And to me, everything that you've said, it sounds like whether you're doing seasonal or just a constant release, it sounds like prevention of burnout, the biggest key to prevent burnout is just making sure that you're preparing everything you possibly can ahead of time. Would you say that's an accurate statement? Absolutely. Like I said, if we go back to my exercise metaphor analogy, when you first start working out, I mean, it sucks, right? It totally sucks. You're like, oh my God, I'm sore.
But that first week is your preparation. You are going to have a little bit of discomfort and it's going to be so uncomfortable that you are now placed into a zone in which you are like, either I quit or I keep going. How bad do I really want this? And when you look at it, like when you compare it to like podcasting, you go podcasting exercise. Okay. Exercise is supposed to make me stronger and it will make me stronger.
The first steps are always the most difficult, but by week two, week three, you start getting used to the routine. Your muscles still may be a little bit weaker or was still a little bit weak, but not as weak, right? You're growing, you're building, you're building endurance. And once you start building more endurance, you start to get strong. And then maybe you start to see weight loss.
Maybe you start seeing physical aspects of exercise, you know, the healthy eating, everything that all encompasses a healthy lifestyle. And you start to see those results. I look at it the same way as podcasting and setting yourself up for success later down the line. It doesn't have to be hard. It doesn't have to be something that's overcomplicated.
You just have to know where you need to reach your people so that they can take an action on something that you want to share with them in case there's something that is important for you to share with them. So set up everything as much as possible. Having a website, this is a big thing for podcasters. They never have a website. They always rely either on, you know, not that I'm talking bad about any services, but they rely on like hosting service websites. I'm talking full legit website.
You know, I'm talking, get a WordPress site. You know, I have a Kajabi site because that has allowed me to have the freedom to take the time off to do what I want to do and kind of just rest and still earn an income. But if you have to start a WordPress site, learn how to use it or hire someone to do it, you have to take the step somewhere because you're not going to get any further in podcasting if you're just going to continue to keep podcasting and burning out.
I have some friends that do a podcast and all they do. That's all they do. They just do podcasts. They have no website and it doesn't mean that they're not successful because they are very successful, but their model is specific towards comedy and true crime. And they have already set up, you know, whether it be a Patreon, I think they still have a Patreon. I know they do actually.
And that Patreon is just one element of their monetization efforts along with the merch that they sell along with the live shows that they do along with, you know, so they set up everything in the process. And then they've also set up this really small dinky little website to collect email addresses. It doesn't have to be complicated.
Just has to be somewhere where they collect emails because one day and I'm sure you I'm not sure if the audience understand this or remembers this, but I don't know if you remember when Instagram went down like six months ago and all the influencers lost their mind like they were losing their mind and they're like, oh my God, I can't make money. And I remember I remember seeing specifically seeing one of my friends who's an influencer. She was losing it like every second. I can't do this.
I can't do that. When those instances come around where Facebook comes down or YouTube goes down or Instagram goes down, what's the other line of communication that you have? Well, it could be your email list and communicating and telling them, hey, just letting you know, I do realize Instagram is down today. I will be back once Instagram gets back up, but here's a promotion that was supposed to run on Instagram, but it's right here in your email inbox. Here you go.
So that those lines of communication need to always be open somewhere, but you got to put the work in in order to make sure those lines are always open. I'm so glad you said that because that's one of the things we actually do talk about a lot is that your podcast definitely needs a website and it definitely needs an email list because your email and your website, those are the only things you actually own because yeah, you can post all this stuff on Instagram.
You can post all this stuff on Facebook. You can post all this stuff on TikTok, but if any of it goes down, what are you going to do? Reach out to your audience.