Okay, if you are listening to this podcast in real time, I am so excited because the doors to Amy Porterfield signature program, Digital Course Academy are still open, but only for a few more days. The Doors actually closed for enrollment on September 17, 2020. So if you're listening to this later, I'm sorry you've already missed out but if you are still thinking about joining digital course Academy for the class of 2020, I highly recommend you go to KrystalProffitt.com/DCA to check out all of the bonuses that I'm offering for any people that sign up for digital course Academy through me. These bonuses include my own signature program, profit podcasting, that teaches you all about how to start launch and market your own podcasts. So not only will you get Amy's amazing program, digital courses had me and her bonuses but you'll get access to my signature program profit podcasting, plus our own private exclusive community that will help you get to the finish line of your digital course that much faster. I also have the DCA digest bonus, which is kind of the cliff notes version of digital course Academy. Every time a new module drops, I'm gonna have exclusive insider tips for where you might get stuck where I got stuck and how you can avoid some of the common pitfalls that course creators make. Plus I'm also going to show you where to pay attention to the most critical pieces of the program. There are even more bonuses that I can't just even just go on and on about today but I want you to go check them out. Go to KrystalProffitt.com/DCA if you're thinking about joining Digital Course Academy or you can click the link in this episode and it will take you straight Right there. Again that's KrystalProffitt.com/DCA. And don't miss out on this opportunity to join the class of 2020. But the doors closed on September 17, 2020. So don't miss out. KrystalProffitt.com/DCA.
Oh, today's topic, I'm so excited about milestones. So I want to tell you a quick like funny, fun fact about me, whatever you want to call it. I usually do really, really well celebrating other people whenever they've hit milestones. And I think I've mentioned this on here before but I want to have an enneagram like coach or someone who like goes in depth on like the enneagram because I think that this is a common trait between enneagram threes, that's what I am and if you're not familiar with enneagram, you're like what are you even talking about? So the enneagram is on a scale from one to nine. And most people fall really heavily with one number more so than the rest. And each number has like a personality, identifying factor, like I'm a three, which is a achiever. And then my dad is a seven who is like the happy go lucky, you know, life of the party kind of guy. My mom is a five who really enjoys the details and really just diving deep into research mode, like she loves all that kind of stuff. So we've taken this quiz as a family, my husband, I think he was a three as well, but it's funny because he scored a three but I see him more as like a nine, which I think is like the peacekeeper. So it's definitely very interesting and how all of us are so different and how we receive information how we process it and everything but I think that most enneagram threes the achievers are really bad on celebrating milestones or celebrating goals, right? So like shout outs, my other enneagram threes, that like you see a goal, right? You plan for this goal to happen. You reach that goal. And then you immediately say, Well, I could have done more. Or, well, it's great, like I got 100. But really now my goal is 1000, right? Like, this is how my mind constantly works. So I am not very good about celebrating all of my milestones, because as soon as I hit one, I've already moved on to the next five goals that I want to hit. I understand. I need to work on this because people ask me like, Well, what do you do whenever you know you were podcasting for a year or whenever you can Get your 100 episode or you hit 200 like all these things, and I'm like, um, yeah, we need to talk about that because I need to make sure that I do this correctly and that we celebrate because 200 episodes, which is coming up very soon, is going to be a big deal. Okay, like 100 I don't think I celebrated enough. So let's dive all into how we can celebrate milestones for your podcast and what that looks like. So let's get right to it. Welcome to the Proffitt Podcast where we teach entrepreneurs how to start launch and market their podcast. I'm your host, Krystal Proffitt, and I'm so excited that you're here. Thanks for hanging out with me today because if you've been trying to figure out the world of podcasting, think of this show as the time saving shortcut you've been looking for. So let's get right to it, shall we?
Okay, so we are talking about celebrating your podcasts, milestones. And I explained a little bit in the intro about what that means. And you probably have an idea of what to expect, right? We're talking about those big goals that you have, whether it is your downloads or the actual episode numbers, or it could be a certain amount of time. So I wanted to break down exactly what a milestone is and how you can celebrate it. So first and foremost, I think that the most common milestone is hitting 1000 downloads, right? Because that's like, Holy moly, that is a big deal. I know for me, as a podcaster. And this was way before I started teaching podcasting. This was when this show was the profit pot or no, not the profit. It was this is before this show was the profit podcast. It was when it was The rookie life podcast, my only goal was to get 1000 downloads. That's all I wanted to happen. You know, of course, I wanted to grow my audience and have a big impact. But internally, right, like as my own internal motivation and goal was to get 1000 downloads, and if you've listened to this podcast before, you know, that took me five months to make that happen, and hopefully, you've listened to this podcast enough, and you have tools and strategies and resources to help you reach that goal a lot faster than it took me I have people tell me all the time, like oh, I hit 1000 downloads in my first month and I have students of mine, it takes them a month and a half and some people it takes them six months. So we are all over the board whenever it comes to when you will achieve your downloads. It depends on your audience and your niche and how often you post and a ton of things. So that's why people ask me How long will it take me to get my first 1000 downloads? I'm like, I can't even give you like a real answer to that, because there are literally so many variables that go into this number. But I do think that this is something that you should celebrate, I even think that you should celebrate every 100 downloads you get going up to your thousand. Because this was something that I did in the beginning. And I'll have to go back because I still have these posts there on my Facebook page, so I'll have to dig a few of them out and and share them in the show notes. But I have these Canva images that I created that celebrated my first 100 200 300 I might have gone by increments of 100 until I got to 1000 but I literally posted these on social media every time they happened and the reason why is because It was a way for me to talk about my podcast success without it being like, Oh, look at me look at me. I was putting this post out and saying, thank you so much to my audience. And those that were in my audience were like, Oh, this is really cool. But those that weren't, we're thinking, Hmm, well, what is she up to over there? What is Krystal actually doing? What is this podcast that she's talking about? So it's way for you to mark it like it's a secret ninja ninja marketing hack for you to talk about your show in a way that's not just look at me. Look at me, it's you telling your audience, thank you so much. We have like we collectively have reached this download goal that we had set forth for ourselves. So thank you so much for your appreciation and for listening to the show. So that's the first thing is being able to achieve that 1000 download mark is usually Most podcasters strive for. But again, I cannot give everybody an exact definition of when that will happen for you. I say definition that's not the right word. That's not the right terminology but the right pathway for you to get there faster. I can just tell you what's worked for me what's worked for my students, and to give you just the God's honest truth that it took me five months to get there. So if you get there, anytime within the first, you know, two months of your podcast, and that's incredible, you're already doing better than I was, whenever I first started. I've actually had a few members of the party people community, they've been celebrating that they hit their first 1000 and 1500 downloads within their first two months of their podcast. So shout out to y'all. My party people y'all are incredible. Keep doing amazing things and sharing your awesome messages because like that's definitely something to celebrate. So that's one milestone. And that's you. Usually most, most podcasters most brand new podcasters want to celebrate their first 1000 downloads.
The next one is one year podcasting. That's usually the second milestone that a lot of people want to celebrate. And I've had people ask me like, well, I usually like because they're posting once a week, this podcast is very different, right? Because we come at you all the time. Like I'm just shoving podcasting information in your face twice a week at the bare minimum. And if you listen to the daily podcast, the potty report, then you're getting a dose of that, like you're getting a dose of me a lot. And I get it, I get it. It's a lot of podcasting information, but hopefully you're geeking out on it just as much as I am. But this show reached so much. I'm trying to think of the word like episode. It's not links I've reached episode numbers. Most podcasts won't see in a shorter amount of time. And that's because I published twice a week with this podcast, the profit podcast. That wasn't always the case. It took me a year to get to around the 50 something mark, right, like and that is what typical podcasts will do whenever they release one show every single week, right? Because there's 52 weeks in a year, let's think about this, like logically 52 weeks in a year, if you release once a week, that's around 52 episodes in one year. So people will tell me Well, I'm not going to reach 100 episodes in one year, but I've been podcasting for a year and for me, like that's an incredible milestone and I tell them, heck yes it is. Do you know how many people like okay, so get this. I love throwing this stat out, again to the members of my party, people community, I tell them get to Episode 15 at Episode 15 because most podcast burnout between the 14 and 15 episode like sometime around there, you will go to iTunes or Apple podcast, Google Play Spotify, and you will see podcast that published episodes up to around 13, maybe 14, and then you don't see any more episodes. They didn't publish anything else after that. So I tell my people look, just get to 15 like get to 15 you will be over the hump and hopefully you will continue podcasting. So yeah, one year podcasting is a huge freakin deal. And I think that you should celebrate it. So the question is, how, how should I celebrate it right? Like, how can I get my community involved online? How can I get people on my email list or my facebook group or people on my social media to kind of join in the celebration? Well, I think that you have to do this strategically by setting Uh, your content and the information leading up to the day that you're celebrating. It's been a year and I know most people are like, well, I started on this date last year, but it's not gonna fall on the day that I published my episodes. It's okay guys, let's not be so rigid about all of our rules and guidelines and all the things. If it's close enough around when you publish your podcast a year before, then that's good enough. We'll call that your birthday, right? your podcast birthday, even if it's in the same month, right? Like, I'm not super crazy about rules and being all rigid about all that kind of stuff. But I do want you to pick a date that you're like, you're going to put out a podcast episode and say, This is the day that I'm going to celebrate the podcast. Now there's two ways to do this. You can actually put out a podcast episode saying I'm celebrating its one year of the podcast. Or you could not say anything on your show and simply share about it on social media. Does that make sense? Like you don't have to make it a huge deal on your podcast if you don't want to, because I know some people are like, it just kind of feels weird to talk about how amazing the podcast is and how awesome I am on the show. But it would feel a little bit more fun to play around on social media and like, share a you know, a GIF or video or Igy story or something that's like, Oh, I'm so happy that we are celebrating one year of the podcast make sure you go check it out. If that feels more natural to you, then go that route whichever one works for you. But I do think that you should celebrate whenever you've been podcasting for a year because it is a big freakin deal. Like I want you if you've been podcasting for a year, even if you've been podcasting for six months. Oh my gosh. Give yourself a pat on the back because it is a big deal. If you've made it To Episode 15 of your podcast, that is a big deal and it should be celebrated. Now, depending on how you want to celebrate that, we're going to talk about some other options that you can do. But for one year, I would recommend that you do at least a few posts on social media to get your community excited, and that'll just make it that much more fun.
Okay, the other milestone that I know some of you will hit within the first two years of your podcast is 100 episodes. So this is when you can go a little bit bigger with your celebrations. And we're going to talk about a way to do this in a second, but I want you to really go all out on your 100th episode. I know I'm I'm teaching right I'm teaching you to do this do as I say not as I do, because I didn't do this very well. And I think because I didn't really like 100 kind of stuff. snuck up on me. Silly is that is right, because, I mean, I knew it was coming. I should have seen it coming. Hang on, I'm actually looking at my content calendar. And I'm trying to see when it happened. Okay, so my 100th episode happened in November 2019. Actually, I have the date right here in front of me. So it was November 12, 2019. So I bet if I know myself really well, I did not make a huge deal about it because it was close to the holidays. And I didn't want to Mike do this whole thing leading up to it, that I was going to have to manage and control and like make sure that everything was going on. Plus, I'm pretty sure that I launched my digital course in December of last year. Actually, I know for a fact because now I'm looking at my calendar and I see it and I bet that I was nervous that if I started talking about That it would take away from releasing the course, which is real silly in hindsight now that I think about it, but I'm pretty sure that's what happened. So I didn't do it very well, like, only now knowing what I know, can I say, Hey, this is how I can do better and you better believe that episode 200, which is coming up very soon, we will actually hit that before the end of October 2020. We're gonna do this a little bit bigger, we're gonna do things differently. Okay, so how can you celebrate your different podcast milestones? Well, first of all, actually, I want to go back real fast, because maybe you're thinking, Well, how do I know? When all of these things happen? Like maybe you have a different numbering system and you don't even know which episode number you're on which let's change that. Okay, let's have a good content calendar that has your episode title, your episode date when your episode goes live, and the episode Number. And then I actually have a really cool resource that's all about the content calendar. And I want you to go watch this YouTube video because it's all about how to set up a content calendar in Asana. And I love Asana. It's my lifesaver. And I think that if you set up a content calendar in there for your podcast, you can track these things better. And then that way, your 100th episode won't sneak up on you and you can actually make a bigger deal about it. And who knows, you might get a huge boost in your downloads whenever you're approaching one of these milestones for your podcast. So how do we celebrate? Okay, wait, hang on, I keep I keep saying this. And then I'm going back. I'm all over the place today.
I want to make sure for those of you that are buzzsprout users, there is a new and I don't remember exactly how long ago they updated this, but it's really cool. So if you're a buzzsprout user You're probably used to receiving emails whenever you do hit a big milestone. Because whenever you hit your first 1025 5100 150 202 5500 750 1000, they send you an email. And it's really cool because it's very motivating. You're like, Oh, dang, I got my first hundred downloads. This is awesome. And then it keeps going. So if you need something to share on social media, if you're like, I don't want to go create something buzzsprout actually does this for you. They'll send you an email. And it is like, it's just share to Facebook or Twitter. Like I'm looking right here. I think you can share it to Instagram probably if you just take a screenshot. You could share it on Instagram, as well but they make it easy towards like a one click and you can share it on social media. That is one of the easiest ways to get the info out about your show. But what's cool is they have your podcasts Download achievements, then it has how many overall podcast downloads you have, and how many episodes you've published. So I'm looking at the profit podcast, and it's telling me, okay, you have published 189 episodes because I have a few bonuses thrown in there. And it says publish 11 more to receive your next achievement. So it's telling me that if I publish 11 more episodes of this podcast, I'm going to hit 200 episodes, which is a big deal, which is a big deal, guys. Like I'm really excited. I have like, okay, so I'll tell you now what I was going to tell you a second ago, I just wanted to make sure and point out to all my buzzsprout peeps, make sure you go check this out. So you go into your buzzsprout account, you go to stats, that's the tab you go to. And then all the way over to the right, you'll see achievements. And when you click on that, it'll tell you what your achievements are. And then you can actually click on the little icons, and share like, oh, Congratulations, you've published this many episodes. Congratulations, you have this many downloads. So that's a fun way to market your show and talk about it on social media.
Okay. Now, how like, how can we celebrate these milestones? So first and foremost, I think one of the easiest things you can do is create an event. Whenever you know something is coming up, like if it's a milestone, like a birthday, right, a podcast or birthdays coming up, you can actually set a date. Like, let's say you wanted to create a Facebook event. So you could create a Facebook event where you're going to go live and maybe you have a glass of champagne or a bubble water or something and you're like, Hey, guys, thanks for celebrating with me. I'm celebrating one year of the podcast and I'm really excited. If you haven't listened to it yet go to blah, blah, blah, and you give them all your podcast information. And say I just wanted to share this moment with you because I'm really excited. know that might sound super cheesy, but I can tell you right now that if you put your own personality spin on this, your audience is going to be excited about it. Why? Because they're your audience. They're your people. They're excited to hear from you and learn from you and listen to you and be educated by you. So they're going to be excited and celebrate with you.
Another thing that you can do is actually send a newsletter to your email list. And what I think is really cool is you can say, Okay, guys, here's what's up. Here's the deal. Here's when everything is going down. And you can invite them to your Facebook event, or wherever you're holding this virtual event. You could do a zoom call and invite everybody on like, Hey, guys, we're gonna hang out for 10 minutes and talk about, you know, your favorite episodes or what you liked most about the podcast or your biggest takeaway or your favorite interview. You can do this however you want. But I think that it would be cool if you send out an email To everyone on your email list and say, okay, on this date at this time, we're all going to go to this one place and talk about the podcast and celebrate. So bring your favorite beverage and come celebrate with us. That sounds like a lot of fun. Right? And I mean, maybe you're saying, but Krystal, I have 10 listeners. That's awesome. You have 10 listeners that would be excited to celebrate with you for your podcast birthday. Okay, look, I want to get that stinking thinking out of your mind. I want you to be excited to celebrate every milestone with your community with your people, because those are the people that have gotten you there. I don't never want you to forget how you've hit any of these milestones. You didn't do this alone, right? You're not you're not in this podcast journey by yourself. And if you are, how selfish of you. Stop that like quit that. We don't do that around here we are people that have servant's heart and we show it for our people and we deliver valuable information to them so that they are entrenched with everything we're sharing on our podcast. They're excited about it, and they cannot wait for our shows to come out every single week. That's the type of content I want you to create. And I think that your audience has every right to celebrate with you because you would not be here without them. I would not be here showing up every single week for this podcast. Without y'all Why? Why would I do this? Why would I just sit here and listen to myself talk all the time? No, no, no, I absolutely do this for y'all. And I'm so grateful for every single one of you.
Okay, so the other way that you can celebrate is with a giveaway. So of course, I'm teasing this now because this is what we do. Why we talk about things well ahead of time that way, you don't feel blindsided and say oh Krystal, I did not Know that your 200th episode was coming up? Nope, you're getting you're getting an exclusive sneak peek in Episode 187 that you better get your hearts ready because Episode 200 we're doing a big giveaway. Okay, like, just mark your calendars now, and be ready because Episode 200. We're doing some giveaways and I'm really, really excited about this. So I'm going to tell you what my giveaway is going to look like. And then you can formulate this for yourself. And I'm probably going to do an entirely different episode just about giveaways because I've had people ask me about, hey, I want to do a giveaway for my podcast launch and you know, for other milestones that they've achieved, but I specifically want to talk about how to do a giveaway for a milestone achievement with your podcast.
So what I'm going to do is I am going to go to my people I'm going to do most of the things that we just talked about, which is why I talked about them. I'm going to create a Facebook event. I am going to email my list and tell them exactly what to do on which day at what time and what they will be qualified for. Once they enter into this giveaway, what what the prizes are, all the details, the deadlines, all the information that they need to know I will put that in an email. I'm also going to post about this on social media. So I will post about the event coming up what date it is what time like, y'all just go ahead and get ready. Get your hearts ready because you're probably annoyed with me. By the time Episode 200 comes around, you're gonna say oh my gosh, thank thankful Lord. It's finally here so she can shut up about publishing 200 episodes, y'all 200 episodes in two years is a really big deal. So I am going to shout it from the rooftops and be so excited about it.
Okay, so for the giveaway, how is that going to be structured? How is that actually going to work? So I don't have all of the details on how exactly I will select the winners yet. But I am going to find things that are focused around this podcast. So it makes sense that I might offer a microphone that someone could use or I actually have and this is a little sneak peek. Because my book is coming out. I'm going to be giving away signed copies of my book when Episode 200 drops so pay attention for those details cuz my book started binge worthy podcast comes out October 20 2020, which is actually before Episode 200. So just be on the lookout, okay, you can actually order the book on Amazon right now. And just to let you know, there's a pre order thing that you can do to um, just, there's there's going to be information in the show notes about it, but I'm just telling you now that it's Coming. So signed copies of the book, possibly podcasting equipment, I actually have an extra chaotic eyeball. If you don't know what that is, and it sounds kind of like extra eyeball. What are you talking about? So this is a sound I'm trying to think of, because it's it's a foam thing. Let's let's label this in layman's terms, right? It's a foam thing that goes over your microphone. What it does is it helps cancel out echo and it absorbs all the sound. And I used mine for a really long time. Except I don't love how it looked on live video, like because it blocked like half of my face. But I think that this is an awesome tool for you to use if you struggle with a lot of echo wherever you record your podcast. So that's another giveaway that I'm going to be doing and I'm going to structure this based on someone leaving the podcast a rating, and a review. sharing it on social media. Now this is where I don't have all the details worked out on like how I'm going to pick the winners and like, did they have to share this amount of times and they left a review here and they left a review here does that count extra? I'm gonna have to figure out all those details. I don't have it worked out yet. But I think that doing a giveaway for a milestone episode is a really fun way to celebrate because people are going to be excited.
Everyone's always excited when there's prizes involved. I'm probably going to get some amazon gift cards and give those away as well. Just because the more winners like the more the merrier. Like everyone gets so much more involved. I'm probably going to get some of my favorite coffee and coffee mugs because y'all know I love my coffee. So it's just going to be a really big deal for me. And I think that that's where the fun comes in. You have to do things that spark your personality and align with who you are because that's where energy comes out like can you hear it in my voice? I'm excited to do this. I'm really pumped up. But if you're listening and you're like, that sounds awful. I'd never want to do any of that. Well then find something that's gonna work for you and your audience. I know y'all. I know y'all love coffee. I know y'all like it. When I talk about podcasting equipment. I know that y'all like to read and listen to audiobooks. So there's a lot of things that I can work with based on what I know about this audience. And that's what I'm going to pull from, but for your audience, if you have a gardening podcast and you're coming up on your one year, could you give away some fun gardening tools for someone to leave a review for your podcast or leave a rating or share about it on social media? I mean, I think that you can make this so much fun if you just get a little creative with it and make it fun, right? Like I've said this before, but my new motto in life is "Chase fun!" Not just kind of look for it. Hope that you stumble upon it. No, no, no. I want you to chase fun like you are a wild tiger and you're just looking for your next meal like chase fun down because it makes the process so much more enjoyable. And you get so much more out of it whenever you can have fun in the process.
But that's all I have to share with you today about celebrating your milestone episodes. Again, we talked about celebrating your first 1000 downloads your first year of podcasting and your first 100 episodes. We talked a little bit about giveaways, but I think I'm going to do an episode specifically about giveaways once I've actually done Episode 200 because then I'll have more insider tips and strategies and all the things to share with you. So be on the lookout for that and like I said, start a binge worthy podcast is now available for pre order on Amazon. So go to Amazon check it out. There's going to be a link in the episode to scription so go to KrystalProffitt.com/Episode187. To learn more about the book, it's gonna be here October 20, 2020. And I'm so excited. But that's all I have for you today. So remember, keep it up. We all have to start somewhere.