Podcasting For Goodness' Sake

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It's been difficult to stay positive lately. And if I’m honest, I feel like I've been doing the exact opposite, bringing near-apocalyptic thoughts, ideas, and hard questions about the future of podcasting.

Sorry about that.

I was contacted recently by a charitable organization in need of some podcasting assistance. And while this organization does have a budget (they weren’t looking for free work), it’s not a huge budget, and they’d struggle to afford my firm’s fees.

Like most charities, this isn't a gigantic charity. They’re not the benefactors of a huge endowment. It’s a mostly self-funded organization, covering their expenses with personal investments by the not-filthy-rich founders and whatever donations they can bring in to keep the organization running with a modest operational budget.

If we’re to work together, and I really do want to help them, I’m going to have to make some concessions. My firm’s clients are businesses with large enough marketing budgets to afford the high-touch professional services we offer. Those services are worth paying for. Just like your services, working podcaster, are likely worth paying for.

Your Podcasting Skills Are Worthy Of Payment

I firmly believe that we working podcasters should be compensated for our efforts. We’ve invested in ourselves to develop skillsets, and we should not devalue that or ourselves by giving away our services for free.

Nor should we undercharge. I was in a group with some other working podcasters last year. I was constantly applying pressure on the other members to increase their rates. Not to fleece their clients out of more money just so they could buy a mansion in the Hamptons. I helped them see that getting a higher rate would lead them to better clients where they could do better work in a sustainable fashion. A going concern, in fact.

Having said that...

Using Your Podcast Skills For Good

Chances are, you have some discretion in how you spend at least a portion of your time and how you earn at least a portion of your money. Yes, you have obligations on both your time and money that you must do. Don’t jeopardize your livelihood on anyone’s account.

But there are worthy organizations out there that could use your professional podcasting help. It’s just unlikely that those worthy organizations can afford to pay you the same rate as you’re able to charge commercial entities. Let’s examine a few ways around that challenge, shall we?

Tithing Your Time

Even though I'm not a religious person, I’m aware of the concept of tithing. Tithing means “one-tenth”, and is used as a “how much should I give?” yardstick when financially supporrting a religious institution.

We can take that same model of tithing and apply it to a time investment. Using the standard 40-hour-week model (yes, I know you work more than that) and applying 10% is four hours. That’s one-half of a day. Or, if you want to spread it out across the week, it’s a little less than an hour per day.

Do you have an hour a day to help a worthy charity with their podcasting efforts? Can you block off a morning or an afternoon one day a week to help a charitable organization podcast better?

Deep Discounts

Another option (and my preference) is to invoice the charitable organization at the same rate I invoice my other clients. But I add a discount line item (much, much more than 10%) to bring the final invoice amount down to a number that fits within the charity’s modest operating budget.

I do this to protect the value of the services I’m providing. It’s quite possible (desirable, even) that the founders or funders of the charitable organization have a future need for podcasting services for their own business. A business that likely has a healthy marketing budget. I want them to see invoices with the full value of the services provided, rather than trying to explain a huge price jump when they ask for a proposal. No surprises!

Possible Tax Implications

Bonus: There might be positive tax ramifications when working with charities. Please understand that I’m neither a tax pro nor a bookkeeper, as either Rhonda or Paula, my respective tax and bookkeeping pros, will tell you. So definitely check with your tax pro and/or your bookkeeper about the possible tax implications of providing your valuable professional services either at a significant discount or for free. Speaking of that:

Pro Bono Podcasting Services

I'd love to be in a situation where I could just do pro bono podcasting work. I really enjoy the work I do with the vast majority of my clients. It is fun. It keeps my brain engaged. Heck, it was when I was retired in Thailand and bored back in 2016 when I started my podcast consultancy. Chances are, I'll probably wind up doing something quite similar to what I'm doing now... forever. If I’m fortunate enough to wind up in a post-scarcity situation again.

Network Of Good Workers

I’m pretty well-rounded, with more than a couple of decades in business operation roles and a history of podcasting since podcasting began. But you don’t have to have either of those things to offer valuable services in podcasting. So if this idea of doing some podcasting for good appeals to you, you might need to build out a small (or large) team of other working podcasters who complement your skillset.

It’s important to find people you like working with as much as it is important to find organizations you can all get behind. Imagine what good you could do if you could talk 10 other skilled podcasters to tithe 10% of their time for a worthy cause you can all work on.

Speaking of good things, I have two Very Good things you can do now. No, neither are charities. But I like the segue.

The first is to buy me a virtual coffee at BuyMeACoffee.com/EvoTerra. It’s an inexpensive way to donate to the cause of making podcasting better. No, your donation isn’t tax-deductible.

The second bit of good is to tell one person, just one other working podcaster, about Podcast Pontifications. Perhaps this episode spurs a conversation you’ve been meaning to have with them. Or perhaps you've been waiting for me to have a positive episode to share with that friend. Lords know I've been talking less-than-positive news for some time.

I shall be back tomorrow for yet another Podcast Pontifications.

Cheers!

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PPS3E10 Podcasting For Goodness Sake - Transcript

Evo Terra: [00:00:00] Things aren't great, but you could use your podcasting powers for good and help worthy causes, better. Tell their stories and still have plenty of time to be a podcasting powerhouse.

[00:00:19] hello and welcome to another podcast. Pontifications with me, Evo Terra. I know it's been a very difficult time right now, especially when you're trying to stay positive lately. And I feel like at times I've been doing the exact opposite. Bringing you some thoughts and ideas about podcasting that are downright.

[00:00:44] Post-apocalyptic sorry about that. Um, recently I was contacted by a charitable organization looking for some assistance in podcasting and here's the reality. They've got some budget to afford. The kinds of services that I provide, but not a huge budget. This isn't a gigantic charity. This is a self ran self funded organization.

[00:01:17] They're not getting billions of dollars of endowment monies and various things, but here's the deal. I really want to help these people. I think they've got a good idea that they've got good stories to tell, and I want to help them. So I'm going to find a way. We're going to work together and try and find a way to make it happen.

[00:01:37] But I know that it's going to require me to do something different than what I do for my business focused clients who are all businesses, who all have marketing budgets, who have the ability to pay for professional services. And I thought we talk about a here on the program because you are working podcast or you have valuable skills.

[00:01:59] That could be used on other properties. If you have the time, I'm going to talk about the time in just a moment. And if you have the desire, I firmly believe that we working podcasters who know what we're doing. Who've developed skill sets, whatever your skill set happens to be him is worthy of being paid.

[00:02:20] You are worthy of being paid a really high wage, honestly, for the things that you do. Was it a mastermind group last year. And, um, worked really hard to make sure that the people that were in that group understood that their services were more valuable than they were being paid. And help them increase their rates, not just to try and Hawk people.

[00:02:44] That was not my goal, but just so that they could, they, the people that were doing the work could have a better life for themselves on necessarily mansion in the Hills somewhere, but just simply, you know, doing the things that they want to do that takes, it takes some effort. So it's weird that I'm talking about that at the same time, I'm talking about doing work for charity services where you're probably not going to get paid.

[00:03:08] The rate that you probably could be paid if you were charging some commercial entity to do your job, but I still think it's something we should be able to do if we want to a and if we have the bandwidth, let's talk about the bandwidth for a second. First, this concept in religion, I'm not religious called tithing, where you give 10% of your income to.

[00:03:35] The religious institution of their choice. We can take that same model of tithing. And so what if you gave away 10% of your time, specifically 10% of your working time, and let's just pretend for a moment that you are working time is the standard 40 hours a week. I know it's more than that. I totally get it.

[00:03:59] But for math it helps to do this. Uh, Rourke that we're doing right here. I assume we're talking about a 10% of your 40 hour week. That's four hours, four hours or a half a day. Or if you want to break it down, you could do that less than one hour per day. So if we're talking about tithing your time to a worth while charitable organization, That you want to help podcast better.

[00:04:31] You want to help get started on podcasting, whatever you want to do. If you do decide you want to do that for free, maybe the way you do that is thinking about tithing your time, carve out 10% or four hours a day, four, excuse me, four hours a week or a half a day or one hour a week. However you want to look at it that you could do.

[00:04:55] Now when I do something like this, what I'm likely going to do is I'm going to invoice fully for my time. But that invoice is going to include a discount line and it's going to be a healthy, healthy discount to make it, to make it work. And I do that because I don't want to dilute the value of the services I provide.

[00:05:19] It's possible. That the people running this charitable organization, the funders of this organization, one of the two might want the same services I provide for the charity, for their business. They have access to those invoices. And if that invoice is shows a really tiny amount, they're going to assume that's what they can get it for the same price.

[00:05:44] Then that's not true. So I want my invoices to reflect exactly how much money I should be charging. And then I put a discount line with a negative number on it to bring that down to a manageable number for them. Keep this in mind before you do this working podcaster there very well could be tax implications, probably positive.

[00:06:04] I would imagine as in, you might, and I am not a tax pro, not a bookkeeper. Either Rhonda or both Rhonda and Paula will tell you I am none of those things, but definitely check with your tax pro your bookkeeper about the possible tax implications of giving away your valued services, either for free or a significant discount.

[00:06:29] No, I'd love to be in a situation to where I could just do pro bono work. I really enjoy the work I do with the vast majority of my clients. It is fun. It keeps my brain engaged. Heck, when I was in Thailand in 2016, when I started the business, I did it because I was bored semi retired in Thailand, or actually I was trying to be fully retired way too young for that.

[00:06:52] So I'll probably wind up doing something like what I'm doing now forever. It works for me in a pro bono situation. Now I'm relatively well-rounded thanks to a long history in business, as well as running a podcasting for 16 years. Not everybody is that way. In fact, I can't do everything. So the last thing I'll leave you with is thinking about building a network.

[00:07:16] I've talked about networks a lot on the program over the years, building a network of other like-minded podcast experts. Podcast freelancers working podcasters like yourself that have different skill sets. And if you have a shared mindset about certain organizations, you might be able to even to somehow multiply your good, bringing other people into the program who might be able to let me think about it this way.

[00:07:47] If you get 10 people to tie the 10%, Hey, that's a hundred percent, five 50%. Not a bad deal. Some charity would really like it. If you were to come up with something like that in this world of bad news, we need some good news in there. Now I have two things you can do that are good. Two good things you can do right now.

[00:08:07] One, you can go to buy me a coffee.com/evo Terra and buy me a coffee. It's a donation that keeps the show running all the time, and you can tell one person, just one person, one other working podcast, or about. Podcast. Pontifications this episode, maybe this spurs the conversation, maybe this is the thing you've been waiting for to share a good news article.

[00:08:30] Lord knows. I've been talking about bad news for the longest time. So share this with a friend, if you would, I would really appreciate it and it helps the show grow. That's it. See you tomorrow for another podcast. Pontifications cheers.

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