April 28, 2025 • 18 mins
Every podcaster, no matter how experienced, has made their fair share of mistakes — and that's not just normal, it's necessary for growth. In this episode we’re digging into the common slip-ups that happen behind the mic, why they’re nothing to be ashamed of, and how embracing mistakes can actually make your show stronger and more relatable. From technical glitches to guest mispronunciations, we'll explore how these moments can lead to unexpected opportunities, audience connection, and long-term podcasting success. Mistakes aren’t roadblocks — they’re building blocks.
Every podcaster has them—flubbed intros, awkward silences, tech fails. But what if your mistakes aren’t setbacks, but setups for growth?
Today's Hosts: MacKenzie Bennett and Mike Dell
Common Podcasting Mistakes (And Why They’re Normal)
Technical mishaps: bad audio, dead batteries, laggy guests.
Editing errors: missed ums and ahs, over-editing, or publishing the wrong version.
Content mistakes: rambling tangents, missed questions, forgetting your CTA.
Guest flubs: a guest misspeaks, or you pronounce their name wrong (and how recovery matters more than perfection).
Point: Mistakes happen to everyone, from beginners to seasoned pros. Normalize it!
The Hidden Gifts in Podcasting Mistakes
Authenticity: Listeners love real moments; they feel more connected when you’re human.
Unexpected Content: Tangents or mistakes can turn into great bonus episodes or blooper reels.
Learning Opportunities: Every error teaches you something—about your process, equipment, or even your audience.
Audience Engagement: Invite your audience in on your learning journey ("What do you think I should’ve done here?").
Idea: Some podcasters even intentionally share bloopers to build community and lighten the mood.
How to Turn Mistakes into Growth
Reflect, Don’t Regret: After a mistake, ask: What went wrong? What’s the lesson?
Document Lessons Learned: Keep a "lessons log" for future episodes.
Adjust Processes: Add checklist items to prevent repeat errors.
Embrace Real-Time Recovery: Practice improv and grace when things go off-script.
Celebrate Progress: Revisit early episodes to appreciate your growth curve.
Bonus Tip: Try turning small mistakes into bonus content or future topic inspiration.
Mindset Shift: From Perfection to Progress
The pressure to be perfect and how it actually stifles creativity.
Letting go of perfection opens up space for experimentation and genuine connection.
Listeners often prefer personality over perfection—they’re tuning in for you, not flawless execution.
Tips for Minimizing the Impact of Mistakes
Redundancy in recording (record locally + cloud).
Soundcheck and equipment checklist before each episode.
Prep outlines but allow for organic conversation.
Record short segments rather than long continuous takes.
Have a post-production review process.
Reflect on their own growth moments and celebrate progress.
Even when you think you’re past the learning curve, new mistakes pop up. Here’s how to stay humble and curious as your show evolves.
Looking back, our best lessons came from moments we didn’t plan. Mistakes make better podcasters.
Thanks for listening to Podcast Insider, you can subscribe to new episodes out every Monday.
The best place for support with any Blubrry product or service is our ticket system. Tickets give the whole team access vs. direct emails or calls. General podcasting discussions and more can be shared on the Blubrry Podcasting Facebook group.
Fill out our listener survey at surveys.blubrry.com/podcastinsider
Hosting customers can schedule a one-on-one call with Todd or a tech checkup with Mike at todd@blubrry.com and mike@blubrry.com
Stay tuned for more episodes and visit our website for the latest updates and resources.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Podcast Insider. I'm Mackenzie Bennett, marketing
specialist at Blueberry.
And I'm Mike Dell, the VP of customer
relations here at Blueberry.
Have you ever had one of those podcast
moments where everything just goes off the rails?
Like now? Yeah. We've all been there.
Technical glitches, awkward pauses,
even uploading the wrong file.
(00:22):
But there is good news. Those mistakes can
actually help you become a better podcaster.
And today, we're talking about how to turn
your podcasting
slip ups into a surprising
opportunity for growth.
You're listening to Podcast Insider, a weekly podcast
bringing insights, advice, and insider tips and tricks
to help you start, grow, and thrive through
(00:42):
podcasting with the support of your team here
at Woodbury Podcasting. Welcome. Let's dive in.
Okay. So there are mess ups. There are
problems. You laugh at them. Literally, when Mike
said, okay. Get started. I was like, no,
Mike. You're starting this. No. It was me.
We're already off to a great start.
Yeah. You know? And that's that's why we
(01:03):
do things called editing.
Yeah.
But you could take a lot of these
things
and
turn them into fun things. You know? Sometimes
leave some of the warts in there as,
Adam Curio used to tell me. He says,
send it, warts and all. You know?
I I think,
yeah. It's one of those things maybe you
should just kinda
(01:24):
collect
the parts that you're editing out that at
least you found funny and put them in
a different folder.
You know, don't just delete them
as a whole, but just clip them and
send them elsewhere. And then at the end
of the year, you're like, okay. Here's the
blooper reel that we all enjoy for TV
shows and movies and everything. Do the same
for your podcast.
Exactly. You know, and stuff happens. You know,
(01:46):
there's stuff that, you know, say you get
halfway through an interview and you forgot to
hit record. Well, okay. That's not gonna help
you any, but,
you know,
but things like that
are technical in nature in most cases or
just plain forgetting stuff, but,
you know, you can get away with it
once. Well, I mean, you know, we went
(02:08):
through all kinds of tech stuff on this
show, and sometimes even if the audio was
kinda crappy,
we sent it anyway and just explained, hey.
Sorry. It's crappy, but that's what we got.
You push forward.
Yeah. Because, you know, if you spend all
your time worrying about being perfect, you're gonna
spend a whole lot more time doing your
(02:28):
podcast. You're less likely to enjoy it.
Yeah. That's for sure. So
common mistakes just in general. Mhmm. Technical,
editing,
content, it content itself,
or even your guest. Yeah. Otherwise, like, it's
it's gonna happen.
Yeah. I mean, it it does happen and,
you know, sometimes you over edit. You know,
(02:50):
I've done that before. So always keep your
original recording because you can always go back.
Yep. But, you know, don't over edit stuff
or say you cut out a section that
you wanted to keep
accidentally and then when you're listening through it
and always listen through your show after you're
done recording it and after it's edited
just to make sure.
(03:10):
But,
you know, there's just all kinds of, of
common mistakes. As Mackenzie said, you know, another
one is just getting on a ramble. You
know, we do that here sometimes.
Sometimes it's good. Sometimes it's not so good.
Well, it is kinda one of the things
that we're talking about is, like, how these
can be good.
Those rambles are
(03:30):
authentic.
Yeah.
They're not maybe the best content sometimes, but
that's how you're getting to your thought.
Mhmm.
You know? And then
and, you know, there's just stuff that happens,
and, you know, we're human.
You know, most podcasters are not going for
that polished radio sound.
(03:51):
They're going for authentic. And, you know, with
all this AI voice technology and stuff coming
up, sometimes it's really hard to tell whether
this is an AI or not. Well, if
you mess up something, well, chances are it's
not an AI.
That is true. That is true. It just
proves that you're
authentic.
Yeah.
(04:11):
One of the things is, like, turning it
into a learning opportunity.
I,
early, early days, was recording with a guest
who
it was just not going well in general.
Coordination with us wasn't working. Equipment was against
us. And then at the you know, we're
halfway through this
interview.
(04:31):
And I look, I'm not even recording it.
And I just kinda took that as a
sign of, okay. I'm gonna do a rerun
this week and just scrap this entire thing.
I don't like him. He doesn't like me.
This is not working.
Yeah.
Yeah. I've had to bail on some, interviews
before too. It's like, nah. This isn't working.
(04:52):
Yeah. Sometimes it just really is not, but
you have to just realize, okay. This is
that's fine. You know, I'm I'm gonna learn
from this. I'm gonna change something else. You
don't necessarily need to make
every everything work each and every time.
Right. But, you know,
in our, notes here so we'll go back
to that. You know, a little behind the
(05:13):
scenes here. But, it says it us authenticity
as we talked about before. You know, listeners
love real moments. They feel more connected when
you're
doing human things like screwing things up.
You know?
You can get
unexpected
content,
you know, mistakes or going off on a
(05:33):
tangent
or going off on a completely different subject.
That happens. And sometimes you can repurpose that
into bonuses
or,
you know, blooper reels
or or just, okay. We're gonna retitle this
episode because we ended up talking about the
wrong thing. Yeah.
Or something. You know? One of the best
(05:53):
things that people can do when they're interviewing
someone is actually just listen
and go where the conversation takes you instead
of sticking to exactly what is, you know,
the list of questions that they have, whether
that's that they made up or from a
producer
or, you know, just, you know, AI, whatever
it is,
actually participate in the conversation actively
(06:17):
and and keep going. Speaking of recording, am
I recording? No. I am.
Pretty sure.
Okay. But I need to move my cable.
So
Speaking of authentic moments
Mhmm. You know, every little error that you
have is going to teach you something, you
know, about your equipment, your process,
(06:37):
maybe your audience,
the guests, you know, your cohosts, whatever.
You know? Like, I I've learned that,
trusting a RodeCaster
Pro Duo,
on this particular Mac is not a good
idea. So Questionable. Backups. I have backups.
You know? Yes. I have a different audio
interface because,
(06:58):
you know, certain things just don't work together
sometimes,
and that's fine.
You know, it's a great piece of kit,
but if it doesn't work with your setup,
change it or learn about it. Figure out
how to make it, right.
I like the idea of there's,
you know, like, keeping a list
of your
(07:18):
your your flubs, I guess, and turning it
into this is our lessons learned.
Because a lot of stuff
you'll move forward with, but not necessarily
think of, like, what happened
individually
each time that kinda led you to this
idea.
But also at the same time, like, if
you write all these down, then you can
(07:39):
come to a conclusion later of, oh, okay.
This was my problem. This is how this
was happening. This is what I didn't like.
I don't know. I think sometimes that visual
for people and, you know, they're the typing
versus the writing too sometimes going back to,
like,
you know, teachers saying, like, you have to
take notes. If you're typing, it's probably it's
not gonna work the same in your brain.
(08:00):
Yeah. That type of stuff.
Except for when I write notes, nobody can
read them including me.
Yes. I have to type them.
See? That was something that,
you reflected on and figured out.
Yeah. Exactly. And, you know, another thing is,
you know, practice your improv,
you know, your ability to just roll with
(08:21):
things and, you know, and keep them in
there. Don't edit them out sometimes. You know?
Sometimes they're they're good in the in the
show. Now if you're live, well, it just
goes out. But, you know, one thing we
have in podcasting that a lot of other
media doesn't have is the ability to
completely edit
or rerecord
(08:42):
or re you know, to fix the mistakes,
but you don't wanna always be doing that.
So leave some of that stuff in there.
There's, there's a podcast that has gotten
pretty popular that I don't actually listen to.
I'm just gonna be honest.
But they show up on my social all
the time. So I do, like, keep on
(09:03):
keep track with them
that way. And the majority of what I
see is, like, the
mistakes.
It's when, you know, they're arguing and it
turns into a whole bit, and they're like,
this is ridiculous, and now it's funny.
And
that's exact but that is a big part
of why their show has gotten so popular
(09:23):
is because they just have that banter back
and forth
and and all of the, like, the the
mistakes are the show.
Right. For sure. And, I think I know
the show you're talking about.
Probably.
But, you know, here's another thing. You know,
kinda shift your your mindset away from perfection
and, you know, just know that you're making
(09:44):
progress. You know, as you as a new
podcaster, you're not gonna be as good as
you are two years down the road,
and you're gonna be making progress. So,
you know, start thinking about it that way.
You know? Every mistake you make and correct,
you know, later on
is good. And leaving again, I I keep
(10:04):
going back to this. Leave some of that
stuff in there for authentic you know, us
okay.
See, there's one of them right there. I
can't Authenticity.
There we go. I couldn't figure that one
out for some reason.
But, anyway,
you know, the the old saying back when
podcasting
started was,
you know, you get
paralyzed by
(10:25):
you know, so you don't do anything because
you're trying to be perfect. So you don't
go forward.
There was a better way of saying that,
but I can't remember it right now. That's
alright.
You're getting
decision paralysis over trying to figure out how
to say this. Yeah. Exactly. So
one of the things that you see a
lot on social media is these quote, unquote
(10:46):
influencers. They started out as normal everyday people
showing their lives, showing their
you know, exercise, their makeup routine,
their,
you know, your air their airplanes,
whatever it is. And then they make all
this money. They get a huge, huge following,
and then they are not relatable anymore, and
then people don't care.
(11:07):
Yep.
It happens it happens so fast.
Yep. And, you know, that's not necessarily a
mistake, but, you know, people change over time.
Yeah. And, you know, but the listeners
most often
prefer the host
and their personality
over all the the hype.
(11:28):
Yeah.
You know, it's,
it's one of those things. You know, I
listen to I have a particular
podcaster that I listen to that I could
care less about one of his shows.
Mhmm. You know, the the subject of one
of his shows. One of his shows, I
really like. One of them, I don't care
about the topic, but I still listen to
the show
(11:49):
because I like him. Yep. You know, I
like you know, he just has a way
of speaking, and I'm learning about this other
subject, which I have no interest in really.
It's one of them is an airplane one
and one of them is a sailing.
Yep. And and they're they're the same guy,
and I listened to his airplane stuff. I
started listening to the sailing stuff just because
(12:10):
he doesn't do enough airplane stuff.
You're like, I still wanna listen, but, okay.
I guess I'll just listen to whatever. Yeah.
He's also pretty big on YouTube, but
but Yeah. Different thing. One of the things
that you can do to just kinda ease
your mind, here are some tips for minimizing
the impact of these mistakes that are inevitably
going to happen. Number one, redundancy.
(12:31):
Mike, you already said it. We are recording
in two different places right now. Yeah. We
we,
touched on that one because I've gotten burned
too many times.
So we do multiple
ways of recording. When Todd's on here, I
think there's three. Because he also hits record
on his end. So Yeah.
We did just a quick two second sound
(12:53):
check before we did this. I mean, we
we've been doing this for how many years,
and we do it, like, once a week
or so. And we still will do a
sound check. We always do a check. And
then, you know,
the thing is we got this down to
a science. Yeah. Right? We're not perfect. Believe
me. We'll have screwy audio sometimes, but Kate
does her best to make us sound smart.
(13:13):
So that's good. Thanks, Kate.
We appreciate it. And something we do here
is we always prep an outline. So you'll
hear me reference, oh, back to our notes
and, you know, and that'll give me an
idea to start talking again. But we don't
write it out as a script.
Absolutely not. We would do a terrible job
of that. Yeah. I'm tear I'm terrible to,
(13:34):
you know, reading and talking at the same
time. Yeah. And I even improvise when I
do have a written line. I'll improvise the
line because it's like, I don't say it
that way. Yeah.
We we see what it is, and we
just say whatever is comfortable.
You know? That's that's how it works.
And then following that,
(13:54):
we'll try to do
like, whenever we were changing how this podcast
insider worked a couple years ago, we were
going from doing multiple news segments
probably with a guest interview as well every
episode to just, here's one topic, and we're
gonna really get into this topic, but we're
gonna, like, we're gonna break it up into
(14:15):
smaller segments. You know? That's why we go
from, like, here's talking about this to now
we're wrapping it up. Here are the tips
of what you can do,
overall for this. So it just it's easier
for your head too, I think. Yeah. Oh,
yeah. For sure. And, like, I think next
week, I'm gonna have our podcaster of the
month,
or maybe the week after for
(14:37):
May.
Yeah. We'll be doing a an interview with
her. We're gonna still do our regular show.
We'll attack that on the end, but it's
recorded
separately.
Not, you know, we don't have her on
halfway through the show, whatever,
stuff like that. So, you know, recording segments
and, you know, if that makes it easier
for you.
(14:57):
Yeah. And then last but not least, we
kinda do this as, like,
postproduction review process.
AKA, that is
I will
publish
the episode after you've listened to it. You've
cut it up a tiny bit, handed it
off to Kate. Yeah. And then, you know,
we kinda have, like, a debrief
generally at the end of every recording that
(15:19):
we have where we're like, okay. That went
really well. We should mention this in the
show notes or, you know, maybe we can
have Kate cut that because it just didn't
go over well.
All of that goes into this and just
makes you have a better
clear head when you're publishing and getting things
out there, and you're like, okay. I feel
good about this.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Nobody's perfect. You know, halfway
(15:41):
through, you know, I I'll wanna say something
and can't think of it. You know, all
that stuff.
Well,
you can look at that as part of
your learning curve. You know, you know, what
things you have trouble with or what technical
issues, you know, all of that stuff.
You just wanna make sure that you
(16:01):
you improve on that, you know, if you
wanna improve. Sometimes it's just, you know, the
the mistakes are the fun part.
You know?
I listen to a particular show where the
two guys are always, you know, going off
on tangents and, you know, not saying something
right and and and it it becomes part
of the show.
Mhmm. You know, like or Todd, for instance,
(16:23):
on his Geek News Central. His his audience
has a thing
they call Toddisms.
When he completely butchers a name or or
uses the wrong wrong word for something, you
know, they call those Toddisms, and he gets
those in comments all the time, and it's
kind of a thing on his show.
Your personality kind of is the show. Yeah.
(16:44):
Especially if you're doing
this, like, as your own hobby. You know?
A lot of the time, if you're listening
to only
super professionally produced shows, that's not coming from
one person. One person is generally not able
to make it sound that crafted.
You know, there's a reason why coming from
the daily or whatever, it sounds like that.
And it's because they have six people working
(17:06):
on this. Yeah. They have doing this and
then three other people yeah. There's a whole
staff.
Yeah. We we we don't have a staff.
We are the staff.
We we are the we are the staff.
We have we have help and Kate, but
she is part of, you know, this Part
of the team. Very small team. Yeah.
And and that's a that's a good thing
for this particular show. You know? Now if
(17:28):
you're going for a highly produced thing, well,
yeah.
That that that's when you get the team
involved and you do,
you know, high production values and all that.
We have pretty okay production values. That's
not what I'm saying.
What I'm saying is, you know, things don't
have to be as polished
as some people might think.
(17:49):
So you still get your point across, have
fun,
whatever your goal for your podcast is. You
know, mistakes are not the end of the
world. Yeah. Mistakes are mistakes are okay. You're
not, you know, good morning America. You don't
have to you don't have to sound like
it.
Yep. For sure.
Well, I think we,
beat that one to death. So,
(18:11):
just say, thanks for listening to Podcast Insider.
We'll have full show notes over at podcastinsider.com.
Thanks, everyone.
Thanks for joining us. Come back next week.
And in the meantime, head to podcastinsider.com
for more information,
to subscribe, share, and read our show notes.
To check out the latest suite of services
and learn how Blueberry can help you leverage
(18:33):
your podcast, visit blueberry.com.
That's Blueberry without the e's because we can't
afford them.
Welcome to Podcast Insider. I'm Mackenzie Bennett, marketing
specialist at Blueberry.
And I'm Mike Dell, the VP of customer
relations here at Blueberry.
Have you ever had one of those podcast
moments where everything just goes off the rails?
Like now? Yeah. We've all been there.
Technical glitches, awkward pauses,
even uploading the wrong file.
(00:22):
But there is good news. Those mistakes can
actually help you become a better podcaster.
And today, we're talking about how to turn
your podcasting
slip ups into a surprising
opportunity for growth.
You're listening to Podcast Insider, a weekly podcast
bringing insights, advice, and insider tips and tricks
to help you start, grow, and thrive through
(00:42):
podcasting with the support of your team here
at Woodbury Podcasting. Welcome. Let's dive in.
Okay. So there are mess ups. There are
problems. You laugh at them. Literally, when Mike
said, okay. Get started. I was like, no,
Mike. You're starting this. No. It was me.
We're already off to a great start.
Yeah. You know? And that's that's why we
(01:03):
do things called editing.
Yeah.
But you could take a lot of these
things
and
turn them into fun things. You know? Sometimes
leave some of the warts in there as,
Adam Curio used to tell me. He says,
send it, warts and all. You know?
I I think,
yeah. It's one of those things maybe you
should just kinda
(01:24):
collect
the parts that you're editing out that at
least you found funny and put them in
a different folder.
You know, don't just delete them
as a whole, but just clip them and
send them elsewhere. And then at the end
of the year, you're like, okay. Here's the
blooper reel that we all enjoy for TV
shows and movies and everything. Do the same
for your podcast.
Exactly. You know, and stuff happens. You know,
(01:46):
there's stuff that, you know, say you get
halfway through an interview and you forgot to
hit record. Well, okay. That's not gonna help
you any, but,
you know,
but things like that
are technical in nature in most cases or
just plain forgetting stuff, but,
you know, you can get away with it
once. Well, I mean, you know, we went
(02:08):
through all kinds of tech stuff on this
show, and sometimes even if the audio was
kinda crappy,
we sent it anyway and just explained, hey.
Sorry. It's crappy, but that's what we got.
You push forward.
Yeah. Because, you know, if you spend all
your time worrying about being perfect, you're gonna
spend a whole lot more time doing your
(02:28):
podcast. You're less likely to enjoy it.
Yeah. That's for sure. So
common mistakes just in general. Mhmm. Technical,
editing,
content, it content itself,
or even your guest. Yeah. Otherwise, like, it's
it's gonna happen.
Yeah. I mean, it it does happen and,
you know, sometimes you over edit. You know,
(02:50):
I've done that before. So always keep your
original recording because you can always go back.
Yep. But, you know, don't over edit stuff
or say you cut out a section that
you wanted to keep
accidentally and then when you're listening through it
and always listen through your show after you're
done recording it and after it's edited
just to make sure.
(03:10):
But,
you know, there's just all kinds of, of
common mistakes. As Mackenzie said, you know, another
one is just getting on a ramble. You
know, we do that here sometimes.
Sometimes it's good. Sometimes it's not so good.
Well, it is kinda one of the things
that we're talking about is, like, how these
can be good.
Those rambles are
(03:30):
authentic.
Yeah.
They're not maybe the best content sometimes, but
that's how you're getting to your thought.
Mhmm.
You know? And then
and, you know, there's just stuff that happens,
and, you know, we're human.
You know, most podcasters are not going for
that polished radio sound.
(03:51):
They're going for authentic. And, you know, with
all this AI voice technology and stuff coming
up, sometimes it's really hard to tell whether
this is an AI or not. Well, if
you mess up something, well, chances are it's
not an AI.
That is true. That is true. It just
proves that you're
authentic.
Yeah.
(04:11):
One of the things is, like, turning it
into a learning opportunity.
I,
early, early days, was recording with a guest
who
it was just not going well in general.
Coordination with us wasn't working. Equipment was against
us. And then at the you know, we're
halfway through this
interview.
(04:31):
And I look, I'm not even recording it.
And I just kinda took that as a
sign of, okay. I'm gonna do a rerun
this week and just scrap this entire thing.
I don't like him. He doesn't like me.
This is not working.
Yeah.
Yeah. I've had to bail on some, interviews
before too. It's like, nah. This isn't working.
(04:52):
Yeah. Sometimes it just really is not, but
you have to just realize, okay. This is
that's fine. You know, I'm I'm gonna learn
from this. I'm gonna change something else. You
don't necessarily need to make
every everything work each and every time.
Right. But, you know,
in our, notes here so we'll go back
to that. You know, a little behind the
(05:13):
scenes here. But, it says it us authenticity
as we talked about before. You know, listeners
love real moments. They feel more connected when
you're
doing human things like screwing things up.
You know?
You can get
unexpected
content,
you know, mistakes or going off on a
(05:33):
tangent
or going off on a completely different subject.
That happens. And sometimes you can repurpose that
into bonuses
or,
you know, blooper reels
or or just, okay. We're gonna retitle this
episode because we ended up talking about the
wrong thing. Yeah.
Or something. You know? One of the best
(05:53):
things that people can do when they're interviewing
someone is actually just listen
and go where the conversation takes you instead
of sticking to exactly what is, you know,
the list of questions that they have, whether
that's that they made up or from a
producer
or, you know, just, you know, AI, whatever
it is,
actually participate in the conversation actively
(06:17):
and and keep going. Speaking of recording, am
I recording? No. I am.
Pretty sure.
Okay. But I need to move my cable.
So
Speaking of authentic moments
Mhmm. You know, every little error that you
have is going to teach you something, you
know, about your equipment, your process,
(06:37):
maybe your audience,
the guests, you know, your cohosts, whatever.
You know? Like, I I've learned that,
trusting a RodeCaster
Pro Duo,
on this particular Mac is not a good
idea. So Questionable. Backups. I have backups.
You know? Yes. I have a different audio
interface because,
(06:58):
you know, certain things just don't work together
sometimes,
and that's fine.
You know, it's a great piece of kit,
but if it doesn't work with your setup,
change it or learn about it. Figure out
how to make it, right.
I like the idea of there's,
you know, like, keeping a list
of your
(07:18):
your your flubs, I guess, and turning it
into this is our lessons learned.
Because a lot of stuff
you'll move forward with, but not necessarily
think of, like, what happened
individually
each time that kinda led you to this
idea.
But also at the same time, like, if
you write all these down, then you can
(07:39):
come to a conclusion later of, oh, okay.
This was my problem. This is how this
was happening. This is what I didn't like.
I don't know. I think sometimes that visual
for people and, you know, they're the typing
versus the writing too sometimes going back to,
like,
you know, teachers saying, like, you have to
take notes. If you're typing, it's probably it's
not gonna work the same in your brain.
(08:00):
Yeah. That type of stuff.
Except for when I write notes, nobody can
read them including me.
Yes. I have to type them.
See? That was something that,
you reflected on and figured out.
Yeah. Exactly. And, you know, another thing is,
you know, practice your improv,
you know, your ability to just roll with
(08:21):
things and, you know, and keep them in
there. Don't edit them out sometimes. You know?
Sometimes they're they're good in the in the
show. Now if you're live, well, it just
goes out. But, you know, one thing we
have in podcasting that a lot of other
media doesn't have is the ability to
completely edit
or rerecord
(08:42):
or re you know, to fix the mistakes,
but you don't wanna always be doing that.
So leave some of that stuff in there.
There's, there's a podcast that has gotten
pretty popular that I don't actually listen to.
I'm just gonna be honest.
But they show up on my social all
the time. So I do, like, keep on
(09:03):
keep track with them
that way. And the majority of what I
see is, like, the
mistakes.
It's when, you know, they're arguing and it
turns into a whole bit, and they're like,
this is ridiculous, and now it's funny.
And
that's exact but that is a big part
of why their show has gotten so popular
(09:23):
is because they just have that banter back
and forth
and and all of the, like, the the
mistakes are the show.
Right. For sure. And, I think I know
the show you're talking about.
Probably.
But, you know, here's another thing. You know,
kinda shift your your mindset away from perfection
and, you know, just know that you're making
(09:44):
progress. You know, as you as a new
podcaster, you're not gonna be as good as
you are two years down the road,
and you're gonna be making progress. So,
you know, start thinking about it that way.
You know? Every mistake you make and correct,
you know, later on
is good. And leaving again, I I keep
(10:04):
going back to this. Leave some of that
stuff in there for authentic you know, us
okay.
See, there's one of them right there. I
can't Authenticity.
There we go. I couldn't figure that one
out for some reason.
But, anyway,
you know, the the old saying back when
podcasting
started was,
you know, you get
paralyzed by
(10:25):
you know, so you don't do anything because
you're trying to be perfect. So you don't
go forward.
There was a better way of saying that,
but I can't remember it right now. That's
alright.
You're getting
decision paralysis over trying to figure out how
to say this. Yeah. Exactly. So
one of the things that you see a
lot on social media is these quote, unquote
(10:46):
influencers. They started out as normal everyday people
showing their lives, showing their
you know, exercise, their makeup routine,
their,
you know, your air their airplanes,
whatever it is. And then they make all
this money. They get a huge, huge following,
and then they are not relatable anymore, and
then people don't care.
(11:07):
Yep.
It happens it happens so fast.
Yep. And, you know, that's not necessarily a
mistake, but, you know, people change over time.
Yeah. And, you know, but the listeners
most often
prefer the host
and their personality
over all the the hype.
(11:28):
Yeah.
You know, it's,
it's one of those things. You know, I
listen to I have a particular
podcaster that I listen to that I could
care less about one of his shows.
Mhmm. You know, the the subject of one
of his shows. One of his shows, I
really like. One of them, I don't care
about the topic, but I still listen to
the show
(11:49):
because I like him. Yep. You know, I
like you know, he just has a way
of speaking, and I'm learning about this other
subject, which I have no interest in really.
It's one of them is an airplane one
and one of them is a sailing.
Yep. And and they're they're the same guy,
and I listened to his airplane stuff. I
started listening to the sailing stuff just because
(12:10):
he doesn't do enough airplane stuff.
You're like, I still wanna listen, but, okay.
I guess I'll just listen to whatever. Yeah.
He's also pretty big on YouTube, but
but Yeah. Different thing. One of the things
that you can do to just kinda ease
your mind, here are some tips for minimizing
the impact of these mistakes that are inevitably
going to happen. Number one, redundancy.
(12:31):
Mike, you already said it. We are recording
in two different places right now. Yeah. We
we,
touched on that one because I've gotten burned
too many times.
So we do multiple
ways of recording. When Todd's on here, I
think there's three. Because he also hits record
on his end. So Yeah.
We did just a quick two second sound
(12:53):
check before we did this. I mean, we
we've been doing this for how many years,
and we do it, like, once a week
or so. And we still will do a
sound check. We always do a check. And
then, you know,
the thing is we got this down to
a science. Yeah. Right? We're not perfect. Believe
me. We'll have screwy audio sometimes, but Kate
does her best to make us sound smart.
(13:13):
So that's good. Thanks, Kate.
We appreciate it. And something we do here
is we always prep an outline. So you'll
hear me reference, oh, back to our notes
and, you know, and that'll give me an
idea to start talking again. But we don't
write it out as a script.
Absolutely not. We would do a terrible job
of that. Yeah. I'm tear I'm terrible to,
(13:34):
you know, reading and talking at the same
time. Yeah. And I even improvise when I
do have a written line. I'll improvise the
line because it's like, I don't say it
that way. Yeah.
We we see what it is, and we
just say whatever is comfortable.
You know? That's that's how it works.
And then following that,
(13:54):
we'll try to do
like, whenever we were changing how this podcast
insider worked a couple years ago, we were
going from doing multiple news segments
probably with a guest interview as well every
episode to just, here's one topic, and we're
gonna really get into this topic, but we're
gonna, like, we're gonna break it up into
(14:15):
smaller segments. You know? That's why we go
from, like, here's talking about this to now
we're wrapping it up. Here are the tips
of what you can do,
overall for this. So it just it's easier
for your head too, I think. Yeah. Oh,
yeah. For sure. And, like, I think next
week, I'm gonna have our podcaster of the
month,
or maybe the week after for
(14:37):
May.
Yeah. We'll be doing a an interview with
her. We're gonna still do our regular show.
We'll attack that on the end, but it's
recorded
separately.
Not, you know, we don't have her on
halfway through the show, whatever,
stuff like that. So, you know, recording segments
and, you know, if that makes it easier
for you.
(14:57):
Yeah. And then last but not least, we
kinda do this as, like,
postproduction review process.
AKA, that is
I will
publish
the episode after you've listened to it. You've
cut it up a tiny bit, handed it
off to Kate. Yeah. And then, you know,
we kinda have, like, a debrief
generally at the end of every recording that
(15:19):
we have where we're like, okay. That went
really well. We should mention this in the
show notes or, you know, maybe we can
have Kate cut that because it just didn't
go over well.
All of that goes into this and just
makes you have a better
clear head when you're publishing and getting things
out there, and you're like, okay. I feel
good about this.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Nobody's perfect. You know, halfway
(15:41):
through, you know, I I'll wanna say something
and can't think of it. You know, all
that stuff.
Well,
you can look at that as part of
your learning curve. You know, you know, what
things you have trouble with or what technical
issues, you know, all of that stuff.
You just wanna make sure that you
(16:01):
you improve on that, you know, if you
wanna improve. Sometimes it's just, you know, the
the mistakes are the fun part.
You know?
I listen to a particular show where the
two guys are always, you know, going off
on tangents and, you know, not saying something
right and and and it it becomes part
of the show.
Mhmm. You know, like or Todd, for instance,
(16:23):
on his Geek News Central. His his audience
has a thing
they call Toddisms.
When he completely butchers a name or or
uses the wrong wrong word for something, you
know, they call those Toddisms, and he gets
those in comments all the time, and it's
kind of a thing on his show.
Your personality kind of is the show. Yeah.
(16:44):
Especially if you're doing
this, like, as your own hobby. You know?
A lot of the time, if you're listening
to only
super professionally produced shows, that's not coming from
one person. One person is generally not able
to make it sound that crafted.
You know, there's a reason why coming from
the daily or whatever, it sounds like that.
And it's because they have six people working
(17:06):
on this. Yeah. They have doing this and
then three other people yeah. There's a whole
staff.
Yeah. We we we don't have a staff.
We are the staff.
We we are the we are the staff.
We have we have help and Kate, but
she is part of, you know, this Part
of the team. Very small team. Yeah.
And and that's a that's a good thing
for this particular show. You know? Now if
(17:28):
you're going for a highly produced thing, well,
yeah.
That that that's when you get the team
involved and you do,
you know, high production values and all that.
We have pretty okay production values. That's
not what I'm saying.
What I'm saying is, you know, things don't
have to be as polished
as some people might think.
(17:49):
So you still get your point across, have
fun,
whatever your goal for your podcast is. You
know, mistakes are not the end of the
world. Yeah. Mistakes are mistakes are okay. You're
not, you know, good morning America. You don't
have to you don't have to sound like
it.
Yep. For sure.
Well, I think we,
beat that one to death. So,
(18:11):
just say, thanks for listening to Podcast Insider.
We'll have full show notes over at podcastinsider.com.
Thanks, everyone.
Thanks for joining us. Come back next week.
And in the meantime, head to podcastinsider.com
for more information,
to subscribe, share, and read our show notes.
To check out the latest suite of services
and learn how Blueberry can help you leverage
(18:33):
your podcast, visit blueberry.com.
That's Blueberry without the e's because we can't
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