How to be a Better Speaker & Slash Editing time with one Podcasting Framework

Hey hey!

Happy new year ??

If you celebrate such things, hope you had a great bit of time off!

And if you don't, I hope you got some excellent stuff done while me and a chunk of the world were chain-chomping chocolate and inhaling eggnog.

To start the year (and to make up for my shameless overindulgence) I want to suggest hitting that reset button.

This is a reset that aims to do 3 BIG things to improve your Podcast:

1. Make editing far quicker and easier
2. Make you a better presenter and speaker, FAST!
3. Ramps up engagement with your audience

This is a framework that I came up with through sheer pain and necessity ??

See, I've always suffered from a couple of the biggest podcasting black-holes there are: imposter syndrome and perfectionism.

The first fuels the second, really.

I'd record an episode, and every few minutes I'd either flub a few words, or I'd say something and think: did that sound right...? I could do that better!

So... pause... rewind... restart... pain!

I was king of the retakes, doing parts of my show over and over again.

You know what's coming. What that leads to.

Literal hours of editing.

Buckets of frustration.

Complete failure of the weekly schedule. Cos I just couldn't fit it all in.

Worse, I just didn't enjoy it.

Who likes saying the same stuff over and over again in different ways? Who loves flogging themselves weekly for getting it wrong, so many times? Who relishes doing the same thing, week in, week out, and never seeming to get better?

I hit a point where I was going to chuck in the towel. I started to hate it.

But, one thing saved the show.

Teaching!

(Don't worry, you don't have to be a teacher to use this...)

Or, more specifically, talking live to real people, no matter where it was.

I started teaching classes at the University I worked at (I was just an assistant before that, really). I started doing online classes, live, too. I started to get on more podcasts.

What does all of that have in common?

It's live. So you CAN'T EDIT.

Enter, our Framework ??

The Live Recording Mindset.

1. Plan your show with a bullet-point script
2. Hit that record button and pretend you've just gone live to the world.
3. Start speaking, and don't stop for anyone! It's live, after all.
4. Stop recording. Don't edit. Just publish.

That's it.

Here's how it helps you.

1. You stop using editing as a crutch
2. You start working on improving your speech instead
3. The emphasis on improvement, and ripping away that crutch, means you improve your speaking skills, FAST ?
4. Editing time is drastically reduced, because you're being less perfectionst
5. You engage with your audience, because you become a better speaker
6. You engage more, because you're being more transparent, less sanitised

Your Challenge

? Take 5 episodes, and commit to zero, or minimal editing.

If there's a huge mistake that just can't stand, use click editing to mark it, and cut it out.

? No editing out ums and ahs ? No editing our your usual crutch words.

Instead, concentrate on noticing them, and weeding them out of your speech.

Here's Some More Help for This

A few things to help you get it done:

Okay, that's it for the first pointers of 2024 ??

Thanks as always for following along, and here's to our best year yet!

Colin

PS. Do you agree with this?

?A Podcast isn't a podcast if it doesn't have an RSS feed!