454. What’s Quietly Killing Your Podcast Right Now

0:05 Good morning, podcasting. Morning Chat. Today is Friday, February 13th, 2026 and today, Friday the 13th. Podcast pitfalls, unclear messaging, inconsistent publishing and mindset trap stalling growth. We'll share real fixes, ownership, and we'll wrap up with wins from the week. So if you're listening live on Clubhouse, hit the share button, bottom left hand side of the screen and share it. However, Clubhouse lets you. And if you're listening via podcast, YouTube, LinkedIn, etcetera, please share this with a fellow podcaster. And now give us about 30 seconds and we'll get things rolling. Thanks for being here. Good morning again, podcasting, morning chat. Thank you so much for being here. You may have heard a little bit of talking there right at the end of the music.

1:28 That is because I somehow got booted out of the clubhouse room. Welcome, I am your host Mark Ronick, and currently on stage with me we've got a Full House producer Ashley Feller, Dr. Faye Ralph Estep, Sid Meadows, Jonathan Howard, BC Babbles, Nick Naulback, and Alex Baelish. By the way, you can check out more about all of these fine podcasters, content creators at Podcasting Morning chat.com/about. A big shout out to Ralph for helping me finally make that full conversion over. So now Podcasting Morning chat.com/whatever I want to slash will be available to you. It was podpage.com/PMC still works, but now we've just solidified all the branding here as far as that goes. Also, good morning to Tide Tutoring, who is on stage with us already from the audience.

2:26 And good morning to Tim, Jessica, Mike and Dave already here in the audience today. So yes, it is Friday the 13th and we're going to have a little fun with that. Today. We're going to talk about what's quietly killing your podcast. We also we should leave some time because Sid has a podcasting technical question for the group and if there's time, we'll see if there's time. I do want to get to Podcast Thon, go to podcastthonithinkits.com. But I should have been prepared for that. But I want to talk about the theme well, the organization, charity, non profit, etcetera that we want to support for the Podcast Thon week.

3:19 And last year we did it on the state of, well, it sounds funny when I say the state of Asheville, 'cause it is not a state, but I mean these conditions of Asheville and Western North Carolina after the big hurricane, Hurricane Helene coming through year and a half ago. And it's podcast thon.org, by the way. So we'll try to get into that as well. But first, what is quietly killing your podcast? It is Friday the 13th, like I've said a a billion times. So in honor of that, let's talk about the things that slowly drain the life out of your podcast.

4:03 And maybe it's your content creation doesn't have to necessarily specifically speak to your podcast because for the majority of us, we're creating content outside of our podcast as well. I'll give you a couple examples to help get the juices flowing. You could say that someone's podcast is slowly going to slowly die when they have a lack of clarity about who the show is actually for. Sometimes the host may be super talented, the audio might be solid, the video might look great, the conversations are good, but it's not really clear who the show is actually for.

4:44 And then that confusion, I believe will compound over time. That's an example and I'd love for the group to play along and share Dr. wants to share 1, so we'll go to her first. Good morning, Dr. Good morning. OK, so this is regarding 2 clients that I have taken on in the past. And their big faux pas, their big mistake was to only be on YouTube or on Facebook. And during the discovery call, I would ask them, why are you eliminating audio? You're eliminating people who like to multitask.

5:26 When I do dishes, I'm listening to a podcast. When I drive my car, I'm listening to a podcast. So you're eliminating those people. And she says, oh, I'm a multitasker. I said, so you've eliminated your whole group. And that's what I'm thinking of when I think of this, how they've sabotaged their podcast. So what ended up happening with that? Well, I got them as a client. I said. I got them on on a platform, that's for sure. Nice. I love it. Cool. Thank you, Dr. And I think Ralph has one for us. Ralph, what's something that's quietly killing a podcast? Slowly killing? Good morning everybody. So I think the biggest killer that slowly kills me is not having a plan. I think that so many content creators go into this sort of seat of the pants, just jump into doing something. And I truly think that is what.

6:16 And I think it's self sabotage to be honest with you. I think you've got to have a plan because you've got to understand what you talked about the beginning. You got to understand who you're talking to, but bigger than that, you've got to understand and you it's going to be repeated. I say this all the time. What is your why for what you're doing? If you don't have that clearly set out at the front end, you are going to bumble and stumble and you are going to be the pod fade poster child because you don't know what you're trying to accomplish. You don't know how you're measuring it and you don't know when you will be successful, Mark. So I think that and I'm a systems guy, you know, that's how I live my life. I'm going to counting. I'm a money guy, but I also think that whenever you do anything, even if it's a spontaneous show, even it's something you want to have you build a community around, you still got to have a plan.

7:04 You still got to understand who is it you're trying to speak to. But bigger than that, how you going to pay for this? How are you going to, you know, measure your own success? So I think that is honestly, I think that's one of the biggest things that I see that is slowly killing. Killing is the word we're using today, is slowly killing people's content. And that's not just for podcasters, that's for Youtubers, that's for tick tokers, anybody on any of the platforms. I don't care what kind of social media you're on, you have to plan. My son is in the Coast Guard. He says if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. And I think that is 100% accurate. Yeah, it is. And by the way, you can see Ralph's lovely face and some several others as well.

7:46 Jonathan, BC and yours truly, you can see us live on YouTube. And if you're listening to this podcast after our live stream, you can get all of the information at Podcasting Morning chat.com if you want to join along. Or of course, you can find me on YouTube directly, just search for Mark Ronik. Mark spelled with AC. Ronic spelled with AC. OK. Thank you. And you can come see my beautiful microphone cover in honor Dr. today in purple. Yes, that's right. Thank you. Very. Much. I feel like Ralph is kind of BS ING about that but that's OK. I don't think it's really for Dr. but that's OK. It is so shut. Up there's much love I have for Dr. today and as I was looking to the side here I said what color would be good today. I got a nice bum rock and a black shirt like the old country guy today and I said well how about a purple one for Dr. today?

8:38 I'll take it. I'll take it. Thank you. Yes, and thank you, Ralph. Planning is a big one for sure that I feel like a lot of us don't do when we get started. And admittedly, especially for the podcaster who doesn't have experience in media, you know, they're maybe they're a business owner, they want to do a podcast, but it's hard to plan for something that because sometimes you don't know what you don't know, right? So hopefully you're doing things like listening to the podcasting morning chat, you're reaching out to me to work with me to get some help planning your podcast. Whatever it is, I think it is really, it's an oversight that we see often.

9:20 So I appreciate you bringing that up, Ralph. And I'm going to jump the line for a minute and just check in with Tide. I saw Tide flashed her emoji while we were chatting about this at Tide. What did you want to add? I was just going to say that as a person who doesn't have a ton of experience in media, if I had dove into podcasting fate like Head first where? I'm. Spending hours upon hours editing and trying to make every single thing perfect and then investing thousands of dollars in all of this equipment and trying to figure it out, that would have burned me out quickly and definitely killed the podcast. So for me, especially at the beginning, I said I'm just going to forego my perfectionism and just put things out there until I get comfortable enough and learn new things along the way.

10:02 I I appreciate that sometimes you got to just learn as you go, and that is the challenge with podcasting. Sometimes it's like, yeah, we could theoretically we could practice, right? We could put in those repetitions, just do the recordings and never maybe put them out there. But it doesn't feel complete. I think to a lot of us doing it that way there, it feels like something might be missing. If we're going to take the time to do the recording, we want to get it out there. We want to share it. I don't have a problem with figuring it out as you go. I do think back to Ralph's point. A little bit of planning will get you very far in this process.

10:43 Even if it is a loose plan to get started. I think that's better than no plan at all. All right, I'm going to check in with Ashley. Ashley, I saw you flashed your hot pepper emoji. Go for it. I would say another one is having unrealistic or too high expectations in the beginning. I do these discovery calls in person with people who want to start their podcast and when I asked them, So what are your goals? Why are you doing this? The answer always goes to something like this. I want to be like Joe Rogan or I want to be like Mel Robbins. They failed to consider that these folks were already pretty well known. Mel Robbins was an attorney.

11:24 And of course, Joe Rogan was already a celebrity before he started. And they're just trying to put themselves up against something that they really shouldn't be comparing themselves to, instead of enjoying the the journey as a new person and as an independent person. Yeah, the comparison trap is big. And yet, especially like the names you just mentioned, a lot of upcoming podcasters often use those as benchmarks, the Joe Rogan's, the Mel Robbins. And look, I don't ever have a problem with somebody aspiring to be that, right? But I also think it's important to understand the insurance and outs of podcasting, the averages. What are, you know, 'cause these are exceptions to the rule, the Joe Rogan's, the, the Mel Robbins out there, they are exceptions. We most podcasts out there aren't getting those hundreds and hundreds of thousands of downloads to every episode. It's a tough one.

12:20 And by the way, Ashley, sounding very caffeinated even though she is 2 weeks in without caffeine. So kudos to you, Ashley. I know you said before we started, you're still waking up, but you sound very well spoken and alert this morning. So I just wanted to shout you out there. All right, let's keep it going. And I'm going to check in with Jonathan, who's joining us on video this morning. Go for it, Jonathan. We talked about this a little bit last a couple days ago actually, but over committing and and then not being able to deliver on that. I think it's definitely something that is going to kill any podcast and it's going to burn you out as well. Jonathan, then what do you suggest to somebody who is who's doing that? Well, much like Ralph suggested, have a plan and commit to what you know you can do in at least a month. Like say I can put out two episodes in a month, then do it every other week.

13:15 I can put out four episodes in a month and you're just doing a weekly one. But commit to what you actually can do so that you're not running to get something done each every week. Yeah, that makes total sense. And thank you for elaborating on that one. I'm going to hold the phone for a second. Hold everything. Stop everything. It is Friday the 13th because Dave Campbell has joined us on stage. I feel like maybe, Dave, for the first time ever, even though you've you're often here in the audience. So good morning to you. What do you want to add to this? Hey, Mark, everybody, glad to be here. Actually, Mark, I'm one of your old school guys. I was here back when Chuck used to be here from the radio all of those days.

13:56 So I just took a little hiatus. But I'm not working today because I got a big event going around today, but I wanted to come and say hi. Love everybody here, the best group of people around. I get to sit in the audience. You guys keep me company when I'm driving home from work. So I get to laugh with you guys. I get to celebrate with you guys. The one thing I encourage all new podcasters when they first start out is you're going to build a companionship with your audience and they're going to just laugh along with you. You might not never ever hear from them, but when they get a chance to speak and they get a chance to reach out, they will. So Mark, I know you're wrestling a little bit with how you're going to do this show in the future. Do what you can, Mark, because we love this show and we love what you built.

14:39 Thank you, Dave. That means a lot. So much so that I am actually holding back a little bit of emotion right now, which I probably shouldn't, as my my personal coach would probably say, come on, Mark, let it out. I'm working on that. But thank you, Dave. Really, I appreciate it. I'm so glad you came up on stage today because we love and appreciate having you as a part of this community. And it's good to hear your voice again. Awesome. Yeah. Thank you, Dave, and check out Dave. Where can people find a little bit more about you? Because I know you're doing a lot of things right now, and I know you're doing this marathon podcasting, and you could share a little bit about that too. Sure. Yeah, I'm right now for I have 9 different podcasts that I host. One of them is called the How to Podcast Series and I'm doing 365 days of content for that show this year. So every single day there's an episode today starting at 10 A 10 AM Eastern, I'm going to be doing 24 episodes in 24 hours, going all the way from today at 10:00 AM till tomorrow at ending at 11 AM.

15:45 We're going right into my meet up that I've been doing for the last three years for podcasters. So today is an exhausting day of creating content, publishing content one episode at a time, 24 hours straight. So just because I want to see what happens, Mark, that's going to be an interesting day. It sounds like it, Dave. Yeah. And I feel like maybe you should be applying to the Guinness Book of World Records. I don't know that anybody's done what you're doing right now. I wouldn't advise anyone. I'll tell you, five days a week is has been a heavy lift for me. So what you're doing sounds very overwhelming for this guy, but I applaud you for what you're doing. Kudos. Thanks, Mark.

16:26 Yep, you're welcome. All right, who else? I know several people. Let's go to BC. But if you're on stage here. OK, Sid, thank you. I was going to say if you're on the clubhouse stage, re remind me if you want to share it. Sid is definitely one of them. You're on deck, Sid. Let's go to BC. Good morning, BCI. Think something that's like slowly draining the life out of my podcast is the fact that life is slowly draining out of me, honestly. So being freelance right now and I've got my eyes on, I think 6 or 7 different brands for socials and marketing aside from my own, and I want to delegate so badly. I wish I could delegate, but the revenues just not quite there to Commission someone to delegate to yet.

17:09 So doing all those things and then just like, Oh yeah, there's a podcast too. And just being like at the end of it is like, OK, I can keep trucking along. Just keep trucking along. Hopefully I'll make it. We'll see what happens. I appreciate the keep truck and along thing, but you know, talk about scary like that. That could be a recipe for burnout. I'm in that a little bit right now with burnout. So what else could you do besides just pushing along? That's a good question. I think part of the stubbornness for me is that with my broadcasting background, like I'm, I'm one of those crazy people that started off video podcasting because I knew how to do all the things anyway.

17:50 So I thought, oh, I can, this will be a bit easier for me, but for what else I could do in the meantime before to try to more easily avoid burnout? I haven't quite figured that part out yet in all honesty. Here is where I, what I would tell a client and it's really to rethink the strategy a little bit, even if it's temporary. Like it sounds to me like, you know, look, we all have lives, right? And the podcast can't get to the point where it's taking over our lives. So I think it's important to find a balance. And again, whether this is for you, BC or somebody else may be listening, struggling with the same thing, I want to give you and others permission to pull back as long as you're communicating with your audience and sharing what's going on here.

18:39 I think the more you share the yeah, hey gang, life is happening to me right now and I've got to pull back temporarily. It doesn't mean you have to stop altogether, but maybe it's a revised, abbreviated schedule for a short period of time while you're catching your breath. There's nothing wrong with. That for sure. And I think to be quite honest, I've been contemplating the past couple days, let's just feed all my things into ChatGPT and have it spit out like a Google Calendar template for me and then implement that immediately because I'm sure that would greatly help me out. And just to re clarify, it's the for me, it's not the podcasting that's taking over podcast for me is the end game. If I could drop everything else today and just live the rest of my life podcasting and just updating my sub stack, I do it in a heartbeat.

19:25 It's the practicality that I got to focus on that I need. I got to pay bills. I got to do all these other crazy, lovely things that we get settled with in this economy in this day and age. So it's just balancing the things is is my top tier focus right now. Yeah, and I appreciate that you said that in the sense that like, yeah, the, the podcast sounds like it's more of the passion more the thing that's driving you. It's maybe then finding balance in other areas. What other areas can you let go of again, temporarily, but I, I know Ralph wants to chime in on this as well. So go for it, Ralph. All right, I'm sitting here trying not to scream through the microphone because honestly, and I sympathize with you BC so please accept what I'm getting ready to say. I think the problem that so many of us fall into is we don't focus on what is the most important thing. And if you're a freelancer, BC honestly, the most important thing is generating revenue because you've got to pay your bills.

20:25 So you've got to laser focus on what are the activities that you can do to bring in revenue. If this is a side hustle, if this is a hobby, it's a different discussion. But if you are a freelancer, if you're listening to this or watching this right now and you're saying I'm trying to generate revenue, you've got to have a different outlook. You've got to start looking at things that are moving the needle because you might love doing podcasting, you might love putting out social content, but if that stuff is not generating leads for you, if it's not generating new customers and clients, you've got to reengineer what you're doing. You've got to start with the end in mind. That's why I go back to planning and systems. But BC that's what I heard in what you were saying is that I want to, I have a passion for this, which is beautiful.

21:09 But if your passion isn't paying your bills, you've got to pivot and you've got to figure out how do I do this? Now that may be, hey, and like Mark said, maybe you have a season where you step back from that. I respect that. But if your goal is this is going to be my full time gig, then you've got to start looking at every single activity that you're doing on a daily basis and saying, is this activity moving the needle? Is this activity moving the needle? And that's not easy to do because what I have found working with content creators now everyday is that they want to do the stuff that's exciting to them. They want to do this stuff that's fun to them. But those things don't necessarily bring revenue dollars in. So you've got to know what those things are and then have a way to measure those because you'll never know if you're not doing well unless you're measuring that. So Mark, thank you for letting me chime in on that because I just think there there's something we've got to really have a different mindset with if this is going to be a money generating thing for you.

22:01 And I fully admit, Full disclosure, I think that I was this in 2025, one of those creators that was leaning too heavily on the things that were fun but not generating money and it cost me. It cost me in 2025 probably had one of my, if not the worst year financially with my business. And I attribute a lot of that to exactly what Ralph is saying here. And now, of course, I'm recognizing that and I'm adjusting accordingly. And thanks to a little bit of help from Ralph as well, because Ralph and I are working together now. Thank you Ralph BC any do you want to respond at all?

22:44 I would just say that I hear everything that Ralph's saying. I agree with everything he said. I would say the one little nuance and I think this still kind of comes back around to your point of still going to make systems still got a laser focus on what actually brings the revenue in my my background. The reason that this is such a thing for me is because my original love is radio. I come from a radio background and I am not just soapbox here in any way, shape or form. But I, when I found my love for broadcasting, found myself with a group of people who I to to this day consider the group of a group of some of the most ambitious and creative people I've ever known. And coming going from undergrad to the business, the business world for the first time.

23:37 I'm the only one who didn't get a radio gig. So I'm I'm the one who found the passion, only one who didn't get ever a chance to actually live that life. And so when when I moved to podcasting, I realized, well, this is more under my control. This is my creative outlet. This is a way for me to live that life. I didn't get to ever officially professionally live for whatever reason here or there. And that's when I started hopping behind the mic again in 2019. So that's what what's why it's so hard for me to consider. Maybe for a time I do have to step back from a portion of the podcasting to laser focus on the revenue building.

24:17 But just to give a bit more nuance there. I still think your point is still kind of remains as it is. Still got to focus on the money, paying the bills, building yourself up for sure. But just to give a bit more of that kind of pathos background to my situation. And I wanted to say something along those lines too. And this is hard to hear, but sometimes your passions don't pay the bills. And I don't mean to be disrespectful or mean spirited about that. I would love to be a professional football player but guess what? I'm not and we have to just accept it. But there may be things BC that you are very talented at that can parlay into revenue for you that would still give you the ability to do this passion.

24:58 I'm going to be very candid with you. Content creation in its very nature doesn't pay my bills at all, but I really like it. But I have enough skills and other things that that I can pay for those things and do my passion. But I think sometimes we get into this mindset of like if we just work harder, if we just keep doing it, we sometimes that's not going to work. And I hate to be the negative guy here, but sometimes it just doesn't work. I'd love to go out there and look at my car and say you're a Ferrari. It's not a Ferrari and we just have to accept that. Now, that doesn't mean we don't give up our passions. It doesn't mean we don't continue to chase our dreams. Look, I'm a Christian guy. I think living in your dreams is a beautiful thing. I think there's hope. There's there's all kinds of great things like that.

25:38 But then we also have to have a reality check because what I see on the inside of this is it destroys marital relationships because there's tension. There's not money coming in. It destroys inner family relationships because there's so much pressure and tension. So at sometimes we got to say, yeah, we have a passion for this. So BCI, hope you get it, dude. IA 100% am behind you. But there has to be a reality check. Sometimes I say, but this isn't working. So we've got to pivot and see what will work until we can get to a season where we can where we can explore our passions. Oh yeah, for sure. And let me let me just say, Ralph, you're not coming off negative to me at all. If there's a practicality that I fully believe we all have to realize within the realm of podcasting, both in how to balance it with our with our lives are, you know, bringing in money and also expectations. So 100% I'm agree with that.

26:29 The problem that I have, having been in this podcasting room for a little while now, there are a ton of money hustlers out there. These knucklehead coaches who are promising all kinds of you will get rich overnight. You can be a TikTok sensation. They are full of crap. You've got a 110th of a percent chance of being that person. I'm sorry, if you're listening to this right now and you're one of those coaches, stop doing it because you're selling a bag of goods that nobody is going to be able to buy. Yes, you're going to make money. You're the one that's going to make money. They're not. And they're going to hate you till the day they die because they're going to spend 10s of thousands of dollars chasing after a coaching program that is not going to deliver for them. I'm sorry. I'm getting a little passionate about this because I've seen what people are spending and I see the dreams that it's destroying and I see the families it's destroying.

27:15 So stop doing that. It takes hard work. It takes dedication. It takes building an audience. It takes 345 years to do what we're talking about doing here. You are not going to be the next Joe Rogan. Maybe you will be. You probably won't be. So I apologize. I'm on my soapbox. That's OK. It just, it gets under my craw because I see it every friggin day. These people sending out these spam emails about get rich overnight and they just lie to people and they think, well, if you keep putting out a weekly podcast, you can, you can live your dreams. You probably won't. If I'm looking for a coach, for example, in any area of my life, one of my filters is usually I filter out the ones that are making those big promises I want to, I want to work with the ones that are being that are sharing more practical advice.

28:05 They're the ones that I tend to at least as A at a first pass. They're the ones that I believe 1st. And by the way, Jonathan saw you grinning ear to ear the whole time Ralph was sharing. Because I know you share a similar message. I'm sorry, I want, I want to address something real quick because I may have stepped on some toes and I didn't mean to. No, not at all. There are there are very good coaches out there. I work with some very good coaches. But the filter needs to be what Mark just said. If your coach is promising you something other than personal development, other than here is the hard work you're going to put in. Like I just started working with a speaking coach and she told me from the front, this is going to be the hardest thing you ever do. She said, because you're going to undo 53 years of the way you think. You need to talk to people.

28:48 Those are the coaches that are successful. Those are the people you need to chase after. But stop chasing after these people that promise you this big bucket of wonder and joy. Thank you, Ralph. Wow. OK, who knew? I guess it's just that it's Friday the 13th spirit. Here's what I'd like to do. I'm going to go to Sid twice in a row because I'm going to 1st ask Sid to share his answer to what quietly is killing your podcast. And he also had a question for the group outside of this particular part, this particular segment. So first, Sid, did you want to share one of your examples? Good morning, everybody. I do think that one of the things that could potentially be quietly killing your podcast is trying to be all the places, trying to be on Clubhouse and on Chatter and on Instagram and on LinkedIn and on, you know, Snapchat and on. This keeps going on, right?

29:42 And you need to really be focused and you do not need to be all the places. Yeah, I'm with you there. It can again, talk about overwhelm if you're somebody that does get overwhelmed with all the different things you have to learn. Yeah, let's start small. It goes back to what similarly what we were talking about earlier. Just pick something, pick one, learn how to use it, get comfortable with it. And especially when it comes to social media, yes, they all have their own thing, their own way, but there's usually a lot of similarities too. So if you're getting used to an Instagram platform, you're going to find some similarities with TikTok and it'll be a lot easier of a transition once you've mastered one of these platforms. Just using that as an example.

30:29 Yes, BC. Yeah, I would say a colleague of mine who's a coach, people love working, working with her out of Charlotte, one thing she will say is, yeah, to your point, say pick one to three. That's the sweet spot. One to three social media platforms, learn to work them well, learn those algorithms perfectly and you'll see a lot more momentum more consistently and reliably. But if you do want to be that person who hits eight different social media platforms plus every single day, consider investing into a a scheduler. I will harp on that till the day I die. You know, use there are so many out there. I've got recommendations, but use a scheduler. They will help you consolidate the process so much more and you can actually handle the workload that that is if that is your particular chosen direction of activity. Thank you, Ralph.

31:19 Anyone else want to chime in on that? OK, well, I will. I will go back to Sid in a moment. I think one of the other areas which I'm sharing, because this is an area that I think I have to work on, I have to improve, it's avoiding promotion because it feels uncomfortable. I don't do it enough. And thankfully, Ralph has been in my ear a lot reminding me of that. Hosts who believe their work should speak for itself. That's me. And then they just create consistently. But their message isn't being amplified. We got to get more comfortable as creators sharing what we do if that's our mission with our podcast.

32:04 Again, like Ralph mentioned earlier, if you're a hobby podcast, then then what I'm saying doesn't apply to you. But if you have the expectation, the hope, the goal to monetize, to make this a revenue stream, then yeah, I think that's really important to think about. Be OK with sharing your products, your services. Yeah, you don't want to just do a whole infomercial the entire time, but it is important to stop once in a while and remind people that you do offer a service, especially for this audience. It's it applies most to your target audience if you're doing it right. Go ahead, Jonathan. I'm actually at the end of my mastermind.

32:44 And one of the things that really I discovered is I was doing pretty much everything right except for talking about what I was doing. And that causes a problem because you can't reach people when you don't talk about what you're doing at the end of like four months. That's my conclusion, and it's hard sometimes. I've got to send those DMS that I don't want to send because it's really uncomfortable, but you got to do them. That is one of the things that holds Saul back, I think. Yes. And Jonathan, I do applaud you. I see what you put out there on social media. I've heard you on your podcast. You, whether you're uncomfortable or not, it's hard to say from our side of things because you do a great job of promoting what you do. I applaud you for that. So I have a question, not really a question, but a question to this.

33:30 And it's not really a question that should be answered necessarily. But if you don't promote your product or your services, who's going to, If you don't share them with the world, who's going to do it for you? You're waiting for somebody to come and do it for you. You're going to be waiting a really long time. So you absolutely have to, whether it's directly, indirectly, subtly, or in your face, you have to promote who you are, what you do, what your experience is, what your gift is, and how you help people. Because if you don't, nobody's going to know. Exactly, Sid, Thank you. Thank you. OK, so I think we're good with the Friday the 13th segment today. I do want to leave a little bit of time because we have a, well, we'll get into our mailbag quote, UN quote segment right now with Sid and then we'll leave a little bit of time for wins. But before I do jump to Sid, I just want to check in with Janae, who is on stage, make sure he gets to say whatever he wanted to share this morning.

34:27 Janae, welcome. Did you have anything specific or are you just here for the conversation? I'm here for the conversation, I'm here for the the preaching moments that we just had earlier. So thank you, Ralph. I love it. Cool. Thank you, Janae. All right, Sid, so you have a mailbag question, go for it. It's your own question. Well, I'm always going to have questions. I'm a newbie podcaster. So on a daily basis I started a new segment in my podcast. And oh, by the way, Dr. this is your 20 minute countdown for your wins, by the way. But I started a new segment on my podcast and it's going really well. And when I recorded the first segment, I wasn't really happy with the way the recording did because I got the picker wheel and I'm spinning the wheel and we're randomly answering the OR we're answering these random, random questions.

35:17 And so the video looks crappy because it's appropriate genates here because when I share the screen, because I use Zoom to record, when I share the screen, it puts me and the guests over on the other on one side, really small up in the top. And the wheel is for the prominent picture. And that doesn't make the video, I don't think very attractive. It also doesn't make the video where we can reuse it and make clips because all you see is the wheel. And so I'm looking for an alternative to record without breaking the bank. I already pay for Zoom and I'm one of these people that I'm going to use what I've got. And so Zoom may not be every podcasters favorite, but it works for me and it has worked for seven years.

35:57 And so I'm not really interested in changing, but I am looking to up level just a little bit the way this particular video looks. And so I've tried Ecam in the past and I know you do all these settings with Ecam, but Ecam's expensive. I heard that Riverside may be able to do this and it's really cheap. So I just was, and Zoom does have screen settings, but it doesn't have screen settings where you can put somebody on the left, somebody on the right, and the screen share in the middle, which is really what I'm looking for. So I thought I would ask this group if you had any suggestions that aren't going to break the bank. So I don't use Zoom for podcast recordings anymore, but I do know that Zoom does allow you to do independent tracks for all the different speakers.

36:44 Audio. When I'm talking about audio, I don't know if it does it for video or not. If it did, that would help. It doesn't. OK, you're sure it doesn't? Yeah, yeah. Because I talked to Simone about this inadvertently and she said you can't do it in Zoom, you can do it into scripts. So she's giving us a way to because we, my editor edits in the script, but we do record on separate tracks. The real issue to me is just the way the video looks. OK, gotcha. All right. Jonathan has his hand up and Janae, you're on deck even though you haven't put your hand up yet because I'm sure you have some insight to offer as well. Go ahead, Jonathan. Sid, you can put that wheel into a Canva graphic and then use that as your backdrop. And just when you spin it, you can have that as your backdrop and it'll be behind you in your in your video. So it's behind me but but it doesn't spin and the question doesn't appear.

37:40 Your your slide will because you're going to put it on. If you put it on this canvas slide, you'll be able to do whatever you need to do with that there with the link. I think I understand this is something that a ton of post production work, is that right? It's a little extra. I wouldn't say a ton, but it is extra work. Yes, for sure. All right, I'll hand it to Janae. And then I see Billy's on stage ready to probably ruffle some feathers with Sid. Go for it, Janae. Jonathan, don't do that. You don't like that idea? No, I do not like that because I. Wouldn't use zoom, but you know. But here's the thing, right? So Zoom does have ISO video if you use it through another platform like Ecamm, right?

38:21 So sure, Ecamm might be a little expensive, but you get a clean video feed for every single person that's on your Zoom. So that's what I use. And I use Ecamm because then I can set up the stage, set up the theme on how I want it for the world to see. And when you're done with spinning the wheel, you can switch back to your full screen. And then you still get the full video of your guest and yourself untouched by any of the extra stuff that's on there. And then you can bring it back into the script to make it even prettier. But that's what I use, and that's what I've done for the past 200 episodes, and everything is very clean, very sharp.

39:02 That's what I do. Thanks. Thank you, Janae. Admittedly, here on my end, I had some Internet trouble, so I didn't get personally to hear all of Janae's answer, but we did capture it thanks to our one of our backups. So our audience, our podcast audience knows no different, but just wanted to call that out. Thank you. Janae, let me check in with Billy. Billy, what do you got for Sid? Be gentle. Well. Mark, I'm gonna kick his ass off the stage. I. Hope you hear what I'm about to say. Sid lives on a lake and he's over here like it's expensive. Stop being a cheap ass. Invest in your business. Let me reframe this for you Sid, stop being cheap. It's not because he cams expensive. It's because Sid doesn't want to take the time to learn it. So that's the reframe, Sid, that's the challenge. So much, so much.

39:58 I got so much to say right now, but I'm going to be nice. It's Friday. So that. We have to do a GoFundMe. For SIDS, that's right. Yeah, quality video. Thank you, Billy. All right. So Sid, aside from Billy, do you feel served or do you would you like a little us to go a little deeper? Go ahead, Alex. Oh, yeah, sorry, Alex. You can be a cheap ass all you want, but you can do it. I do it all the time with the celebrity interviews we did. What you do is you copy the the video into itself. We've done it all the time. And then you just make just that person in that video there.

40:40 You shut off all the other sound except for one one thing sound and it is perfect if you really wanted to do it. But I'm along with Billy, don't be a cheap ass and just don't. You don't need to buy the script. You don't need to do all that other stuff. You can just do it inside and you could do it in Canva or whatever else and and just copy and paste it into Canva and you have all three. You use one sound and it's done and you can make it look however you want. It's a little time consuming but it is possible to do in zoom within Canva. But ecam, that's what it does. Go ahead, Janae. You just need one more sponsor Sid. That's it bro, do it.

41:25 Yeah, that GoFundMe for the sponsorships, it's going to be tough for them. In my heart, the gut, I knew that the answer to this question was to do something like ECAM. I knew that, but Philly's not wrong. I did buy Ecam a few years ago and could never figure out how to use it, though somebody did commit to me that would help me figure out how to use it and would never actually own up to. That. But but. EPS customer service bro. Plenty of resources. Junaid can help you. I mean Sid, you're so cheap. I bet you your yard with a pair of scissors, don't you? And that's what I'm thinking about right now. Oh my goodness. But I mean, the end of the day, this episode has become really popular.

42:08 And in the short, I mean, it's something about a week yet and it's become really popular, gotten all kinds of messages about it. And so I think I have stumbled into something that's really cool. And I just want to lean into making it better and making it better for people to want to watch on YouTube and better for us to promote with clips that will actually work and where the Zoom clips don't actually work. By the way, Mike Short in the clubhouse audience, he has said to follow Doc Rock on YouTube. He teaches ECAMM and he works for them now as well. So maybe there's one place you could go sit if that is the route you decide to go. All right, so with that, let's jump into wins from this past week.

42:57 This is the time for you to shine, and it doesn't matter. I don't want to hear your judgement that my win isn't nearly as big as that last chair. And how do I follow up with that one? It doesn't matter. This is your journey, these are your wins and they mean something to you. So we and we want. That's right, celebrate. They mean something to you. That's right. So no judgy wudgy on on my win. Well, see, but you're doing it right now by judging yourself. You just did it, Dr. You judge yourself because you're thinking about others, how they're going to respond to this because you make might be thinking, oh, this isn't a big deal to them, it doesn't matter.

43:37 Who cares? Who cares? OK. Ashley cut that out. No, don't cut it out. That's fine. Leave it. All right. So with that, let's see, we have a little bit of time. So let me check in with our audience who joined us on the stage first. And by the way, if you are in the listening audience, come join us on stage and share a win from your week Tide. We're going to come to you first. Please share a win with us. One win was that I made $38 off of my podcast and I will mic myself because I'm at school and it's very loud. OK. But real quick, how did you make the $38? I was through Podmatch, and so I guess that when you link up with people who are paid subscribers on Podmatch that you get a Commission.

44:22 And then I also became a legacy member. Alex invited me to do that so I can also, you know, post my affiliate links and things like that. So that was pretty cool that he saw something in me and saw that I was active on the platform. Yeah, excited. That's awesome. Congratulations. And yeah, good for good for you. I think that's a really cool thing about Podmatch that I don't hear people talking a lot about or enough about. Yeah, you can get paid for using Pod Match. Yeah, that's very cool. Thank you, Tide. All right, I'm going to keep it moving. Congratulations to you, Tide. Dave, you want to share a win with us? Sure. I think my win really, Mark is just being up on the stage with these amazing people as I've been listening for years to you guys.

45:04 I've seen people come, I've seen people go. I love watching Billy and Sid go at it. I love hearing DDR talk about Android versus Apple. I love when Nick comes in the room and shares all these amazing AI tools. I have no idea what he's talking about coming in here and just being the kindest, gentlest person you're ever going to meet. Like, and then I've seen Ralph develop in this group in such a short amount of time, Ashley being the one person that's like the common for everything who makes everybody sound awesome. Jonathan with his hat. Come on, like everybody here, just the best people you're ever going to meet. So as you're listening to this later, which I do at work because I work overnights and you guys help me at the end of my shift when I get in my car, you guys are the first thing I listen to. As you listen to this later, everyone, I want you to come and check out this group.

45:57 These are the nicest people they're ever going to meet. This is my win. So thanks, Mark. Dave, thank you so much. Really. That's my that's my win for the week for sure is Dave's kind words and positive feedback about this fine group. And I couldn't agree with you more about all of these awesome people. Thank you for saying that, Dave. Speaking of awesome people, let's go to Janae. Janae, do you want to share a win with us? Absolutely. Thank you, Dave. I got to see Dave yesterday and the Baltimore podcasters meet up. That was pretty cool. So I guess that's my win because outside of all of the other things that I'm doing, I got to see Dave and you know, we got to talk and I got to share like the topic yesterday was really poignant and what we're doing, what are at least what I'm working on. So they talked about all of these things like how are people using AI for and I was like, you know what, I'm building something that does all of these things for you. So that's my win.

46:51 I'm 80 to 90% done with the first beta and I'm super excited to, you know, launch this out to the world. April 4th is the launch date. So that's my big win as I truck along and, and build this amazing tool for myself and whoever else wants to come check it out. Thanks. Awesome. I'm really excited. I'm meeting up with Janae later today to see a little. He's going to take me for a test drive of this new software, this new app that he's working on. Congrats, Janae. I'm going to go to Billy next. Billy, please share a win with us. This week I passed 4400 uploads on the Amazon platform, so it was a little here with only 600 uploads over the last 12 months.

47:41 I think the connection was getting a little screwy there, but I think I got the gist of it. And congratulations to you, Billy. Tim, welcome to the stage. Thanks for coming on up and please share a win with us. So two wins. One, I am feeling like a human being because earlier this week, Oh my gosh, I was so sick. It was dizzy, it was horrible. But I'm feeling like a human today, so I'm grateful for that. And then my second win was. I've been working with this guy named York Campbell out of Canada. He has a podcast called Welcome to Earth Stories. He's used me as a voice actor many times, many times.

48:24 And he's starting up a brand new. Well, a brand new season. He wrote a script with me in mind and I just got done recording it yesterday, sent it off to him and he's really happy about it. So I can't wait till that comes out. So that's my win. That's really cool. I see Dr. is really impressed over here. I'm watching her on camera. And yeah, congratulations, Tim. That is awesome. Very cool. All right, some baza is also on stage. Some baza. Please share a win with us. And now are we going to get now? Usually when I come to you, we end up hearing your microwave or somebody doing something in the kitchen distracting you. No, not today.

49:05 Not today. OK, wow, it's the first. Everybody is asleep, they have a day off so early in the morning. I want to say yesterday was Africa Podcast Day, and with it being Africa Podcast Day, there was a celebration worldwide and I got to see a lot of the African podcasters, you know, getting together and speaking about Africa podcasting. I did manage to do a show on Substack, which was my first and I did a solo where I spoke about Africa's gain in podcasting, which was really scary, but I don't know if it I did look scary, but I did manage. That's the biggest win.

49:45 I've never done it before and that was a great celebration for me and a win for me. So looking forward for more things to happen in the near future. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. First of all, I hadn't, I had no idea. So thank you. This is something I will add to my calendar that February 12th is Africa Podcast Day. Very cool. And Mark, congratulations. Yeah. I was posting it yesterday, I don't know if you saw it, I was. I kept on posting it the day before it started and yesterday. Maybe you didn't catch it on the chats? No, I probably missed it if you put it on the chats. Yeah, because I am terrible at keeping up with the chats. I just can't. There's so many moving parts for me. All right, we'll celebrate it next year. Yes, I, we will. And please, next time, if I don't remember or if as we lead up to it next year, remind me, reach out to me personally. Certainly I will.

50:34 Yeah, congratulations. Some baza. OK, thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. All right, so now let's hear from the rest of the crew who would like to share. All right, we'll start with you, Ralph. Share a win with us. So I've been really leaning into YouTube as I've talked about on the show and I will hit 250,000 subscribers in my sermon channel probably in the next day or two, which is cool. But the even bigger thing is I launched the Content Creators show back in December and as of right now, I'm at 82,947 subscribers. So I've really focused that content on YouTube. That's the audience I'm trying to speak to. So you can do it. I'm going to say that I'm just an accountant.

51:16 I, I am not an eloquent speaker. I'm not, I don't have training in in media. So just chase your dreams, live in that and you can accomplish that too. So I just want to thank everybody who supported me in that, especially the folks here on the show. So thank you, Mark. So Ralph, congratulations and today you've said you're not a football player and you're just an accountant and something that you casually slipped in to a private conversation with the group. Yesterday you were a SEM semi pro baseball player. Yeah, I played one season here in Delaware. It's called Northern Delaware, Big League. I could throw a baseball pretty fast. I had terrible accuracy because I was constantly hitting people so I could hit the ball well and I could throw the ball fast. So I did a little relief pitching, but I took one year and did that. It was a lot of fun.

51:59 I realized I was never going to be the Pete Rose or the other the big names of baseball. But I have my my day of got actually got paid for a game. So I can say I was quote semi pro. So that was a cool thing. Very cool. And you and Nick have something in common because Nick was, I think was an aspiring professional baseball player and he played in college and that and I had reached out to him yesterday when I saw you commented about that and to tell him that. So, yeah, now you guys can have some some more to chat about if you'd like. All right, Congratulations again, Ralph. And let's go to Ashley. Ashley share a win with us. My win for the week is I started a songwriting and poetry challenge and accountability group. It's called Songs and Poems from a Hat, but really it could be any creative medium.

52:46 It could be a podcast. The whole idea is that we get together once a month and everybody contributes A1 word prompt. We pull that prompt out of a hat and then you have a whole month to create something, whether that's a song, a poem, a podcast, a painting, a collection of photos, whatever. It is all based on that theme and we have a meeting in between when you get the prompt and when you share what you've made from that prompt. And there's an online group, but if anybody would like information on that, I've got that for you. And then just one other little win is yesterday after PMCI like to go outside and sit in the sun. And I did that yesterday. I went outside inside of my patio and a beautiful white tailed buck was just in my yard like a few feet away and I caught him on video.

53:32 He saw me, I saw him and he hopped the fence and that's my Instagram if anybody wants to check that out. Oh yeah, I definitely want to check that out. And congratulations, Ashley, please, I've. Got a question for Ashley? Yeah. And let me just say, Ashley, please put that link to your community that you're building in the show notes so that people can join if they're interested. Go ahead, Dr. Ashley, have you seen this person keeps coming up in my TikTok feed. There's a guy that come goes out to where all the animals are, like to zoos, and plays the guitar and sings very gently and all these animals come up to him. Have you seen that? Because that's exactly what it reminded me of when you when you gave us that story. Have you seen that, Ashley? I've seen that.

54:12 Oh yeah, I have seen that. And I've actually thought about this, taking my flute or my penny whistle and playing for the animals. I used to do that up in Pennsylvania and they'd come right out of the woods. Oh, that's so cool. Yes, please do that. That would be fun to watch. And Dr. since you have the mic. So my win for today is that most people here know that I'm into the whole networking thing, but I have now a paid, I'm starting to network with a paid platform. It's brand new, but they've already sent me several, several, like so far like 12 emails with names that I'm setting up meetings with people have I've gotten to my schedule and set up meetings with.

55:01 And it's a, it's kind of a different take on networking. It's not who you're meeting with, it's who they know, who they can set you up with. OK, kind of like a pod match but for networking more specifically. Yeah, I guess so. It's really interesting. It's pretty expensive, so I'm going to give it three months, but that's my win. Thank you. Congratulations. Yeah, congratulations. Awesome. Good job, Dr. Appreciate that. All right, listen for the rest of the game who haven't shared, is there anybody that would really like to share a win with the community before we wrap up? Let's go to Sid. Go ahead, Sid. My win is my new podcast episode series called Hot Takes. And I just, it was an idea that I had to do something fun and short and hopefully engaging.

55:51 And the messages I've got about this is just like blowing me away. It's like really exciting to see that I tried something new and my audience is really liking it and enjoying it. And so it feels really good to be able to put something new out there and it be received so well. So that's my win for this week. Love that. Thank you, Sid. Yeah, Following the passion, following the idea all the way through and seeing where it goes, that's sometimes can be scary for a lot of us. So thank you for being an example and showing us that it can really work out for you if you put that time in it, that love and passion into it. And I really believe that wholeheartedly about all the things that we can can do in our lives.

56:33 I think whether it's podcasting or something else, I think it when you feel passionate about something, it's worth pursuing. Jonathan, you wanted to share? Go for it. First wanted to thank Tide for saying pod match, because I went there and I had a $40 payment. So. And secondly, I just wanted to say that I had three. I'm getting an echo. Sorry. So I had three people who actually got really good wins out of my program this week and came to me and that and I was thrilled. So their wins are my wins. I'm happy about that. So congratulations, Jonathan. That's awesome. Yeah, whenever our work, our service can benefit others and we see that in action, that is absolutely a win to enjoy. So kudos to you.

57:16 Congratulations. Anyone else want to share a win? OK, well then I will quickly share that my win is, is that I am pushing through the discomfort both professionally and personally. I am. I fully admit I'm struggling. I'm just struggling in general. And Despite that, I am pushing through. I am working with people like Ralph. I've got a personal coach. I am actually also I've that new client I might have mentioned last week. The new client actually is somebody who has a practice here in Asheville that works with people with ADHD, autism and other areas as well. But he himself has autism and ADHD and he's created quite a practice here locally.

58:03 I'm going to and they take my insurance, so I'm going to also follow up with that as well. So my win is, is that I'm doing the hard work to better myself, to improve, to feel good about all the different things that I'm doing. OK. So with that, we are not back on Monday because Monday is a holiday here in the US It's President's Day. And I will have more announcements about the upcoming schedule of the podcasting morning chat in the days ahead. So stay tuned there. But we are back next week, Tuesday through Friday, 7:00 AM Eastern, live on all the different streaming platforms. If you want that information, just go to podcastingmorningchat.com until Tuesday.

58:49 Make it a great long weekend, everybody. Take care.