Ethics In Podcasting

How To Share Your Podcasting Brilliance & Not Be A Jerk About It

Podcasting is awash with helpful guides & trainers. But there are also plenty of hucksters & shysters turning out a quick buck. How do you stay on the right side when you have knowledge to share?

February 11, 2021

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At some point, many podcasters feel the need to share the knowledge they have gained with other less experienced podcasters. Clearly, I’m all for that and think that more podcasters should share their knowledge with others.

But how you do that, and how you bill yourself and the materials you have to present matters. So before you set off on your path, consider your options and make the best choice. For all of us.

Do We Need Another Book About Podcasting?

Many people are drawn to writing a book for the same reason they are drawn to podcasting: How hard can it be? Well… pretty hard, as you know. No, it’s no giant burden to talk into a microphone. We do it all the time. Nor is it terribly daunting to type words into a computer. Again, we do it all the time.

But as you know, working podcaster, making a good podcast is really, really hard. Same goes for publishing a good book.

There’s always room for more books about podcasting. And books continue to be purchased by people looking for answers. But do you need to write a book about podcasting? More to the point; have you amassed the experience necessary to allow you to fill a book about podcasting? Are you ready to put in the work—and I assure you it is work—necessary to publish a great book?

This may come off a bit hypocritical of me, as I had less than a year of podcasting experience under my belt when I started writing Podcasting for Dummies. The same goes for the other early podcasting books like Podcasting: Do-It-Yourself Guide, written by Todd Cochrane of Blubbry and Tricks of The Podcasting Masters, written Rob Walsh from Libsyn. We all made that choice because we had no choice! The medium was brand new. While we’re all three proud of the books we wrote (Rob and I with co-authors), we knew what we were creating. We saw our jobs much as early cartographers exploring a new world and creating quasi-correct maps to help guide the way for other early explorers. None of us thought we had all the answers.

It’s been about two decades since then. That’s eons in internet time, and those initial guides and those that came not long after have been refined by a million others to millimeter precision. So while you can write a book about podcasting today, there’s a lot of ground—and history—to cover. Are you up to that task?

Should You Write A How-To Podcast Course?

The internet is lousy with online learning management systems (LMS) that are almost begging you (and helping you) to distill your knowledge down to a saleable course that you can market to others who want to learn from you.

I’ll bring up the question of experience once again: Have you gathered enough podcasting experience to do that? How will your course stack up against the hundreds (probably thousands) of other podcasting courses out there, some created and constantly curated by people with a dozen or more years of experience?

If you feel you really do have a unique take on podcasting that is worthy of a course, then yes, absolutely, you should make that course. But take some time to do some research on what already is out there, and have a self-check-in to make sure you can deliver the goods. Make sure the lure of huge piles of cash proffered by those LMS tools does not force you to put out an inferior product. Reputation matters in this space, and there are plenty of people with tarnished reputations in podcasting. We have a long memory. You really don’t want to be That Guy.

Should You Become A Podcast Coach?

There are lots of ways you can coach other podcasters, but I suggest you look at a narrowly-defined coaching role. So more a hitting coach than the manager of a baseball team. Or a vocal coach, perhaps. As you know, there are lots of aspects to podcasting. And while lots of people are good at particular niches, most podcasting pros aren’t going to be great coaches for all-things-podcasting.

So if you do want to coach, drill down on what you do best. If audio engineering is your kick, then maybe you can coach people on getting the most out of a particular DAW or a select group of audio plugins. Perhaps you’re an excellent editor of the written word and could coach people on transforming text written to be read into something written to be narrated and heard. Or maybe you’re a Speech-Language Pathologist and are able to coach podcasters on how to get the most of out their voice as a vocal coach. (Side note: I’m starting to work with a vocal coach. I’ll let you know how it goes.)

Is Podcast Mentorship Right For You?

If you're a regular listener/reader of my content and you've been podcasting for a while, you’d probably make a great mentor for another podcaster!

Mentorship doesn’t have to be fancy with a lot of rigor. In fact, I prefer unstructured mentor/mentee relationships (hi, Steph!) where the relationship is symbiotic, each learning from the other.

I also like mentorships that are free. Not that I’m opposed to getting paid. But when payment is part of the mentorship equation, the temptation exists to pack a mentorship program with a bunch of “value bombs” and other gross-sounding things that turn out to be thinly veneered obvious answers. Or maybe I’m too cynical. If you can avoid that and make a paid mentorship program… who am I to stop you?

Just remember that being a mentor is not the same thing as being a coach or a teacher. The dynamic is different when the person on the other end is a student. The expectation of the one passing on the knowledge—that’s you—is different as well. To me, mentorship is much more general and open-ended in nature. Coaching and teaching tend to be best when they are highly specialized and have a well-defined goal, outcome, and end-date.

How Should You Best Share Your Podcasting Experience?

So which is the right approach for you? Should you commit to writing a book? Would a course be better? Should you hang out your shingle as a coach? Or should you seek out opportunities to serve as a mentor? I can’t answer that. And honesty, you may not be able to answer it either. At least not by yourself.

Suggestion: get your peers involved and crowdsource the decision. Reach out to a small number of people you trust—people who know you and who won’t bullshit you—asking for their input. Include a link to this article so they can quickly understand the possibilities and pitfalls. Then review their feedback and make your best decision.

And if a moment of brilliance struck you as you were reading this or listening to the episode, great! You can some me your appreciation by buying me a virtual coffee at BuyMeACoffee.com/evoterra.

Tomorrow morning, I’ll be hosting a room on Clubhouse that’s all about keeping the magic of podcasting alive in you, the person behind the microphone. I’d love for you to join me. And do let me know if you need an invite. I have a few to spare.

Monday is Presidents’ Day in America, and my lovely wife has demanded I take the day off. I do what I am told. So with that, I'll be back on Tuesday for another Podcast Pontifications.

Cheers!

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Podcast Pontifications is written and narrated by Evo Terra. He’s on a mission to make podcasting better. Allie Press proofed the copy, corrected the transcript, and edited the video. Podcast Pontifications is a production of Simpler Media.

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Podcasting is a wash with helpful guides and trainers, but there are also plenty of hucksters and shysters out there just trying to make a quick buck. How do you stay on the right side when you have knowledge to share?
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Hello and welcome to another Podcast Pontifications with me, Evo Terra.
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At some point podcaster, you're going to decide, you might decide you have knowledge that you wish to share with other less experienced podcasters. And I am all for that. Heck, I've done that. And I guess, arguably I do that. But in doing so how do you make sure that when you're doing that, that you bill yourself as someone that is experienced and can do this the right way?
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There are lots of ways. And how you present yourself and bill yourself, I think are key. And that's what I want to talk about with you today.
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Some people, like me , might decide to write a book. Yeah. I wrote a book about podcasting many moons ago. And like podcasting, I will tell you this, like podcasting, writing a book is easy. Now, you're probably wondering what did you just say? Well, let me finish. But also like good podcasting, writing a good book - very hard to do.
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I mean, the mechanics of doing the work isn't all that complicated - talking into a microphone, typing and keyboards and mechanics are pretty straightforward. Yeah. But it's all those other things that really get in the way. So it's hard to write a book. You know that, so you know that it's hard to make a good quality podcast.
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See, when I wrote Podcasting for Dummies way back in 2005, I only had a year of podcasting experience. Why did I write a book with a year of experience under my belt? Because there was no more experience to be had than that. And the same thing for Todd Cochran, from Blubrry, for the book he wrote, and the same one for Rob Walsh, the one he co-wrote - from Libsyn.
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So yeah, we were doing this very early because there weren't another option. Very short time. You know, we were like the early cartographers I guess, exploring the new world, drawing these quasi correct maps that would kind of get you there. But there were a lot of things we didn't know.
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Well, today there's roughly two decades of experience. Two decades of experience. So nobody wants a hastily drawn map anymore. So that means if you're going to do something, remember you're entering into a field that is two decades old. Make sure you're prepared to write a book that handles the fact that you're in something that is two decades old.
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Another option people say, well, writing a book is hard, so maybe I'll just do - I'll make a course. I'll sell an online course. Because there are new platforms cropping up all the time that are begging you and also helping you, begging you and helping you to distill your knowledge down to a salable six-part series course thing that you can sell.
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Great. Those are - they exist. But again, do you really have the experience to do that? How is that course you're about to make, you're thinking of making, going to stack up against every other course that is out there? Do you really have something unique to say? If you do, make it. If you really have something unique to say, then yes, absolutely, you should make that course.
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But have you checked, have you examined all of the other myriad courses that are out there to make sure that what you're putting into the world is actually something of value, that's helpful? Check and make sure that the lure of making money, which is the whole reason people make courses, make sure that, that lure of making money, and I am okay with you making money, but make sure that lure of making money does not force you to put out an inferior product because your reputation matters in this space.
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And if you're just trying to make a quick buck, well, you're not listening to my show anyhow. You're into this. You're here. Make sure that course you put out is not going to somehow taint what people might think of you.
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Coaching another common way people with knowledge to share, like you've done this for awhile, want to get into the game of things? When you think about coaching, I'm a big fan of people becoming coaches. I want you to think about coaching more as a swimming coach or a vocal coach, or even a hitting coach for baseball and yeah, I guess you could -
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I think the way to think about it this way for coaching is those people are all teaching specialties, right? So try not to, when you consider yourself as a coach, maybe not bill yourself as a coach for all things podcasting, unless of course you are very good and very experienced at all things podcasting, then you can do that. But if not, well just coach someone at a niche level.
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Like what is the thing you do really well? Maybe you can help people, coach them through getting the most out of an audio plugin, if you're really good about the engineering space. Or maybe you can coach people on script-writing and help transform words they put on texts that were originally written to be read, now they can be considered an audio form . Or again, a vocal coach. I have just engaged with a vocal coach to help me.
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So I think there's plenty of room for that. If you've got some specialized expertise, go down the coaching route. But probably my most favorite would be mentorship. I think if you're listening to this show and you've been podcasting for a while, you probably could qualify as becoming a mentor for someone.
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There are lots of ways you can do a mentorship program. I prefer a very unstructured program between the mentor and the mentee, where both of us are learning from each other. Hi, Steph! That's really important, I think, is that I, the mentor, should get as much as the mentee gets out of this. It's not a guru talking down from on high.
I like mentorships that are free. Because it helps you avoid the temptation of trying to pack a bunch of things that you think might be valuable that really aren't valuable and you let the mentee kind of pull out what they need.
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When you are becoming a mentor, if you do decide to go down the mentor route, make sure that you're not sliding into the other roles that I mentioned. There's a difference between having a mentor and a coach. They're two very different things. There's certainly a difference between a mentor and someone who is teaching. Cause that's different. There are similarities, but there are differences between the two and you want to make sure that relationship stays that way.
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I think mentorship can be much more generalist where again, coaching and teaching tends to be much more specialized for at least for most people. But a mentorship is much broader than that. There's lots of things you're trying to share with people. And the other thing about being a mentor is prepare yourself to say, "I don't know," quite a lot.
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I mean, technically teachers should do that, too, and so should coaches, but then they go find the answers and bring them back to the students or the other way around. But for the mentorship I'm oftentimes saying I don't know. Just because I've done this for a while it doesn't mean I know everything. So again, just prepare to know that.
I want you to look back at your experience and your practical knowledge. What have you done in this podcasting space? And then go back to that list I just gave you of those roles and figuring out which one do you think is going to be best for you. You got the itch to share your knowledge. How are you going to do it?
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Honestly, that's going to be really hard for you to judge for yourself. Take it from me. It's hard to know which one is your best way to do that. So best thing for you to do is send the link to this article, to friends and maybe family that you trust. There's an episode link in the episode details. Send that to them along with a note, asking their feedback on where they think you might be best suited and then go, you know, give it a shot. See if you can find someone to listen to what you have to say, to read what you have to say.
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Or just join up for that mentorship program is really my favorite way for you to do that. And if during all of this, a moment of brilliance struck you, you knew exactly what you're ready to do. Great. Do you want to show me some love for that? By all means go to buymeacoffee.com/evoterra and well, you know, buy me a coffee.
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All right, that's it. I don't do shows on Friday. I do a live Clubhouse on Friday. If you want to join, there will be information in the episode notes about that. But if not, no worries.
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I shall be back on Monday with yet another - oh, actually I won't be back on Monday. Monday's a holiday. I'll be back on Tuesday after President's Day for another Podcast Pontifications.
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Cheers!

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