So, um, now what do you wish you had known whenever you were first planning your very first podcasts? Cause I know you've been working with John for a while, but on your very first one that you were kind of taking the reins of with Kate's take and ditch busy, what do you wish you had known that you didn't before? Yeah. I mean, we've already touched on it a little bit here, but it's, um, about not, not everything has to be perfect. Not everything is going to be perfect.
Um, I remember when I launched Kate's take, I was like so focused on the fact that it was a topic based show and I was being a little bit like over the top about, no, my topics have to flow. Like it has to make sense and it has to be a progression. And like by episode 400, I was like, I'm going to talk about whatever like my audience is asking me, what questions I see on Facebook, like what conversations I'm having with people at events. And those were always my best episodes.
Very rarely, unless it's an actual serialized podcast, are your listeners going and thinking like this is awkward, Kate's talking about systems. And last week she talked about marketing. Like nobody's doing that. Right? So are you sure? I'm just kidding.
So there's things like that where I, I was putting so much bandwidth into that, that I was missing the whole idea of like just starting, getting better, recording more episodes, engaging with my audience, making my content better, becoming a better host, becoming a better speaker. Like all of those things are the things that are important. That's how you're going to get better.
That's how you're going to figure out how to grow your audience is when you start learning to be better on the microphone, create better content that your audience wants and engage with your audience so that you actually have a connection and can form community. Those are like the pillars of what's going to make this work, not whether or not your episodes match up well together. I love that. I love that. So now is there anything that you think can't be systematized?
I already know the answer, but I just want to hear it anyway. In my mind, no. Good, good. I love that. I love that so much. Is there anything that you see podcasters doing that drives you bananas when it comes to systems and processes? Not using them. No, yes. Okay. That makes perfect sense. That makes perfect sense. But I mean, there is like, I do think that maybe you have an hour or so one day and you're like, okay, I'm going to do this.
And you actually spend the time to put something in place. But then the next, like when you go to do your recording or whatever, you don't have anything scheduled and your prep isn't ready. And like, sometimes I see people put the steps in place, but then not leverage them. I know that creating systems and like getting on that, it takes time and it is a huge investment to get it started.
But I've never spoken with someone who has adopted a system and actually implemented it and been mad about the fact that they did that or thought like, what a waste of time that was like, I've never experienced that. So it's all about like following through with it, actually implementing it, like hold yourself accountable.
And if you don't feel like you can hold yourself accountable, get into a community, a group, get an accountability partner, join a mastermind, like tell your friend that you're really working hard on this and ask them to follow up with you next week to see how everything's going. Like start putting stops in place so that it, because otherwise it's way too easy to push it to the back burner.