66- An Entrepreneur delivers lessons learned

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

In this episode of TheStrugglingBiz.com, we focus on the possibility of learning lessons from your enterprise as an entrepreneur in podcasting — that is, content creator in the new media platforms. Thus, we can deliver some information from an author named Denis Murphy in the medium.com article called “11 Lessons from 100 Podcast Episodes.”

Now, from my own experience as a podcaster, podcast consultant, author and video content creator, I look at myself and my accompishments. As I have been podcasting for 15 years, this article interested me, for I have had over 18 podcast shows, and I have had nearly 2 million downloads. And I wanted to compare my lessons learned after some shows that have had nearly 500 episodes (both The Struggling Entrepreneur, as well as my current podcast show of The Podcast Reporter with over 430 episodes).

From this article, the 11 lessons learned are:

Solo episodes;
Reach out to potential guests more than once;
Most podcasts don’t even get past 7 episodes;
Most days you feel like an idiot;
You reconnect with your real voice;
Discover your why;
Other people’s assumptions and experiences;
Treat social media as an ongoing experiment;
You don’t need to earn money;
You don’t need a huge audience;
A personal development vehicle.

And each section contains a couple of paragraphs to explain just what the learned lessons provided as value to Denis Murphy as the podcaster.

However, for this podcaster, I have learned many lessons since 2006 — and I keep on learning lessons from my involvement and participation in the podosphere still today, as well as the future.

In addition, I do take issue from my own experience with several of Murphy’s lessons — in particular, numbers 4, 9 and 10. That is,

In response to Murphy’s lesson #4: I have NEVER felt like an idiot when I participated as a podcaster in the podosphere. I had used my entrepreneurial skills and experience to create a better enterprise which I had planned to monetize.
In response to Murphy’s lesson #9: I have tried to earn money, and I have been successful as a profitable podcaster. I think an enterprise would do better to try and earn money, unless you will be podcasting ONLY for passion. In fact, the DRIVE of an entrepreneur is one that looks forward to monetization and creating and implementing strategies to make it happen; and
In response to Murphy’s lesson #10: I have grown a large audience in the podosphere, with nearly 2 million downloads. And if you have a good strategy and plans for monetization, a large audience is one objective that can help you become successful as an entrepreneur — especially if you develop a larger audience that can become loyal and supporting fans of your content.

Thus, if you, as a new or aspiring entrepreneur, want to get some best practices, I would go to another source to see what some of them are, in spite of Mr. Murphy’s personal lessons learned. One such podcast show that gives a lot of best practices is The Audacity to Podcast from Daniel J Lewis; another is The School of Podcasting from Dave Jackson; and one last show is The New Media Show from Todd Cochrane. In addition, for the content creation and podcasting for money, some of the best strategies for monetization is Paul Colligan and his podcast shows (both past and present) that focus on profitable podcasting.

As a matter of fact, this episode is giving me some impetus to prepare and publish an episode in this show for the future that will deliver to my audience MY OWN lessons learned after over 1500 podcast episodes from all my shows. Keep watching this space for any news of this upcoming episode later this year.

We do suggest that you read this article from Mr. Murphy, but then we recommend that you put together YOUR OWN list of lessons which you yourself have learned in any number of key podcast episodes which can mean value and importance to you. And then you can reflect on these lessons learned and how they can impact your entrepreneurial venture so that you can become a successful entrepreneur.

Thank you for your attention.