Hello, hello. Welcome, welcome to today's live stream. Let me turn off, turn down my volume so we don't get an echo. Let's see. I'm going to make sure I'm live everywhere as is customary for things like this. Here I am on Twitch, Twitter, the biggest question mark always, LinkedIn, and over on YouTube. Perfect. So thank you so much for being here.
This is going to be a little bit of a different live stream for me because I kind of came to a realization that now that I'm not really programming anymore, or like building web stuff that building in public live streams are a lot less frequent. And so I decided to switch to like a more topic based sort of live stream where I do, I cover a topic, I'll do some Q&A.
And if any questions come in, of course, I'll answer them. If any questions come in that deem a kind of bigger, more space to answer it, then I will answer those questions in a future live stream or dive deeper at least.
So really excited to try this format out here with seasons. I picked this question because, well, I gave a talk last week at Ecams, Leap into tools and tactics, and this question really stood out to me as one that I think is worth mentioning because I've always used the term seasons to mean breaks, and Doc Rock, who was moderating, or MCing, maybe the session, had a different point of view and I want to explore that a little bit.
So if you are just joining us, feel free to say hello in the chat and let me know where you're coming from. And if you have any questions regarding any seasons or podcasting in general, definitely going to do my best to answer as many of those as possible on this live stream. I will be going for about, well, at most an hour, if no one's hanging out, then I'll leave early.
Anyway, I'm really excited to try out this format. So let me, there's one more thing I need to do as far as housekeeping goes, and then I will dive into the, wow, I was just watching the Yankee game. The Yankees are on and I'm having some trouble multitasking, I guess. Well, we'll dive into the season stuff. So the first thing I want to slash need to do, because I didn't do that yet, is set the lower third for the right thing. So let me do that really quick. I'll put this in the chat as well.
But I'll mention that later. That it was just like a little quick behind the scenes look at how things are managed. So, okay, so first, let me talk about, let me tell you about seasons on like a technical level here. So we'll go to the screen share view. You can see I have my RSS.com account up here. This is going to be true of lots of hosts. I don't know. They must all support them now, because this is something that Apple podcast rolled out a while ago.
But a season is a number that you can assign to an episode and much like a television season. It's just another way to organize your podcast. So I am on, if we go to Apple podcasts here, I am on, if you probably can't see that, and I probably can't make it bigger. But in Apple podcasts, I'm on season 13 of my podcast and I'll tell you a little bit more about that, right?
I had an opportunity where maybe I could reset the seasons with the big rebrand and the rename, but I decided not to do that because there is still nearly eight years of content there. And they, you know, I'm not going to, I didn't retire this show and start a new one. I rebranded the show. So decided to keep the name kind of like how in Netflix, Scrubs Med School was just kind of considered season nine of Scrubs, even though it was a spin off. And that really bothers me.
But so technically speaking, seasons are basically just a number, right? Something that you can use to organize your podcast. Now, as far as what seasons mean, let's say writ large, right? Let's talk about where seasons make the most sense as far as like when you should definitely use seasons for your podcast, right? Serial podcasts, and that's serial, not the podcast serial, but a series. That's what the word serial means. A serial podcast with different subjects.
Like a lot of, a lot of crim, like true crime podcasts will do this, right? Where each season is its own case or investigations. Crime town does this serial does this. I'm sure there's a couple of more that I'm not really thinking of that, that will also do this. That makes sense, right? Because if we look at, I don't want to use the podcast serial because it'll get confusing.
So let's look at like crime town, right? In season one of crime town, they looked at the corruption in, I think, Rhode Island, right? Where they did a deep dive into like political corruption and the mob in Rhode Island. Season two is a blur to me because that was the one that was like Spotify exclusive. And so I don't remember that. You know, they, they, I think they also looked at Chicago. If I'm not mistaken, I can look this up. Crime town seasons.
Yeah, so the first one was Providence, Rhode Island. The second one was Detroit. Oh, that's right. Yeah. So interesting was that one. Also, is this page, did they only have two seasons? That can't be right. I really thought they had, yeah, wow, website expired and everything. I guess they only had to. That doesn't seem right to me. Slow burn is another one where they looked at impeachment, like different impeachment trials, right?
So each season was the impeachment of a different president. And then they moved on to other things like, I think, Biggie and Tupac's murders. And so seasons definitely make sense there because there's very clear delineations between the subject matter and the type of investigation. And a season basically tells the listener, hey, you should start at the first episode of this season if you want to understand what's happening.
In the last episode of this season, that's what makes those shows serial podcasts, right? You need to listen to them in order. The other place where it could make sense is episodic podcasts and episodic podcasts are podcasts where you don't need to listen to the previous episode to understand the following episode, right? So like Joe Rogan or most interview shows are episodic podcasts where for the current episode, like it doesn't rely on knowledge from previous episodes.
Previous episodes could be referenced. I will often reference previous episodes when they make sense, but you don't have to listen to episode 400 to understand what's going on in episode 401. So why would you have seasons for episodic podcasts if the order really doesn't matter? Well, if you want clear and obvious like topic arcs, right? So if you have an episodic podcast about farm to table, I don't know why I picked that. I don't know anything about that.
But if you want to have a podcast about farm to table, maybe it's episodic where you interview folks in that space, but season one is all about the logistics of farm to table. Season two could be all about the economics. Season three could be all about what actually goes on on the farm, maybe. Sorry if anybody's watching this and they understand farm to table because I don't and I'm really sorry, except I know that like the food is good. So that's where an episodic podcast might have seasons.
And where I think there's some confusion, right, with podcast where there certainly was for me, I'll talk about my like seasonal mess in a minute is that all TV shows do this, right? And a season could almost be equated with a break, right? Where if the episode, like if the show doesn't end on a cliffhanger, then there may not be an obvious difference between what happens in season. Season one and what happens in season two.
Some of my favorite shows, friends, scrubs, parks and rec could kind of feel that way, right? And like there is probably like a seasonal arc if you really look at it, right? Season two of Friends is all about Ross and Rachel's relationship. But Ross and Rachel's relationship doesn't start in season two, right? It like season one ends with Rachel realizing that she is also in love with Ross, but Ross is with Julie.
They get together, I think in like mid-ish season two and then spoiler alert, they break up in like mid-ish season three. But like the story arc of season two is Ross and Rachel getting together, right? Whereas the story arc of I think season six, right, focuses on like, I mean a lot of stuff happens, but like a big focus or a, let's say a red thread is Monica and Chandler's relationship. Where I think they get, I'm rewatching the show now, but that's the main focus, right?
Really good TV shows will make their seasons clear, right? Dexter, for example, like each season was basically a different murder more or less, right? Like a different, there was like a different bad guy in each season. And so I think if you're going to have seasons, right, like serial podcasts with different subjects or episodic podcasts where there are clear and obvious topic or story arcs would make sense.
And so, you know, if you want to compare like what has a clear season versus what doesn't, I think Dexter again is a real good example of that. Whereas like friends or some other sitcoms are telling kind of a bigger story and the seasons are more like breaks. So that is kind of where seasons make the most sense. If you are just joining us, say hello in the chat, let me know where you're coming from.
And if you have any questions about podcast seasons or podcasts in general, I am happy to answer them. I have my B machine over here checking comments on both LinkedIn and Twitter slash X because those don't come through on E.C.M. Live like the ones on Twitch and YouTube do. So if you definitely, definitely want to make sure I see your question, you should probably be on Twitch or YouTube, mostly be on YouTube. That's like the platform where I am the most.
Okay, so let's talk about my seasonal mess, right, and why I think I messed up on like doing seasons. Like I don't think seasons make sense for my podcast. I tried. I tried to have them make sense for a while. I took a very teachery approach to my show where I was like, oh yeah. So like people will be able to listen to my podcast and learn something throughout the season.
But I quickly realized that the season, the series, whatever, I quickly realized like that doesn't make a lot of sense for me because I was interviewing different people. I didn't have like a very clear lesson plan and the amount of it would have made more sense if I had been doing a solo show this whole time, right, where season one would focus on some aspect, right, and maybe that's something I could do for podcast workflows, though both of my shows are episodic by design, right.
If I'm trying to like leverage the amount of time I have to do these shows, doing a serial show requires a little bit more than necessary. Like unless I got like a big sponsor, right, where I had this idea a while back where, hey Liam, I see Liam is watching on LinkedIn. Thanks so much for being here. I appreciate it. Appreciate you coming around every live stream. I love it.
I had this idea a while back when I was like still fully in the web development space of doing a serial podcast on like the history of the internet from like the 60s up through where WordPress was right because I was in the WordPress space and like how it evolved over time and I tried to find a big sponsor for that but the value proposition wasn't really there. I wasn't very good at pitching that type of content at the time or like why, like why a organization might want to sponsor that content.
I didn't really know the the organizations I reached out to I didn't really understand the goals of those organizations. And so like, like why would they just want to sponsor my content on a topic that they might not be interested in right so if I were pitching it today I'd reach out to or like organizations that make more sense where we would maybe share the content maybe I would make the content but they would host on their website that sort of thing.
But anyway, that's like the only that's like the only serial podcast that I ever decided like decided I wanted to do so. All of that said, my show doesn't make sense. It's not a serial podcast and so do seasons really make sense not really. If you look back like if you find, if I look at my podcast in Apple podcast connections or podcast connects whatever it's called.
It's it's a mess right because they do they will organize on the back end by season they don't it looks like they don't organize in the app, either on the desktop or the phone. So it's just kind of weird like that so even more like that's just kind of a footnote. If your if seasons don't make sense for you like there's no benefit to the end user for you marking a season. If you don't have like clear seasons, if that makes sense.
So I kind of had like my seasons would would align with my breaks right so I would do like 22 to 24 episodes, take a three week break come back and it would be season two. But I got really in my head about it. And I was like what but like, if I look at friends it's it's a season is from September to May, which is like most of a year. And there's like a three month break so like should I have like one season per year.
Should the season number be indicative of the number of years this show has been going on. And so I was inconsistent and so like if you look at earlier episodes. The seasons don't make sense some are not even marked as seasons so if you could organize by season. The shows would be out of order.
And again I didn't have any real reason to have seasons so I think at one point I considered, okay well this season will be about like WordPress theme development and this season will be about WordPress plugin development and this season will be about WordPress memberships. And I just abandoned that. Partially because I didn't have a good system in place for like planning that content far ahead of time. But I also wanted my show to be a little bit more reactive and responsive.
And so I did have some more timely episodes. It really doesn't make any sense. I'm interviewing people on topics but I'm usually, I'm not doing a lot of work to like reorder the guests in an order that makes sense. Because I understand that people aren't listening to every episode and I don't think the work I'd be doing would get more like would get people to listen to every episode right. And if you look at the mission statement of my show now, it's like to help busy solo, pre-new, or parents.
The show can be more of like a just in time learning thing or like an archive where when they want to learn more about SEO they can find the SEO episode. And when they want to learn more about membership plugins they could find the membership episode right. And I think that works better for my content, my audience. And then I am mixing in more solo episodes that talk about kind of other topics. Those are more timely and more reactive right.
I'm doing a solo episode too about how as a solo pre-new or like we're not, I have three small kids, we have decided to not do summer camp. My wife has a flexible schedule as a nurse. I have a flexible schedule as a self-employed person. And so I'm talking about like what all of that means for a solo pre-new or right. And I think that makes sense and it's timely. And so again, I don't think seasons really make sense here.
And so and now what I need to do if I really want to keep things organized is, and I have a whole other big project I'm working on for this. I'm going to have to have my VA go in and update every episode with season numbers where I say, okay, like episode 26 is the start of season two. Episode 54 is the start of season three. And then she'll have to go in and update all the seasons, which I will have her do because it's driving me crazy.
But as I think about it, like again, it doesn't make a lot of sense for me to have seasons. That said, I'll probably continue having seasons with season 14 kicking off in July. Or maybe I'll do like a grand reef. Well, no, I can't do that. Where season 14 will kick off in July. Right. So it's like July to December. Or maybe I will start doing like the year long season, right. The show launched in July. That's why I picked July. So July to July will be season 14 and so on and so forth. Right.
So, you know, that's again, something I need to consider and I need to think about. But that's a lot of mental overhead for someone who has a podcast where seasons don't make sense. Right. And we'll get to planning in in a little bit. But that is, I think that's a lot of the level setting that I think we should do here. So, huh. Liam asked, can you talk about? Oh, my least favorite thing about about LinkedIn comments on post on live streams is that I can't see the comments, which is awful.
Right. Like why enable comments if I can't see them. I have to go to view events. So like the kind like the comments are like under view event details and not on the live stream. Isn't that terrible? Liam said, can you please talk about only murders in the building and TV show about a podcast about as the title goes only murderers in their building. I'd love to, but I've never seen it. So I'm going to have to add that to my watch list because that sounds hysterical.
So, Liam, thank you for the recommendation only murders in the building on Hulu now in the Disney Plus app. Hashtag not a sponsor. Matt Medeiros coming in. How long should a how long should a podcast season be Yankee season short or short? Thank you, Matt, for that. I can't talk a lot of smack on the Red Sox right now because they're actually good.
I say actually because it seems like their trip to the 2018 World Series was like some deal they made with Ursula from the Little Mermaid where it's like, OK, I'll send you to this one, but then you're going to be bad at baseball for the rest of your life. So I mean, we'll see, you know, maybe as short as the Yankees or Red Sox season. But to answer your actual question, I think I'm going to give a really frustrating teacher answer, which is it should be as long as it needs to be.
And this really goes back to what I was saying before, right? Like if seasons don't make sense, then you don't have a clear guideline for how long the season should be. And you can say, well, all right, each year is a season, I guess. Or you could say I have two seasons in a year because I'm going to take breaks. But if you have a story, you're telling. Well, then the season should be as long as the story needs to be.
Some people will say like 10 episodes, right? Matt, I know you did. I'd actually love your input on this because I know when you were doing the Matt report, you experimented with like dropping a whole season Netflix style at one time. So I would love to know if that worked for you or if I would love to know if that worked for you and how you kind of view seasons. I know you were just trying to dig at my Yankees, but I want to shoot my shot.
And actually, I'm going to, if you are open to it, can I do this? I think I can do this. Matt, if you're open to it, no pressure. I don't know what your day looks like. I'm going to send you an E. Cam live guest link. If you want to join me on the live stream. This is crazy. I've never done this before. So we'll see. We'll see what happens.
Because I'd love to, because you actually experimented with a season like this. And that's very interesting to me. I think you can add a little color to the commentary. A little better than I can, right? I've never tried that. I've considered that sort of thing, but I've never, I've never done it. I also, I'm not sure how you, how I'll get notified now that I'm live. I don't know how I'm going to get notified if you actually do join. So we'll see. We'll see if this works.
Live television or whatever. Okay, so that's a really good question, though, right? How long should the season be? You should be able to tell your story in that certain amount of time. If I look back at serial, like what I'll probably find is a range of episodes, like maybe season one was 10 episodes and maybe season two was like 14 episodes or something like that. But they, they took the amount of time they needed to tell the story, which I think makes a lot of sense, right?
There are also like, in this same vein, there are like, it should still ring, hey, Ecamm live. I don't, I don't know who's behind the Ecamm live mask here. Hopefully it's, it's one of my many friends at the company, but thanks so much for being here. I appreciate it. It should still ring. So that's really exciting.
Thanks so much for the live tech support. I appreciate it. If you don't use Ecamm live, you should. You should check them out. They're actually sponsoring podcast workflows this month. This was an unintended sponsorship mention, but there how I run my live streams, how I can seamlessly switch between my scenes and potentially add guests and add my lower thirds.
And this is a special view that I have when I'm doing slides on one side. I have like a view in Canva for slides where I can have myself side by side, which is super cool. And then of course, those lower thirds are also thanks to Ecamm live. So thanks so much for being here. They are a sponsor. This wasn't, this was unintentional sponsor content.
I probably have to mark this video as paid promo now. But thanks so much for being here. Okay, so there are, there are podcasts that will do like a, it's like one season and so they'll do a limited run and you can mark that as complete in the feed as well. So like a good example of this is the RFK tapes from kind of the same team who did, who did cry, I think crime town, but the RFK tapes was like a limited run podcast that that took a look into the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.
And it was Zach Stewart Pony and Bill Claibor, I think is how you say his name, and a potential conspiracy around the assassination. So this was a limited run show. I think there were, let's see, there were nine episodes. And the show has been marked as complete, right, because it's Oh, it's Caleb. Hey Caleb stoked that you're here. I think we're, well I'm going to be at CEX rumor has it you are too so stoked for you to be here and I'm stoked to meet up IRL next week.
So awesome, awesome. Thanks so much for being here. Okay, so if you have like a one season idea, right? Then, then you could like have that have the podcast market complete. So there's a lot of ways to consider how you want to do your content. But let's talk about breaks versus seasons right this was the thing that I kind of realized during the E. Kim leap into tools and tactics event.
Someone asked the question like should my show had seasons I basically said, probably yes, like almost definitely yes. And doc, who was MCing said, you know, I think that he gave a more nuanced and I think better answer like a better original answer. And what I realized as he was giving his answer was, I wasn't really delineating or differentiating maybe between seasons and breaks. Okay, so I think most podcasters should take a break, right?
Where like there's like a few weeks where you don't publish. This is especially true if you don't have a team right so there are daily podcasts, the bulwark history daily, Ryan holidays podcasts that run every day. But Ryan holiday from what I can tell gets in there records like a bunch of podcasts all in a row and then hands them off to his team.
Lindsey Graham, not that Lindsey Graham the host, but the host of several history based podcasts including history daily will do the narration but he has if you listen to the credit he has a whole team of people behind him, who are doing the research the script writing the audio
and the editing and the publishing. And so if you have something like that like yeah then you get to record and and pass it off to your team. For some for a solopreneur someone like me, like I'm sure Matt, maybe Caleb if Caleb has a podcast, where we are probably doing a lot of the work ourselves.
I don't like I don't do the editing. I really do like just record but I, I, what's the best way to put this I do the planning. I do the recording I do the interviewing and I create the edit notes and send them off to my editor I don't have like a producer where I'm
talking right. So I do take breaks because it gives me a little bit of breathing room, right, where if I feel like I'm getting behind or I've had it where like I've had to scrap a day where I was supposed to record two or three interviews, because my kids were home sick or something like that. And so I have to rearrange my schedule, which can be tough because I do say the episode number during the actual recording. I reference it. Well I don't say like hey welcome to episode whenever whatever.
I reference it in the show notes and so I'm a little bit locked in to that episode number. So a break in the summer, right, especially like around the time that I take my vacation with my family gives me a little bit of wiggle room where I can I'll usually be a month or six weeks ahead. And so I know like starting in June. I'll have some breathing room where I don't have to be producing right right now. If I look at my podcast planner.
I have. And oh, and it looks like I mean my my break doesn't start until the end of July this time are just that's the way it worked out with like the way sponsorship worked out and things like that. So I've got four episodes in the can ready to go. And then five episodes that I'll be recording in May, and three solo episodes I'll be recording and so like yeah by by like the beginning of July, I will be done up up until August 12.
Maybe maybe like I'll bump it back one more week, right I can do that because I don't. I don't pre announce breaks. And that's that's something else you need to to consider but the breaks really helped me right and then I also know that I'm taking a break.
And so I'm just like in most of December right like listenership just like really drops off in December anyway. People are doing a lot of other things they're traveling there with family they're doing end of the year stuff they're watching every Christmas movie or whatever that they watch.
And then listeners just kind of drop off towards the end of the year anyway and then that gives me a little bit of flexibility to like try some fun stuff, but it also gives me breathing room to look back on on the previous year see what content did well see what content tanked really plan out what I want to do for the coming year so breaks are not seasons because breaks are are less about the subject right there less about the topics you're covering on the show.
The story you're telling on the show, and they're more about how you can continue to do your podcast without burning out and give yourself a little bit of breathing room. And people say like consistency is everything and you need to publish the same time the same week on the same day and the same week, the same day of the week, the same time.
But if you communicate with your listeners and say, hey, just so you know, taking a take going on my summer break for three weeks. So there won't be any new episodes will be back on this date. People are fine with that. Right. If you look at a TV show, right, it's not like I mean, okay, here's a really good and like okay I'm not saying that I'm Game of Thrones but House of the Dragon has been gone for two plus years at this point. I think me like two plus years at this point.
And I am waiting I will watch that premiere. Right. I'm so excited for that show still. The TV show Sherlock starring Benedict Cumberbatch like British TV shows just kind of do whatever they want. Like, like in America things are very structured. It's like, yes, Sweep Sweep is in May or whatever. And like we have premieres and whatever August or June or whatever.
And the first episode of of the season is in September after the school year starts and people have a more predictable schedule and they'll be in front of their TVs right, which is like not as important now with streaming but that's like how it was for a long time. And we're going to we're going to do our Christmas special and then we're going to take some breaks till after the new year and then we're going to go until May.
And then we're going to take the whole summer off right and people weren't like, oh man, friends has been gone for a long or Parks and Rec or Brooklyn 99 like though that's been gone for a long time. I'm not going to watch anymore right they're going to watch when it comes back so as long as you are predictable and communicative a break should not adversely affect you right.
And if you're really worried about it like I've like I've published back catalog episodes or re-air episodes I thought were interesting just to kind of see. I've done bonus episodes which were like less structured more kind of solo episodes that didn't publish with the normal cadence they were bonus episodes they weren't sponsored so I gave myself a little bit more flexibility there.
But as long as you manage your audience's expectations you should be good right maybe maybe in that episode where you announce your break you can tell him like hey if you haven't listened to this episode check this out or listen to this other podcast right which is also really good I highly recommend it so there's a lot of things that you can do there.
The main thing that you want to think about though as you consider seasons or breaks right the Lynch pin of all of this is planning and so I'm going to double check the comments here don't see anything going on.
The Lynch pin is planning. I'm a huge proponent and now now I can actually show this lower third so you know what I want to share my screen I'll go out of dark mode because I don't like dark mode for anything but like if sometimes it gives my face like a weird shine when I'm recording my windows open so I'm like my my blackout curtain is pulled back so I have a little bit more wiggle room
I'm also like pretty tan right now I've been spending a lot of time outside because it's finally nice here in the northeast of the United States okay so you can go to podcast workflows.com slash tools slash planners probably drop it in the chat here. That's not what I want. I just do that I was in the wrong window. So I will drop it in the chat over here. Yes. Yes. Great.
If you want to pick up those planners I'm pretty sure I just deleted my lower third overlay. Did I just do that. Yeah. Oh no okay there we go great. I don't really know what I did there but we're all good to go now so these planners are you so you can you'll get them in Notion in air table and in Google Sheets but this this is like my shows life's blood so let me bring it up in Notion that's where I am using it primarily.
Can I can I bigify this I can great so right now I am in the if I go to the all episodes I guess I'm filtering this but like if I go to the upcoming episodes you'll see what I have coming up. You can see that I have guests scheduled until July 22nd some of those are solo episodes I guess spoiler alert for who's coming on the show and then you could see the status of each of these shows so you can see the ones I need to write our solo shows and then anytime someone uses my calendar to schedule.
I can see what I need to write the status is updated automatically to interview interview scheduled. I can also look at the published episodes if I want and see. I probably want to like reverse this but I can look at the solo episodes so I can see like what I need to write. I can look at just the interviews to see to see what kind of prep I need to do and then I also have a can band board. This is not related this is not coming on in October. This was just a separate interview I did.
So you can kind of see like what scheduled again what's out for edit what's ready to publish this one is all ready published. So something didn't some automation didn't fire there. March 25th. Oh, yeah, I just didn't. That's an older one. Not the latest solo episode which is this week. So this planner is super important for me this allows me to take a look at everything that I have coming up what interviews I've booked when the well is about to run dry.
You know I ran into a problem at the beginning of this year where I realized I hadn't before my break I hadn't pre recorded any episodes for the new year. And you can see probably that. Let's see let's sort this one. By. Oh, there's already a sort on it live ascending to do live descending. Yeah, that checks so you see like I had one pre recorded but then there were one two three four solo episodes in the beginning of the year before I started doing more.
Oh gosh, more interview episodes so that actually worked out, I should say because I want to do more solo episodes this year I'm trying to work my way to like half and half. And what I really need to do there what I'll probably use my summer break for is pre recording a bunch of solo episodes. One of the things I ran into was like one of my. If I have two solo podcasts like podcast work like the podcast workflows podcast is technically a solo podcast.
Am I like too much of a house divided by having these two kind of similar shows. And I don't think I am. So this organizer is really important to me it's been really helpful I can see the record date. The live date the sponsors, I do have season here and you could see season 14 turns over in August because of the break.
The status and then my VA knows to come in here and check all of this stuff create the artwork with the photo that's uploaded and all of that so like my show would not be running the way it runs. If I didn't have this planner, which again you can find over at podcast workflows comm slash tools slash planners. I wish I had a maybe shorter URL. You might, I think podcast workflows comm slash freebie goes to a different freebie.
And all of this is is actually I'm getting ready to put all this into a system called podcast navigator, where it'll help you through every stage of your podcast where from planning. And like the getting it launched to the staying organized with the planners to the automation stuff to take a bunch of things off your plate I'm really excited about that. It's going to be my first paid product in a while that's not just like a course I threw together in hopes that it would sell.
I'm actually like doing real research on this and I want to shout out Jay Klaus for I'm in his community. And just the information he shared about creator HQ has been usually helpful in helping me frame this product. So shout out to Jay thanks so much for that. Really, really good timing as my membership is going to renew and the value this happened several times throughout the year so it's not like it just like he like got under the gun or whatever.
But I'm really with stuff like that I'm really reminded of the value of his community even if I'm not as active and circle as I'd like to be so. Anyway, I am working on that product that's neither here nor there. I really just wants to point out that if you were going to so how does all of this now that I've walked you through my planner, kind of. How can you leverage a tool like that you don't have to use mine, of course, do you know do whatever works for you, however your brain works.
Maybe you see that and you get inspired to create your own based on some of the information I have that you maybe didn't think of. But how can you leverage that to plan seasons or breaks. Well, first of all, think about the type of content you're creating right so if you are telling multiple discrete stories. Over several episodes, right because each episode should be a story no matter what, but if you're telling a story over multiple episodes, a season might make sense.
If you are if you have a serial podcast for sure, a season would make sense. If you have an episodic podcast where maybe you are covering the internal workings of different companies and you're interviewing people like 10 people from those companies, maybe then you'd have a season.
Or if I decide for the streamlined solopreneur, I just for each season I want to cover a specific topic in depth. Then maybe I'd have a season and in that case going back to Matt's obnoxious question where he takes a shot at my Yankees. Sorry, I just made myself laugh there. You know, then I would probably have much shorter seasons right where instead of 24 episodes, maybe episodes like maybe seasons or six or eight episodes, which feels really short.
But I'm not going to cover like SEO for 24 episodes right that's going to get really stale for my listeners. And I'm not like then I become an SEO podcast at that point right so maybe I would have six episodes seasons where each one is kind of packaged nicely. Which, you know, again, that's like what like British TV show does right like again Sherlock their seasons were three hour and a half long episodes.
Like that's it. That's how that's what they needed to tell the story that's the format they decided and it worked for them. So it you want to consider the type of content you're creating I saw a comment come over here. I just realized I've been using my laptop trackpad on this computer, because they're right next to each other and I have universal control turn on. I saw a comment come in. And now I don't see it anymore. Maybe it was deleted.
Oh, someone just reacted. Okay, sorry. I thought that was a question, but it's, it's the questions I asked in the description of this so think about that. So that's when you'd have a season but if you just want to build in breaks you don't necessarily need seasons. And I would say like because the organizational overhead of a season like doesn't really make sense you don't need to a season numbers not required. And I think an episode number is.
It probably depends if I go back into rss.com. It's not required here. If I look at like a different tool like transistor might be required there. Okay, so in transistor season number is required. I don't really know why I'd have to like look at the spec. I guess, which I don't feel like doing. So, I guess this will depend on your host. The nice thing about well with transistor it's required but they also auto increment or auto fill.
So if you say like I'm on season five, they will assume your next episode is also in season five, which is nice like if you've maybe it's because I had some like if I start a new show. Let's see. I don't think I don't know if Liam is still here but we don't I don't know that we do have seasons. So I guess I'd have to like take a look at a show in transistor that doesn't have seasons to see if it's okay so okay so there's a podcast that I managed from one of my clients.
Where they don't have seasons defined and the season field isn't even there. So I bet this is actually a setting somewhere in transistor. Disabled Apple's episode numbering Mark show complete blah blah blah. Yeah, so it's probably something in settings that I can fix or change. Or maybe when I imported because I was doing seasons when I imported my show like now they have to enforce seasons or something like that but depends on the show but it's really it's not required right.
If you're starting from scratch or whatever a season is not required so that's my whole spiel. Thanks everybody for coming if you have any questions I'll stick around for a little bit to account for the live stream delay though lately I haven't really seen much of a delay which is super nice. I'll also check the comments here check the comments there see if anything has come in check Twitter. But those are generally the most common questions I get about having seasons.
And I guess I should say I don't know if I did a good job of this but the you know the reason I want to cover this is because when when you're a solopreneur especially right. You're a solo podcaster. It's a grind cover it like doing week to week right I spent. If I look at time tracking today I spent a little over two hours getting everything together for the two interviews I did yesterday.
And that's like writing the summary which I've been using Claude A.I. for not the actual summary I'll have it write a summary and then I'll be like what did you talk about. And then I'll punch it up very like I love it let's change everything about it. Vibes. But the takeaways have been really good from Claude A.I. and from cast magic actually. So I'll use those tools to help but I'm you know writing three to four hundred words. Summarizing the episode recording the intro bumper.
Now I'm also recording the video for that as like a little bit of promo so I need to think about. How can it like can this stand alone without the rest of the episode. If I say in the episode like check it out at streamlined FM slash whatever. Does that kind of confuse the listener it's probably not. And then I record I put everything together. I don't re listen to the episode when I look through my edit notes.
And one of the interviews yesterday like I was just having like a hard time at the beginning I thought someone was like trying to break into my house or something so I was like very distracted and so there are more edit notes than usual. But my point is that it takes time right. And if I didn't have those breaks to like look and reflect on how things are going and give me a few weeks to get ahead right like if I'm usually four to six weeks ahead.
And a three week break de facto makes me two plus months ahead right. On either the tail end or coming back right if I like if I front load even more episodes to come after the break. Then I know I could pass off like a month's worth of episodes to my VA get them published for August and part of September. And I don't have to worry about scrambling to find a guest right when I get back from break so it really gives you some flexibility in your schedule.
It's it's worked for me it's part of the reason why I have been able to be so consistent. And it gives me some time to record some extra solo episodes and have like an emergency bank in case I cannot publish a new episode or the episode I was intending to publish so. With that that's everything that I've got. Quick check because the Yankees are playing right now the Yankees ostensibly are. Oh no. Oh no they are losing exuberantly seven to one. So I'm glad I'm missing it.
Great. Matt I guess you win this one. Thanks so much for watching this live stream. I really appreciate it again if you want to get that free resource. You can go to the link you see on the screen here it's also been dropped in the chat. And yeah if you have any questions just checking LinkedIn one more time. If you have any questions about podcasting in general. Let me know next week. I will be fresh back from CX. So I might be a little bit.
Tired. But I intend to talk about what makes a good video podcast so that should be a good one that's next week. Subscribe to this channel to find out what I'm going live it's it's Thursdays at 2pm Eastern I've decided so. Thursdays at this time this time this day this time. For the foreseeable future next week I'm talking about what makes a good video podcast. I also email my list so you get that free resource. And you'll be on the mailing list and so you will find out. When I'm going live.
All right thanks so much for watching I really appreciate it until next time. I'll see you out there.