Today between mowing the lawn and losing my mixed grand final I had to set up a my old podcasting equipment.
It was the result of an opportunity I took many years ago when out of the blue someone I had networked with through an online community he was building and he was also setting up an online Radio Show asked me to do a show on the station.
I thought it would be an intriguing experience so I said yes and I was extremely nervous on the first show. But it was those good nerves, the type of nerves you get when you are excited about a new experience.
The first show was a 1 hour time slot but not everything went to plan, I couldn’t hear the live run back of the show and little be known to me my connection had cut out at the 45 minute mark so I continued on with the show for another 15 minutes that was being broadcast to no-one. Lucky the show had a fail-safe if there is a drop out that last for a certain period of time it resorts back to the automatic player and songs.
So the first show didn’t go to plan, I was running the show through a program called Virtual DJ that connected directly to the online station and I could pick any songs I wanted to play and talk about anything I wanted to talk about. It was a lot of fun and the show had a live chatroom as well where people could discuss anything that was mention on the show live.
I did this broadcast for about 6 months. I got very comfortable behind the microphone during that time. I got a lot out of it that I didn’t expect and the best thing about it was I enjoyed it. It wasn’t a hassle at all I had the same time slot once a week and it just flowed.
So how have I applied that knowledge to what I have coming up?
I am making my very first guest appearance on a niche podcasts that talks about standing out from the crowd. I am really excited about the opportunity however I have a lot of work to do before that, more on that in a moment.
For the podcast I want the sound quality to be a lot better than the sound quality you get from the inbuilt microphone on my laptop. I pulled out the old broadcasting kit from the box it has been sitting in for about 2-3 years, set up the microphone, mixer and software on my mac and tested the quality of the sound and the difference between the microphones was definitely noticeable the online issue I have now is getting the volume right.
If I hadn’t taken that opportunity that presented itself many years ago to go on an online radio show I wouldn’t have even known where to start with putting together a set up with acceptable audio quality. It was frustrating getting it all set up again but once it all started working it was very much a relief.
Now the podcast recording is on Wednesday. I am unsure what date it will be going live but in that time I have to put up my website so that the listeners on the podcast have somewhere to go to get more information on what I will be talking about and hopefully get some signed up onto my mailing list.
The perfectionist in me was holding me back again. I wanted to get everything absolutely perfect but I have come to the realisation that all I need is to get at least 3-4 articles up on the website and make sure there is a lead capture to capture the new visitors.
The priorities have become finishing the articles, setting up the lead capture, getting the autoresponder set up and fixing the design of the website. None of which have to be perfect and I know it is going to be a learning experience. Fail quick and learn quicker right? That’s the motto I am going with anyway.
It is a pretty simple philosophy, the more opportunities you take, the more you will learn and the better equipped you will be to deal with a range of different situations going forward.
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