This episode is going to be a little bit different. This episode is not going to be edited. That means I'm not going to cut things, about change things, and if I go wrong, you're going to hear it.
Now, I'm going to caveat that with we're going to edit and put music in. We're going to do edits to it that get people's attention at the start when we do our little previews. And I've got a bit of the end of a cough that I'm recovering from, so if at any point I do cough, I am going to edit that bit out because ultimately there is a bit of a quality thing for me to hold on to here.
But the reason that I'm doing that today is because so many aspiring podcasters or business owners who want to start a podcast and spread their message think that to start a podcast, they've got to be doing it perfectly. And it's going to be a little bit difficult, right? Because I'm two and a half years into podcasting.
I don't have a script as I speak right now. I've thought about what I'm going to talk about, and I was a teacher. I've been a teacher for seven years. So including a type where I had to cover an assembly last minute, didn't know what the topic was, just had to go with it, had to come up with something on the spot. So my skills in terms of coming up with stuff, talking to at least a level of eloquence, is practiced.
But at the same time, that doesn't mean that I don't um or get caught up over my words. When I'm in a classroom all the time, if I asked a question, especially in a P.H. lesson, I'm thinking about it, and then I'm going, "Oh, but no, but H," and on every podcast episode when I'm editing it or when my partner's editing it as he's learning that skill ahead of us becoming an agency, there are plenty of ums, ARs, and stutters that need catching out. Not loads, but they do need it.
But a lot of business owners think it's got to be perfect. And what they do then is they build this idea up in their heads that therefore they can't possibly get started because they don't know how to talk on camera. And what if it goes wrong? And what if something happens?
And what if they say the wrong thing? And this episode today is one going to be unedited because it shows you what it's like to just talk and to go with it. And I can tell you now the experience is that I'm being a little bit more careful than I possibly normally would because I know there's not an edit. And to me, I want to make sure it's as good as it can be.
But I want to take you back to the very first episode of the Single Girls Guide to Life. That is the episode, the podcast, there's my first error. That is the podcast P that I created for my life coaching business. And I remember the first episode. I remember having, and I've got notes with me now. They're just to the left of me, if you're watching and you can see it. But it's not in shot.
I had my notes written out, and I didn't have the video running because at that time, I was just thinking, "Oh my God, I just got to get this recorded. I want it to sound good." And I had written essentially a little mini script out, and I was reading from it. I remember as I recorded the first episode, thinking, "Well, I can't just stick to this script because I want to make it conversational. I want to be in the room with that person." So I'd written it quite conversationally, but even episode number one, I remember thinking, "Okay, the script is great. It's really good to guide me." But even now, I'm adding little bits into it as I think of them, as I naturally say things.
And that went out. I edited that myself, put it online, and it's one of the most downloaded episodes of the Single Girls Guide to Life, as you would expect, because what do people do when they find your podcast? Go back to episode number one.
And about six months or so ago, because I was trying to go and get little moments from the episode, I went back and listened to it. And I was furious with myself. I went back and I went, "Why are there so many ums and rs? What is going on? Why is it like that?" Because my level of detail, my level of caring has upped its game over two years. Of course it did.
But it's still one of the most downloaded episodes of the Single Girls Guide to Life. It's the one that pulls people in. It's what led to 100,000 downloads of that podcast. If it didn't happen, if it weren't for episode number one, I wouldn't be where I am now with it. And so this episode is intended to show you... I'm going to show you and tell you stories that make you realize that it doesn't have to be perfect at the start and that the value of the imperfection can actually win you over.
Because there are a lot of podcasts out there. Not as many as we might think, active-wise, but there's a lot of podcasts out there. And the most popular ones, let's be honest, have a team, have people involved, producers. They've probably got a celebrity involved, someone that you already knew before they were a podcaster. So there is a level of finish and quality to them.
But my name has been up in those ranks with those people. And that was very early on. That I... They ranked in the top 10 for something or the top 20 for something. And my name was around Michelle Obama, Matthew Hussey. And I'm thinking, "This is just me in my living room editing this." And they will have had natural arms kept in. And people would have cut stuff. Interviews would have been three hours long and cut down to an hour and a half for those kind of long ones. And there's me, just as best possible, three months in at that point, taking a few Ms and ARs out.
So we're going to be looking at you understanding that you don't have to have it perfect. That there's beauty in it going wrong. And you can judge this episode because, as I said, other than a few caveats and the fact that also I live next to a bunch of dogs that could start barking at any moment, and I'm not going to make you wait for two minutes for that either, this will be, I promise you that this will be an unedited version that you hear. There'll be some little coughs in there that you hear that don't make sense to take out. Obviously, if I have a coughing fit, we will. But we're going to go through that while you understand and can learn that this whole idea that you can't start a podcast because you don't know how you're going to get it right is like saying, "I'm not going to drive a car until I know I'm not going to make any faults. I'm not going to take my test until I know it's going to be perfect, like I don't make any miners."
Because if you didn't do that, if you didn't start getting in the car with your driving instructor or your mom or dad, then you wouldn't be where you are today in terms of having them been able to take the test, probably getting a few miners on the way. And now, even now, when do you drive your car without a few miners, without getting it wrong sometimes, without thinking, "Oh, that was a bit close there. I should have waited or I should have gone quicker. I could have taken that turn there." Hesitation. How many times do we hesitate and you get that mark? We can't do that.
We can't sit there with podcasting and think, "I've got to make it perfect to make a start." Because just like driving, thing, you have to pass your test first before you really learn to drive. That's the saying, right? Once you pass your test, you learn to drive. True. Because you're on your own and you're doing it and you have to make those judgments without someone's foot hovering over the pedal.
And that is exactly the same for podcasting. You can't sit there hovering over the pedal saying, "Oh, I can't do that in case I can't do that in case what happens if this? You have to get started." And that's the kind of mindset that we need to start adopting if you're going to go into podcasting. We fear this element that we're going to get judged and when you put yourself out online like you open yourself up to that judgment.
But the thing is, you can't get good at saying what you're saying. And for those of you that I know are aspiring to talk on stages, to be interviewed, that's harder than podcasting because when I do a podcast, especially a solo episode, I have planned it. I know what I'm going to talk about. I've thought about what I want you to take away from it. I've thought about the structure of it. I've got some bullet points here. I've got some stories. I know I'm going to tell.
Now, I've been interviewed as a result of my podcast. People have invited me to go on podcasts, on live radio broadcasts as well, might I also add. So BBC 6 called me up, been on panels. Now, depending on the setup, depends on if you know anything about what you're going to be talking about. When it came to BBC 6, it was, "We just want to talk to you about your Single Girls Club." "Oh, good. Okay. Right. I don't know where I'm going to go with this." And the second time was, "We're doing a piece on divorce. We'd really like your take on the new fault divorce and what that might mean." "Okay, cool. Very general compared to sometimes podcasts where you're told kind of the questions that are going to be prompted.
...and the same for panels. I actually don't like it when I know the question so much because I start to overthink the answer. More, but you are thinking on your feet more and there's that element of thinking what if they ask me something that I don't know and to me that's a fun challenge that is how I see it. It's why I fell in love with teaching because teaching, you end up doing very similar things every single day even though the classes are different and the year groups change, etc. But there's always the element of the group and the individuals in the groups are going to be the things that you can't predict.
There would be times where I'd be in the middle of teaching something, and it didn't matter what kind of group it was, there would be a time where someone asked me, "Well, can I do this or why do we do it like that?" The thing with maths is when you were taught it, probably you weren't taught why we did something; you were just taught how to do it. Part of my development as a teacher was to understand why we did things so at least I could explain that to pupils. But sometimes there would be some things that I didn't really know why we did them either. I'm like, "Well, just the way we do them." And you can't necessarily give that answer. I mean, you can give that answer, but it's not going to buy you anything with the pupils. That doesn't really help them. They go, "Oh, right, okay. Why would I do something I'm just told to do? You know, you want to make children—I want more people to be critical thinkers like why do I have to do it this way?"
And if anyone wants that, that's me because I'm going to always challenge the way things are done and not just assume they're done a particular way. So I used to say, if they said, "You know why do we do that?" You go, "You know what? I don't know. It could be something to do with this if I genuinely had an idea or there might be a real reason. And you know what? I'm going to check. I'm gonna check with Mr. Drew, who I called upon in those moments. Going to check with Mr. Drew, and I'll get back to you, particularly if I knew there was a reason or if I knew there was another way. There's always a question about converting um meters per second into kilometers per hour that I just—it's actually not that difficult, but I just suck at it, and I always fluff it a bit.
So it's a little bit like that where if I was on a panel and I genuinely didn't have experience, expertise, or an opinion on what they had spoken about or I just had no blooming clue what they were talking about, I would say, "I'm really sorry. I don't actually know what that's about or I haven't really had the time to think about that. You know, if it's something I've heard of but don't know much about what I have heard, what I have read, if I can give anything, then I'm going to caveat it with things that I can do in that sense. But I'm going to be quite, you know what? I don't know about this enough to talk on it, but what I can do is bring this potential perspective in that I think connects. And you take it back to something you know now that that's only in a live situation."
Live podcasting is becoming a bit of a trend. People are talking about doing these episodes live so people can tune in, you can react, you can get questions Q&A, and then uploading it as a podcast. That's becoming a bit of a thing, so watch this space. But the beauty of a podcast is, even though I'm doing this unedited, you ultimately get to do podcasting edited. So if you really stumble over your words, there have been times when I have tried to say the same thing three, four, five times and there's great bloopers which I've put a few bloopers out before, you might have seen it on my Instagram where my boyfriend called me halfway through and it came through on the laptop because my phone's being used as the video and I answered it in good faith that it wouldn't take too long and I was on the phone for 20 minutes, bearing in mind the video is still running, and I'm thinking what am I going to do? I can't even remember what I was saying.
These bloopers are actually, I wouldn't—I didn't keep that in the edit, funnily enough. They didn't need to know our plans about trying to get to the science fair down at Anglia Rasin. But these bloopers, these things that interrupt you end up becoming quite fun, and they can give this element of content that you use as entertainment because entertainment content, quite difficult now on Instagram, like it used to be dancing and pointing and we've very much moved away from that. Entertainment, to some degree, allows people to laugh at you or laugh with you. And I don't mind stumbling over my words a few times and throwing that out as an intentional piece.
But every time I do a podcast episode, every time I do a webinar, every time I do something where I'm presenting, as I did in teaching, I always then evaluated what I could do to make it better. And listening back to my own podcast episodes, going back and listening to the first episode of the Single Girls Guide to Life, I went, "Wow, look how far I've come." But also, I need to check myself on this. Editing your own podcast at the start can be valuable in that sense because you go, "I didn't say that the way I wanted to. Yeah, actually, even though the edit was really good, like I didn't stutter, I didn't have to think about what I was saying. Actually, what I was saying wasn't good enough." So going wrong ultimately makes you tighten your game up.
And I know so many of you want to be on panels, so if you're not used to talking and talking for an extended period of time, I've been going for 14 minutes here, 14 minutes with a very basic bullet-pointed outline. I'm generally talking out loud, but I've done that because I can craft that over time. So what do you think my conversations with people are like with clients is like? What do you think I would be like on a panel? I've got enough to talk about. I probably need to rain it in a bit sometimes. But once you start talking and putting it out there and then looking back by editing, by having to listen to yourself, that's when you learn your craft. That's when you learn to drive the car. So we don't have to be afraid of going wrong on a podcast.
I suppose one thing people think about is that if I put information out there that's wrong, what can I do about it? And I want you to think about these little sections in the newspaper called Corrections, which you may or may not have noticed. But publications, especially, you know, big national newspapers, while they are big national newspapers, you know, there is an element of wanting to get things out as quick as possible to be first is an important thing in the media industry. And often, even if the information is not correct and it's wrong, we will see these news outlets, particularly with um websites, will put the information out there having to correct it later on at the bottom or at the top in italics. They'll go, "We previously, in a version of this published on blah, blah, blah, said this, this, and this. When actually this, this, and this." And newspapers do the same when they make a statement that's incorrect, and they have a Corrections con. It's very small, but it does exist.
And I made a statement the other day in an episode where I said I was comparing the Instagram accounts. I initially would have given the example of Richard Branson, how many followers does he have versus how many followers does Virgin have on Instagram. And I think I made the point about Steven Bartlett, like there's not even a channel for the Diary of Coo podcast. Wrong. Wrong information from me. I had said it because I genuinely believed it. So I think if you make genuine mistakes, then all you've got to do is admit to them and own up. And it turns out there actually is a Diary of CEO podcast Instagram account. I had to fact verify it was true because I looked at just thought, well, I've never seen this. I've never come across this as a clear profile that I've thought about following, which, as you guys will know, I like the podcast and therefore why do I not know it exists? It has significantly fewer followers, so it made my point anyway. And the fact that I am a listener, a fan of Steven Bartlett, and then I don't know that it exists just doubles down on my point. But what can I do about that from a professional standpoint? Well, I'm going to go back to the show notes of that episode and say, "During this episode, I mentioned this. Actually, here's the account. Here is what I said wasn't there. And I could even put the point, but it makes my point that even as a fan, I didn't know about it. It's about owning it. And I would do the same in front of the pupils I had in my classroom because I'm not going to BS my way through it. I wouldn't do it in an interview because I don't know if a kid asks me something and I don't know the answer, I'm going to be honest with them and say, "Well, I've never heard of that or I don't know. I'd have to have a look at it by myself sometime."
Now in an interview, you can't do that necessarily. And for all I know, they're asking me something that I don't actually need to know. There could be a situation where a client tests you a little bit and says, "Well, what about this?" And you go, "Oh my God, what? What are they talking about? I don't know what they're talking about. What am I going to do? Maybe I'll just say like, I know. Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah. I mean, yeah, that's really useful. I've looked at that. Yeah, we don't feature it in our thing." And it could be that it's completely made up, for all you know. You don't know in an interview. You don't know they're testing your integrity. They're testing, are you an honest person? Are you someone I can trust? And by being humble about it, saying, "You know what? I don't know about that. And if that is something that you're interested in, I haven't heard of it myself. But if that's something you're interested in, I'm not the person for you." That comes across so much stronger in a situation.
I think that can be said for the same thing if you're on a podcast. You're going to be giving information and sharing your stories in the manner that you have experienced it. So someone knows more than you, then they're probably not going to want to listen to your podcast. And why would you need them to be listening? Because whatever products or service you've got, they're probably outgrown you in whatever fashion. You're trying to speak to people that are usually on a journey behind you, on a journey where they are not as skilled as you. And the information that you have is going to be valuable to them. Because the other thing that I know is going to be playing on people's minds is that, but I'm not the top expert. But there are other people out there that know so much more than than me. And I could say that about marketing...
I've only been in the marketing game since I started the life coaching business which it will be coming up for three years. I have no qualification in it, no official qualification, but I've got two and a half to three years worth of experience of doing it on the ground. And I would say, if I come back to my teaching experience, the reason I chose a school-centered initial teacher training program, which means that you're in a school for a year, I believe you become a better teacher out of that program than if you do a PGC solely in a university. Sorry to anyone that did that, that's my belief because those guys did two six-week placements, that ain't long enough. Me, I was in the school for the whole year.
I started doing a 20-minute starter about, when did I start that, maybe a week before the half-first half-term, so like six weeks in. And then I did that regularly with one class. Then that got to doing half a lesson. Then that got to doing a whole lesson with them. Oh, then we're going to take on another class. Then we're going to take on another. The amount of experience I had outweighed any of those guys for sure. And the same goes for when I was learning to be in theater sound. I went and volunteered in all the shows to the point that someone that we had coming in as a guest in my degree was talking to us and went, "Have you gone to all the West End shows? Are you depping?" Yeah, I'm doing all that. And she went, "I don't know why you're here. You're doing everything you need to do. You're already in it. I don't know why you're on this course." Oh, right, great. I'm only spending like, what was it at the time, oh, still the cheap one, but I'm still spending 10K on this plus the loan to live. No worries there.
You want people that have got the experience, and they don't necessarily want to hear always from the person that's done it so well they can't relate to you. Even now, you could be like, "Well, I'm not two years into podcasting, but I can tell you what my experience was when I first started." And it didn't start with video. I've said that a hundred times.
There was one thing that really clicked in my mind, and I've been reading or listening to rather outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, a great book if you've never read it. It's all about how success really happens and that it's not down to the individual but actually the set of circumstances that surround you. It's a combination of the individual being in the right place at the right time and sometimes the things that you can't see. He talks about the fact that you do not have to be the top of your game to be successful. It's actually a level of being good enough.
And as I'm creating this podcast and when I was thinking, "How am I going to do this without editing?" and I think I'm doing pretty well so far, I went, "But it's only got to be good enough." And I will do my normal edits of intro, outro music and cutting. We haven't had any dogs; we haven't had too much coughing. So we're actually doing a pretty clean cut here. I don't see that anything really needs cutting. It's just got to be good enough to go out. And that's all you need to have a podcast out there.
I don't know how you feel listening to this, and I don't know how you think. I'm hoping you're not thinking, "God, she's got this so sussed; she's hardly stuttered at all." And therefore, how am I ever going to do it? Because all I want you to do is not start with a 22, as we're at this point, a 22-minute episode. I want you to start with five minutes, and I want you to just practice recording and saying stuff to the camera.
If you are that concerned about the ums and stutters, well, just start. Get a minute done. Do a mini introduction without stuttering, and have it written out. And write it out, and you're going to say it to the camera. You're going to look down at the piece of paper, and then you're going to come back up and say it again. And over time, you're going to repeat that statement over and over again so that it becomes so natural.
I haven't done a single Girls Guide to Life episode for a little while. But let's just see if I can do the introduction to that off the cuff because I've done it a hundred times. It always slightly changed. So I would say, "Hello and welcome to another episode of the Single Girls Guide to Life. I'm Shantel Dyson, your single life and love coach for singles in their 20s, 30s, and 40s. And this podcast is all about living single life with confidence. We're going to go into topics such as living alone, dating, and being the best, most confident self you can on solo trips, making new friends, and staying confident in your single life."
I did that. It's not exactly perfect. I was creative as I went because I haven't done it for a while. I'm a bit rusty. But once you do things over and over, it becomes natural. And the same happens for podcasting, which is just thinking out loud but with a bit of a structure. And if you do go wrong from time to time, if you watch the video version of this, you will see there was a moment there where I didn't know what I was saying. You could see it on my face. But that whole idea of doing something, putting yourself under pressure, doing a little bit of a challenge just makes you more human. It makes you more authentic in the delivery. And you won't see hardly any cuts in this video. Watch it all the way through, and it won't be the most interesting. Hardly any watch on YouTube because it won't be pleasing to watch. But that's the genuine authenticity that we're looking for as we move into this space.
People don't want these cleanly cut perfect things. Like it's incredible when people do them, don't get me wrong. You wouldn't want to watch a movie in the cinema, a Hollywood blockbuster, with there being loads and loads of problems with the edit. But if you ever used to look—I don't know if they're still on there, but on IMDb, there was always a section for not bloopers but like errors in the recording. So continuity being one, for example. When you go from one shot and say there's a glass on the table in the next shot, there's not a glass on the table. But in the next shot, the glass is back. Even in Hollywood blockbuster movies, sometimes the glass is moved. And that tells us that they still went with that because it was good enough. So it wasn't a poor edit because it all worked together. It was good enough to go out. But when they went, "Oh, that glass isn't there. That glass is there," either no one noticed it or they went, "I value this piece over this piece," and therefore, it's going out regardless of this glass that we forgot about.
There was an episode I'm going to come back to it on Diary of a CEO where their recording equipment had not worked, or they didn't have a backup or something like that. It was the Melc episode, and they went and rolled it out. I don't know how well that episode did. I could probably check the YouTube stats if I wanted to. It really—it turned me off on the audio. But when you do listen, it's not that bad. And it just goes to show that even people at the top of their game still make mistakes, still have that experience, and don't let it stop them. And neither should you because imagine what will happen if you could just get the first episode recorded or your first 5-minute snippet. What that's going to lead to once you realize that the stutters, the ums don't really matter, that there's something that you can work on and improve.
And imagine in six months after that first podcast episode what you're going to be like as a host, what it's going to mean to have a podcast going out showing your true authentic self, letting yourself be critical of your execution but improving it as you go. And what impact it would have on your audience and on changing the way the world thinks to just jump over this hurdle once and not be stopped by the fact that it won't be perfect. Perfectionism holds us back in all kinds of ways. And luckily, I haven't held on to that too much myself. So I'm showing you, I'm giving you a leaf out of my book to be taken that it doesn't matter. It does not matter. My first episode on the Single Girls Guide to Life wasn't great, and it goes to the same for all pieces of content. You have got to get in the car and drive on your own to learn how to really drive on the roads. You have got to get your podcast recorded, edited, and out.
You might do no edit at all based on the fact that you've seen that it's possible to get through. And once you start putting podcast episodes out there, that's when you start learning how to do podcasts. I could teach you everything I know, but until you go out there until you put one out there and then put another one out there and another one out another, you won't critique effectively. You won't then get better at podcasting. And you won't be able to have the impact that you want to have with your business.
So, we've made it, potentially. Jason's going to be loving life because he's only—I'm going to tell him that this episode doesn't have to be edited by the basic edit. So, he won't have to listen to it for 30 minutes, completely unedited podcast episode. Let me know what you think because I'm really intrigued as to if you just think it basically sounds the same, which I'm hoping it does because I know our episodes don't need too much editing. I've done well not to really stumble. I did once right at the start in night. And there's a couple of bits where I've corrected my word in, but it just goes to show that it might not matter. And if you just want to make sure that you're ready to start a podcast, I'm going to pop a link in the show notes in the bit where you can click on the podcast episode that will allow you to just make sure you're ready to start a podcast. Have you thought about all the things? It's not helping with the stutters, but it is. If you're in that beginning stage of thinking like how do I get started, take that quiz and it will tell you some—ask you some questions that in response it will tell you if you're ready or not, or if you need a little bit more support, a few more things to think about before you actually get going. But the stutters are a good thing. They're something to practice, get good at, refine. And see, this is a skill that you're developing, not something that you have to be perfect at before you even start.
Until next time, everybody, keep changing the way the world thinks one podcast episode at a time, and I'll see you then.