Podcasting Life and Business After Four Years-Podcast 622

Podcasting Life and Business After Four Years-Podcast 622

What’s it like to support yourself as a podcaster? I looked up the other day and asked, “How long have I been doing this?” 2009 was the actual start date. I’ve been in business supporting myself as a podcaster exclusively since 2013. Learned a lot of lessons in that time. It seems like I’ve been in business a lot longer than nearly four years. Hear some of those lessons in Podcasting Life and Business After Four Years-Podcast 622.

Soul killing corporate jobs aren’t for everyone

Some business owners wish for the peace of collecting a paycheck and doing what the boss wants. Not me. Going into business for myself has been a path of self discovery and self realization. You say goodbye to eight hour days and regimented work schedules. No more guaranteed paychecks. Some months are great. Some aren’t so great. You’re ‘On It’ pretty much 24 hours a day. Freedom is one of the rewards. Wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Self Realization

Surprisingly, how I spend my time has become one of the top priorities. I can do anything I want. Is what I am doing with my time going to benefit the business? How does the business grow? What is the core business? How is that going to change? Self Realization is one of the big benefits of being in business alone. No one around to give orders. Good decisions accrue to the business owner. So do the bad decisions. Thus, you spend a lot of time thinking things through.

Content Creators

Centuries of business have been about consolidating physical space. Farmers need more land. Ranchers need more space for more cattle. Retailers always want to open new locations. Content creators have real estate in cyber space. With the right tools we can make that space as big as it needs to be. A new world requires a complete change in thinking. Content creators don’t just have to change the ‘working for the man’ mindset, but how we think about what we do as well.

Podcasting As A Business

Podcasting is still a fledgling ‘industry’. We podcasters are cutting a new trail. As an advertising medium Podcasting works. Smaller podcasts can yield very good results too. Podcasts big and small tell stories and provide basic information on highly specific topics unavailable anywhere else. Podcasters make an authentic human connection with the listener not found in broadcast media.

Walk and Talk

The rules of the Walk and Talk Podcast are no prep, no plan. Just talk. Join me. What came up in this podcast are the life and business lessons I’ve learned since I started podcasting. If you’re considering going into business for yourself, especially as a content creator, do what you love. Passion for the work will get you through a lot of rainy days.

Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul

Podcasting Life and Business After Four Years-Podcast 622

 

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Podcast 596-Values

Podcast 596-Our Values

Journalism’s new norm is reaction. It is called News. In Podcast 596-Values, news coverage today is a reaction to something someone said or wrote. News is reaction to a new initiative by some government entity. Donald Trump hasn’t been president for a month yet. Already it seems like a year. Trump’s pace of executive orders, executive actions, tweets and initiatives allows him to dominate the media battle space while he cooks up another controversy stew to cauterize yesterday’s controversy.

In Podcast 596-Values, where is the media battle ground? It’s not the Internet. It’s some some battlefield in Europe or Virginia where armies clashed. It’s not a battlefield with stories of élan, bravery or great deeds. The media battle space is our brain. This battlefield is as small or as expansive as it needs to be. As the media storm rages and the wind blows, how do we know our tent is securely fastened and isn’t going to blow away? It call comes down to something called values.

In Podcast 596-Our Values, time to take a pause in this daily insanity of back and forth partisan media coverage. A break from ‘journalists’ who call two or three people, get some quotes, write it up and call it a day. Time to take a look at what we believe as individuals and as a people. Democrat, Republican, Populist, Populist Nationalist, Libertarian, Communist, Socialist, Moderate, Partisan, and Extreme alike. We’re all on a journey together in our lifetime on this planet.

What do we believe? What are the Values we hold dear? Where do those values come from? How do those values anchor us when the gales of change blow up even when those gales are generated from the hot air of politicians in Washington? Politicians who cry and grandstand secure in the knowledge the things they say and do won’t be investigated for any length of time or to any real conclusion?

Reporters determine our values by looking at the latest poll or driving to a shopping center and asking people in the parking lot a few questions. The result is a few hundred words taking the ‘temperature’ of regular everyday ‘folk’. Don’t have any supporters of the president in your state to talk to? Just drive across the state line to the first town and sit in the parking lot of a Safeway or Piggly Wiggly until mom and the kids show up, or chat up and write up what old uncle Frank thinks, while he sits in his 1997 Lincoln waiting for Aunt June. The headline? “Middle America Supports Trump”. Boom.

Work on a national TV show? Find that article about middle america. Get that pollster on the show. Find that Congressmen who says that crazy stuff. Get that woman on from that foundation. Say some stuff. Get some calls. Move on to the next ‘story’. Clicks. Listens. Comments. Calls. Ratings!

The battlefield is the mind. How do you avoid becoming a casualty in the partisan political war? It’s increasingly a battlefield filled with threats. More and more it’s a battlefield better characterized as a moonscape no man’s land, where the shell shocked wander, dazed and confused. Survival in this environment depends on what we believe. Why we believe it. Where we learned it. Who taught us. Where we get our information. How we check our information. What anchors us in the storm, or what kind of ground we have pounded our tent pegs into.

Sponsored by X Government Cars and Hydrus Performance.

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Podcast 479

Midnight Moonlight Talk. Spring is here. A lunar eclipse is hours away, so the time has come for a midnight walk and talk in the full moon light. The rules of the walk and talk are, no prep, no notes, just walk and talk. That’s the agenda for Midnight Moonlight Talk. The origins of the ‘walk and talk’ are probably the walks with my grandfather and grandmother back in Ohio on hot summer nights when I was a little kid. We talked about everything on those walks. I learned a lot, and became a night-owl. After the mega-cast about media in Podcast 478, I promised some discussion about coping. Given that there is no prep for this podcast, listeners get a glimpse in how we prepped for shows back at KSTP around 2000, how that has changed, and how the media has changed. How do you cope with the onslaught of highly partisan, snark-media these days? You start by cutting the cable, keeping your WIFI so you can watch what you want, when you want it, and you don’t have a constant, twenty-four-seven audio track of people telling you what to think. Every now and then a news cleanse is necessary. If you’re reading books, or newspapers you’ll find that your analysis will actually get better, because your powers of discernment will improve. Why? Because you’re actually reading the news rather than skimming, and you’ll start to recognize how much of today’s news is gleaned from other websites and rewritten. Getting out and doing whatever it is that you do outside, and perhaps some kind of exercise that teaches you how to breathe — martial arts, CrossFit or Yoga — or even just walking whenever you can, clears your head and deglazes all that nonsense. It doesn’t hurt to stand outside, drink a cup of coffee (or whatever it is you drink) and take in the night air and the moon on an early spring night. Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul, Pride of Homes and Luke Team Real Estate and X Government Cars.

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