This is only tangentily related to the imposter syndrome conversation. After yesterday's call I kept wanting to encourage everyone to just start recording and playing with the platforms. Even if the name, art, music, etc are still in progress. That way when you're for real for real recording you already know the buttons to push and have gotten over some of the tech stress. Plus you have the speaking practice and you get used to your own voice and face. It took me some hours of editing my stuff before I got okay with hearing my voice and many more hours for the video. The video still bothers me a bit and gets me stuck on doing more recording but doing more of it gets me closer to okay with that. Go head in to descript (or riverside) and play. Maybe invite a friend on to get the hang of how interviewing works. Then mess with the editing and the AI stuff. Push all the buttons! That'll at least help with the tech hangups. And you can stick with the free trial until you're ready for the real deal, so no reason to not start now. I think it's also good to practice the intro/outro and reading other copy, to make sure it sounds good out loud and you don't trip up on the words. I've found a lot of copy I end up stumbling and so I can tell it's not in my voice. Or that I'm not super excited about it. But I had to record it to figure that out, and then to play it back to see that it wasn't as awful as I thought. (Although some of it was still pretty awful.) So at this point I've recorded dozens of solo hours of me doing and saying stuff, and a lot of it I won't use. So I think it's helpful to start doing that sooner. When I first tried out riverside, I recorded a test run where I read through all of the settings and pushed the buttons, and it made a "magic clip" out of that, which it named "David laughs through confusing tech setup." I'm sharing that here for your amusement. 😂

Come to tomorrow's coaching call where we'll be doing something about that big ol' monster under the bed! (Also, I'ma gift a 30 minute 1:1 to the first person who guesses where the gif on this post came from...)

I'm kinda just recording from scripts I wrote and letting the duration take as long as it does. First episode was 33 minutes. Then I just published a 10 minute episode because I didn't want to bother trying to drag it out to the same length. I was thinking I'd like the solo episodes to be about 30 minutes if I can pull it off, but that'll make me take even more of forever to do these things. I saw YT shorts can be a max of 3 minutes. So I'm thinking 3 minutes or less is "short-form" and going there and on socials. Then 10 minutes or more could be an "episode" maybe? Do I need a consistent episode length? Does that mess things up if I do 10 to 15 minutes things, then a 30 minute thing, then maybe if I have a guest it'll probably be an hour or two? I'm also doing monthly Terrain Q&A calls where I do a solo talk at the start and talk about stuff I had prepared. The first talk was 30 minutes. I posted it on YT. Can I maybe throw an intro on there and repurpose as an episode? Basically trying to use all the things I have in all the right places without doing a ton of extra work. I guess overall I'm asking which things go in which buckets?

1. Once your show is officially LIVE, drop your PODCAST ARTWORK, & your APPLE + SPOTIFY links in the comments below. This is where we all help each other build momentum and boost early traction. 2. Don’t just drop your show and disappear. Take a few minutes to engage with others, listen to their episodes, and leave real reviews. This is how you build connections and get the most out of the community. 3. And a personal note from me: please don’t leave surface-level reviews. Actually listen to (at least!) part of their episode and share thoughtful, honest feedback. We can all learn so much from each other. Everyone here has something powerful and unique to offer. Lift each other up. Celebrate each other’s work. Let’s make this the most supportive corner of the internet for new (and AWAKE) podcasters! Drop your show below when you're ready. 👇

My original plan was I didn't really want my headshot on the cover art and other stuff. I was gonna leave it as an octopus. And then some people showed up (totally "unrelated") and said people are going to fall in love with my face. So I guess I'm making a headshot now... And I actually need a headshot for three things. 1. I'm doing a workshop at Confluence. 2. This podcast cover art. 3. The Youtube thumbnails since I'm doing a lot of solo episodes anyway. I have my main "profile photo" one which I use for everything right now. I really like that one. And I even used it for my temporary cover art that I threw together. I'm attaching both of those. Then I've been taking a few more, both inside and outside. I have about 200 of those (in case you can't get enough of me). Here are a few. For outside, I live on the beach so I can go back out there and take more if needed. For inside, I have the softbox so I can mess with the lighting a lot. Let me know if you have more direction for either. My questions: 1. Is the profile photo good? I'm concerned that since the original is taken at a distance the cropped version is lower quality and may not work in some cases. 2. Are the windy hair ones gonna make the background removal wonky? Guessing for the headshots we don't need to remove the background but I know y'all do for the YT thumbnails. 3. Eyes are more closed when outside. An issue? And more generally, which one is the best??? Thanks!