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Demystifying the process of designing, launching, and sustaining your podcast. Particularly, if you're a coach who's built your life around unlocking transformation in others. You're passionate about helping people, but you're unsure how to truly connect with those who need you most. This show is for you.
Allow me to turn the tables. Let's find your transformation and hold your podcast to the high standards of the modern industry without losing touch with the human behind the mic.
This is the Highline Sounds Podcast, episode 4.
Welcome to the Highline Sounds podcast. I'm Stephen Henning and I'm here to demystify the process of designing, launching, and sustaining your podcast. Particularly, if you're a coach who's built your life around unlocking transformation in others. You're passionate about helping people, but unsure how to truly connect with those who need you most. This show is for you.
Allow me to turn the tables. Let's find your transformation and hold your podcast to the high standards of the modern industry without losing touch with the human behind the microphone.
I feel like I owe you an apology, because I've gone quiet. I've gone dark a little bit. If you found me in the last few months, I know you got an email from me inviting you to this Highline Sounds podcast, and if you were generous enough to check it out, you found very little waiting for you and it probably cast out on why you were interested in the first place, especially starting your podcast.
And it'd be really easy to give you a laundry list of excuses or what I feel like are legitimate reasons for me going quiet. Ultimately, it's because I haven't trusted you, and for that I offer an apology. I haven't trusted you to show up to a human being behind the microphone to listen to what I have to say and make your own judgments.
I've been trapped, honestly. Turns out no one is immune to the traps of self-doubt and imposter syndrome that lie in the way of starting and maintaining a thing you're passionate about --really excited about. You want to craft your life around this new business, this new art, this new project, but those negative thoughts start creeping in, especially when you feel like you're doing it alone.
The honest truth of it is I got stuck myself in loops of hard feelings like guilt, shame, embarrassment, disappointment. They got worse and worse, the quieter I was on this podcast feed and with my email readers, all because I was afraid I would get those exact same feelings by putting out bad stuff.
Ironically, I wasn't escaping the feelings I felt like I was because I was getting them from the exact same action of saying nothing, of being quiet: inaction.
When I was in college, in my freshman physics class, I learned about the difference between static friction and kinetic friction. Static friction -it might be betrayed in the name- is that force of friction that keeps things from moving once they have achieved a state of rest.
Kinetic friction is that force that encourages things to return to a state of rest as they are in motion. And I've started to think about my self-doubt, the imposter syndrome that we all feel as a form of static friction. It was really easy for me to sink down into the state of non-action, the state of standing still, doing nothing, being quiet. And I learned in that college freshman physics that the static friction is nearly twice as hard a force to overcome than it is to keep moving and learn to live with the kinetic friction.
So today, I'm choosing to make something a little scared and maybe even do it bad, but I need to overcome this static friction and teach that part of me that would rather stay small and hidden and still that it's not so bad to be out here and to explore what might be in front of us.
Here's the thing. I strongly feel that overcoming this static friction and putting anything in motion is not just for podcasters, like I typically like to talk about around my business on starting and sustaining podcasts. This is for entrepreneurs, writers, artists, performers, musicians, coaches, creators, ultimately humans who make anything.
I've come to think of courage as a muscle. Courage is a virtue, often praised through the ancients to modern times as the quality that gives people their medal, equated with bravery very often.
But the thing is, it takes training and it implies fear. If it doesn't take courage to do something, you're actually not afraid of it. If you wanna flex that muscle of courage, you have to seek out the scary edges, the scary frontiers of your own mind, of your own body, your heart. The courage is the resolution to step past that leading edge and say, I've never been here before.
I think of Samwise Gamgee in the Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship of the Ring, walking through a cornfield of all places, still in the Shire, but there's a moment in the movie where Sean Astin stops and says, "this is it. Mr. Frodo, if I take one more step, I will be the furthest away from the home I've ever been." And thank goodness Sam isn't alone. He has his friend Frodo there to encourage the courage there to say, "you can do it. I'll do it with you."
So that's something like what I am stepping into with today's episode and the next few. I am treating it as a experiment or a laboratory of courage to overcome a lot of the internal thoughts that tells me, that probably tells you, that whatever creative project you're working on -a book, a podcast, a movie- that it requires it to be like a perfectly polished gallery or museum. But that's honestly one of the- what I think is the unique beauties of podcasting is that it doesn't have to be anything like that.
It doesn't have to be the polished hallway full of pristine paintings. What it is, is a documentation of a life stepped into courage, stepped past that line, the furthest away from home you've ever been, 'cause let's be honest, doing anything creative, doing anything vulnerable is hard, is scary, and it's nerve wracking to hit the lights and turn on the camera, fire up the microphone and say something that will be heard by other people to internalize.
So today I thought I'd talk about the thoughts and internal conflicts I've had over the last few months is I left this podcast feed silent. Now, the point isn't to air out a confessional before you to make myself feel even worse and really lay on the pity party. I hope you can actually see yourself in some of these ideas that have been spinning in my head and know you aren't alone on the path to making your thing. And maybe together we can each be that friend Frodo to turn around and say, you can take that step and be the furthest away from home and comfort and safety that you've ever been, 'cause it's actually not that bad out here.
So number one. By the way, these things are real. These are things that I have put in my journal as I dealt with the conflict inside of me, of feeling the growing guilt of being quiet behind this microphone. It's not good enough for them yet. Or, what if I can't get it perfect?
Number two, it's not good enough for me. Or, what if I can't measure up to my own standard.
Number three, is this what I imagined at the beginning? Really easy to idealize a future in communicating with people. I naturally imagine the effortless Zoom calls where I'm collaborating with a new client. We're designing the perfect podcast and we're saying the perfect thing. And it's not always like that. Sometimes the call is awkward. Sometimes we get stuck together. Sometimes there are internal blockages like the ones I've been experiencing, and when it doesn't measure up to either my own standard or what I imagined it would be, it's really easy to start doubting yourself.
Number four, not enough people will listen anyway. Or, does anyone even care? Really, that one very much gets me. Obviously as a podcaster, as a person doing digital things in a digital medium, you get metrics. You post an Instagram and you see that you get a hundred impressions, and then you scroll your reels and you're seeing people getting thousands, sometimes millions of likes, let alone impressions, and you start feeling like a very small, inconsequential fish in a very large ocean.
Same with the download numbers. Honestly, not a lot of people listen to this podcast at this point, and it's really easy to look at that and start justifying, "oh, it's okay to be a quiet for one more week while I just dial it in with that perfectionism and measuring up to my own standards."
Moving on to number five, I don't think I'm saying anything mind blowing. And honestly, we don't have to. But the idea, the thought is it needs to be, otherwise it's not gonna keep people hooked or they're not gonna stick around.
Number six, hasn't someone already said this? Yeah, probably. There's nothing new under the sun. So yeah, it probably has been said before, but not by you. And maybe we need you to say it.
Number seven. What if I fail publicly? That one is scary. It still gets me. Failing is hard, even if you do it privately. We've all probably literally tripped, like on the sidewalk or in a store, and no one saw us, but we were in public. And you dust yourself off, you stand up, you look around. "Anyone see that?" Sometimes people do, and 99% of the time, no one's laughing, no one's pointing. Almost everyone is actually looking to be there to help with concern.
Number eight, what if people misunderstand me? They probably will, but can you trust them to do their own work and communicate what you have to say? It is obviously our job as writers, as communicators, as speakers to communicate as effectively as possible and translate what's going on in here out there through the medium of words to get people to understand something new. That's what we're all doing.
And that's honestly what all art is. You look at a painting from Van Gogh. Van Gogh is saying, "this is what it's like to look through my eyes. Can I trust you with this vision of the starry night?" And understand, we both know this isn't what it looks like according to a photograph, but this is what it looks like to Vincent. And that's what art is, and that's the art we're doing with words and with our voices.
Number nine, what if I embarrass myself? Kind of going along with what if I fail publicly? You might, and that's okay. And it does take the resilience to get back up. Dust yourself off.
Number 10, am I letting the people I love down? Especially if you like me, are putting yourself out there on the internet of all places to trade your expertise and trade your time for what you do to help them. That trade, asking for that trade, is a very hard thing. And when things don't go so well, when you go quiet on a podcast, when sales are down, it's really easy to feel like everything is on your shoulders. But I'm willing to bet, as I've discovered, if you ask those loved ones that you feel like you're letting down, they believe in you, they're cheering you on. You can ask for help. You can ask for support.
Number 11, why is this so much harder than I expected? Again, to that imagined future. This takes a lot of work. Something I've been dwelling on as I take my dogs for walks and hikes around Montana here is "flowers are expensive."
I have a neighbor crab apple tree just on the other side of this wall, and I am thinking about this summer that flowers are expensive. Metabolically for a living being, for a plant, to produce. The flower comes first as a bribe to the pollinators saying, "here's the sweet stuff. Can we trade? 'cause I'm looking to make my own legacy, make my own mark on the world."
What that takes after the flowers is the making of the fruit, and that is expensive. It takes so much metabolic energy. It takes literal calories on the trees part, the energy that they're harvesting from the water and the minerals and the soil and the sunlight. They're bringing all this in and they're going to spend it before they have a guarantee on return. To put something beautiful out there, and the beauty is how they figured out to bribe the rest of the world. The sweetness of the fruit is how they figured out to bribe the rest of the world, to literally let the seed spread farther and give that seed a chance of being planted and becoming a new tree.
So why is this so much harder than I expected? Because especially at the beginning, the beautiful thing I'm making, the beautiful thing you are making, is expensive and hard. Metabolically, financially, spiritually, energetically. It takes a lot to be behind the microphone, in front of the camera, to write like you really want to be understood. It takes a lot and it is hard. We expect the outcomes. We don't expect the expenditure to get there.
Number 12, what do I do after I over promise? My resolution, my decision, is make this episode and apologize for it. When you over promise, when you say you're going to do something and don't deliver, be honest about it. And if you're feeling vulnerable enough and brave enough, courageous enough, talk about why.
Number 13, and the last one, what if I pick the wrong place to start?
Honestly, this is probably the one that was getting me the most through those first three episodes that I'm leaving up on this feed as a testament to when this started and when this quiet period began. The decision fatigue, the paralysis of wanting to make it just right according to those standards and that perfectionism and that imagined future.
What if I pick the wrong place to start? It turns out you can start from anywhere. If you know your course, you know you're heading, you probably will make it to the destination you want.
So with that list concluded, my next episodes are going to tackle these ideas one by one. They're probably going to be shorter episodes, but I hope that they can serve into the future as truthfully, little selfishly, reminders to myself that I know what these thoughts are like and I know what it takes to overcome them. I know what it takes to calm the self-doubt enough to go ahead and do the thing and make the thing right? So I'm gonna tackle these ideas one at a time with the actual work I did in my journal and talking with friends to overcome this static friction and move forward.
And I have discovered something fun through this process I've been developing for myself. Something like affirmations, I call them remembrances. Really a reminder from a resourced Stephen saying this is actually who we are. And when the voices of doubt and imposter syndrome and fear creep in, especially the louder, they get this time capsule message in a bottle from my resourced, calm and serene self can say, remember who we are.
And one of the key remembrances moving me forward is I do one scary thing a day.
Now that you've listened to me doing my one scary thing for the day, I want to thank you. This is an important takeaway for me throughout this entire learning experience to do one scary thing a day, especially when you're feeling alone and feeling exposed, because the good news is, I'm not alone and neither are you. You're here and you're listening, and unless you're some sort of superhuman with perfect confidence and serenity, I have to imagine I'm not the only one who gets stuck with these feelings.
So if you need one scary thing to do today to get moving, to overcome the static friction, would you send me a quick email at stephen@highlinesounds.com? I want you to have a chance to get unstuck. What's the idea keeping you from typing, from suiting up, firing up the camera or the microphone? I'm finding even over the last few minutes that saying these things out loud and sharing it with someone else takes a lot of wind out at the self-doubt sails.
And finally, I want you to remember that I'm not standing on the other side of these thoughts with perfect solutions. I'm actually walking this path right now, so if you're trying to build something meaningful and feel slowed or stuck by these thoughts too, I'd love to walk alongside you.
Thanks for listening.