other people prefer text. Those are all things that you can create from single video and we cover that in great detail inside of Podcast in a Weekend. It’s the portion of the class that most of my students, stop and say, Wow! I had no idea I could do that. And when they implement these tools and strategies with their podcast, they can actually create more content in less time, starting with one thing, every week.
It seems totally backwards, I know. That is just the feedback I get from my students because they are thrilled to know that podcasting doesn’t have to be one more thing. You’re going to do something like a video probably for your business already, so why not turn that into another format, and you can do it all with this device, your smartphone. I would just recommend that you use the use of a microphone or at least the headphone microphone that came with your phone to record, so you can cut out some of that background noise that happens when we’re out in public or in different places.
So hardware is the really easy part.
Now, and I want to talk about number three people say they want to podcast they asked: Why do I want to podcast Now? In the beginning of this episode, we talked about the number of podcasts are increasing, the number of listeners are increasing, and it’s kind of really the golden age of getting into podcasting. And of course, again yesterday was a better view starting today, however, start where you are and move forward.
Start by picking up your device. Start by popping those headphone microphones in to your device and start sharing your story.That’s really as simple as podcasting is.
And there’s lots of ways you can then take that audio even and turn it into all sorts of different formats to really Multiply Your Message.
Here’s what I’m going to recommend. I recommend that you head over to YongPratt.com/myths and get instant access to last week’s workshop. It’s the Encore presentation of that workshop. Tune in to find out what the top three myths of podcasting are and if you are claiming any of those in your life as reasons to not podcast because it’s time for the world to hear your message! It’s time for the world to hear your message in all sorts of different formats, because we’re able to take one piece of content and turn it into multiple.
Before I hopped on this live, I actually pulled a card. Not a tarot card. It’s this deck of cards called Secrets of the Millionaire Mind card by T Harv Eker. It’s an interesting one because it’s all about how to cultivate a Millionaire Mind, and the card that I pulled was, “Focus on contribution.”
So this is the card.
On the back it says, your life isn’t just about you. If you want to be rich in the truest sense of the word, you must contribute to other people’s lives. And that my friends is exactly what a podcast enables you to do quickly and easily.
I want to thank you so much for tuning into this live Q&A. If you do have more questions, pop them down below this video here on Facebook or over on our website, yongpratt.com/218 so I can make sure to get your questions about podcasting, answered.
If you’re ready to launch your podcast type ME in the comments below, and I’ll let you know how we can make that happen in as little as a weekend.
Alright, my friends, I hope that was helpful for you. Definitely go take a listen to that free training I have for you at YongPratt.com/myths. Pop your questions down below, and then let me know if you are ready to start to Multiply Your Message with your very own podcast.
I will catch you all next time. Cheers.
