Five important lessons from 50 podcast episodes | Ep. 50 Content Magic with Lindsay Smith

We've reached a pretty special milestone over here on Content Magic - the 50th episode!

So, I'm sharing five of the crucial lessons I've learned since starting this podcast.

1. Start before you're ready.
2. Embrace the crappy first draft.
3. You and your message have value.
4. Outsource to experts.
5. Community and collaboration over competition.

Tune into this one for some fun stories and a couple of secrets!

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Instagram: @lindsaysmithcreative
Website: lindsaysmithcreative.ca

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Show mixed and edited by: Cardinal Studio

Lindsay [00:00:00]:
I'm so good at every other type of content because usually it's a written type of content. My emails are written. My social stuff is written. This is not written. If you have an online business, you're creating content. And the way you create content is more important than ever. It's really noisy out there, and learning to stand out is the only way. Hey, I'm Lindsay, and I'm the host of the content Magic podcast, all about being an entrepreneur and creating kick ass content to market yourself and your business.

Lindsay [00:00:33]:
I have a not so secret superpower for copywriting, marketing and content, and I've helped hundreds of folks just like you show up with a ton of confidence in the online space. I've been doing this content thing for 20 years, and I believe the real magic is a combo of intuition, creativity, and strategy. You can create content for your business without losing your mind. I promise. So tune in every week for tangible content, tips, inspiring guests, and some real spicy opinions. Probably mine. Ready to dive in? Let's go. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the podcast.

Lindsay [00:01:10]:
It's me, Lindsey, and this is my 50th episode. So today I'm going to share with you 50 things I've learned since starting a podcast. No, just kidding. I don't have a list of 50 things. I do have a list of five things that I want to share with you. So, number one, which you've heard a million times, start before you're ready. So here's a little secret. This podcast, content magic, is actually my second attempt at starting a podcast.

Lindsay [00:01:44]:
I had an idea once upon a time. It had a different name, and it had a different concept. I think I even recorded an intro for it, and I bought some music, and that's as far as I got. No, that's not true. I think I. I think I recorded a few. I think I even had a guest on once, and that's as far as I got. I did nothing with it.

Lindsay [00:02:08]:
And then last December, I was like, okay, I'm really doing it. And I didn't feel ready. You never feel ready. And if you had children, you know that you're never really ready. There's no such thing as being ready. And if you're in business, you know, there's. You also know there's no such thing as being completely ready. You're never going to like, you know, there's like no manual for.

Lindsay [00:02:36]:
I mean, you can read a lot of books, but there's no. There's no replacement for just taking action. And here's something else I know you can do all the studying you want. You can read every business book that's ever been invented. You can take a business course. All the studying in the world is not going to replace actually doing the thing, because that is how you will learn the quickest, the fastest, the quickest, the fastest. You will learn quickly. You will learn fastly that way.

Lindsay [00:03:16]:
So if you're listening and there's something that you're like, I don't want to do that. It's too scary. You know what I'm going to say? Just fricking do it. Which leads me to my second point, which is embrace the crappy first draft, which means, and I think Stephen King wrote a book about writing. It's possible. I've shared this story before. And so he talked a lot about, you know, he's got a bazillion bestsellers, and he talked a lot about, in that book, about how some manuscripts he just couldnt finish and hed like, put it in a drawer and just leave it there for six months and then bring it out six months later or something. Or maybe he had his wife review them.

Lindsay [00:04:05]:
I forget, but he just left it and then went back to it. And so sometimes, well, that was supposed to be metaphor, but sometimes, and again, you know, and my podcast editor told me this, he was like, listen, the first five to ten episodes are going to be real crappy. And I was like, okay, that's fine. So if you just embrace the crappiness that you can't possibly be good at the thing immediately and just be like, okay, this might be kind of shitty, but you do it anyway. You just get better at it. And here's another secret I want to tell you about why it took me so long to start a podcast. Because I'm so good at every other type of content. Because usually it's a written type of content.

Lindsay [00:04:51]:
My emails are written, my social stuff is written, this is not written. And so one of my insecurities is that my written abilities do not transfer to my spoken abilities, which is because, and I think there's like, this expectation, like, oh, Lindsay is such a good writer. She expresses herself so well. She's going to be great at a podcast. You know, also, I was a radio reporter once, but that was different because I was, like, writing scripts and doing it right. I had my reporter voice on and Lindsay Smith's TBC radio, Charlottetown, Prince Edward island. Like, I had my reporter voice. This is not my recorder voice.

Lindsay [00:05:28]:
My recorder voice, my reporter voice. This is just my regular voice. So I think once you just kind of like, just be like, okay, this might be crappy the first time I do it. And it's the same thing with anything. It's the same thing with like launching something the first time. Sometimes it's just data, sometimes you just do it for the learning. You just do it because it's like a piece of clay and you have to kind of mold it a couple of times to get the figurine that you want. So that's number two.

Lindsay [00:06:00]:
Number three is you and your message have value. And I think sometimes, especially as women, we're kind of like, who am I to even talk about something? Who am I to go out into the world and talk about my expertise and my zone of genius? Who cares? And my mission for doing the business that I do is because I believe that as women business owners or women entrepreneurs, sometimes we dull down our voice. And I think this is something we've kind of been taught to, to not take up too much space and not be too loud. And I want to tell you that this is your psa and your permission to be loud and that your message does have value. Even if I get one message, like a month, that somebody loved the podcast, either if it's just me or if it's a guest, that makes my day. Even if I had one download a week, that meant somebody was listening. And this was helpful for somebody because most of us get into business because we have some zone of expertise and we want to use it to help other people. That's most of, that's usually what, you know, especially service providers.

Lindsay [00:07:23]:
That's usually why we get into business, because we're like, oh my God, I'm really good at this thing. I love it. I'm super passionate about it. Now. I want to help others with this smartitude. Okay, number four, outsourced experts. So I think, and this is the other thing, too, and I always joke that I'm like the content and marketing lady that's going to tell you that content and marketing is not everything. It's like a third of what you need.

Lindsay [00:07:51]:
Like, it's not everything you also need. Like, you also have to be really good at what you do, and you also need, like, everything else on the backend, like, your content is only as good as what you're offering. So if you're offering a shitty product, well, then marketing is nothing going to change that, right? Not to say that any of you are offering a shitty product, but it's like, it's only one part of the equation. There are other parts of the equation that have to go into building a business. However, outsourcing this podcast, especially having a podcast editor and producer, has saved my sanity. And the other person that works with me is an OBM, an online business manager. And she does a lot of my, like, scheduling and sort of things that just like, take up too much brain space. And what's so wonderful about Krista is that she does things before I even know that they need to be done.

Lindsay [00:08:44]:
Like, she'll go in the back end of my website, or she goes into my emails or my Facebook or whatever, and she's just like, oh yeah, I got that scheduled. Oh yeah, all those things are done. And I'm like, what? I didn't even know I need to do those. So those are the two people. Those are the only two contractors that I work with. And they have saved me from a lot of things. So also, the whole podcasting thing right now it's October 7, 2024, and on Netflix there's this really awesome series called nobody wants this. I've watched it twice because it's essentially Seth Cohen from the OC who was grown up.

Lindsay [00:09:22]:
Adam Brody and Kristen Bell are in this cute rom.com series. Anyways, so Kristen's Bell character and her sister have this podcast that they sell for like a bajillion dollars. I'd like you to know that that doesn't happen very much. And it's funny, like, I felt the same way when Mad Men came out, which, you know, I was working in full time, working full time in advertising at the time. And yeah, I know it took place in the fifties, but it was like, it did not represent like, advertising properly. Or like when I read a book or something, like a fiction book, or they refer to taglines as slogans. And I'm like, that's not how you talk about it. Anyways, so that was a tangent.

Lindsay [00:10:08]:
I forget where I was going with that. But one, podcasting is not that. It's not going to make you a million dollars in the first hundred episodes. And outsource, outsource, find help with your meta ads, find help with your web copy, find help with your business strategy, find help with your operations or whatever it is. So outsourcing, number five, is community, and collaboration is everything. So I don't think I was ever of the mind that I had competition. I think when I worked full time, there was more of like, things felt more competitive because other people would get the really fancy projects and it was like, and advertising is a very insular industry. Yeah, there's a lot of awards and stuff, but people outside of advertising have no idea what a Cannes lions is or a golden pencil is.

Lindsay [00:11:14]:
Nobody cares. So I think there was a lot of. All those award winning campaigns came from the superstar teams. So I think that in itself, just made it feel competitive. Like, why did they get all the good projects now my mission has changed very much. I want to do good work with good people. That's pretty much my mission. And so.

Lindsay [00:11:37]:
And I think, like, I don't. There have been times when I've felt maybe threatened by competitors. Not threatened, but just kind of, like, maybe envious. Is it like, because you looking from the outside, you're like, oh, my God, how come? Why do they have this and this and that, and I don't have it and that kind of thing? And I think we've all gone down that path. And because I've been doing this so long, I recover very quickly from that. I'm kind of like, wait a minute, Lindsey, this is what you're good at. But I will say that I've been in the same mastermind since January, maybe, and it's a year long, and it's this incredible group of women, and they're all super smarty pants. And so, honestly, being part of that community has, you know, I definitely feel like I've gotten my.

Lindsay [00:12:32]:
I don't want to say, like, my money's worth, because that's sort of a yucky thing to say, but just that community alone, and all of us are of, like, a similar age. All of us have real life experience, which we then transferred to the online space, and so that's what we share. And so I think most of us are in our forties or older, and I think that community, it's really wonderful to be able to have peers that kind of have the same smartitude as you, but in different areas. So that. And collaborating. And I think that's something that, you know, having guests on the podcast over the ask 50 episodes, you know, these are people I get to, like, chit chat with all the time, and it's really fun and, you know, I don't know, talk about whatever. Shoot the shit or, like, talk about new ideas or, you know, like, I'm doing another podcast episode with my friend Amy, even though she was the first guest on this episode. We're doing an or on this podcast.

Lindsay [00:13:36]:
We're doing another episode because we were like, oh, my God. Because we talk all the time, and we have all these, like, juicy nuggets to share. So we're doing another episode together. So I feel like collaboration over competition and yeah, some of it is, like, some mindset stuff and I think some of it is just like, growth. And I always say, like, the blessing of being in my forties and doing this thing is like, you give a lot less f's. And I think that's. I think that just comes with time and experience. So those are my five things.

Lindsay [00:14:14]:
Start before you're ready. Embrace that shitty first draft. Like, you might be sucky at the thing you start with and just be like, okay, it's gonna suck for a while, but I'm just gonna keep going. You and your message have value outsourced experts always. And community and collaboration is way better than competition. And that's it for me. Guys, we have a couple of awesome guests coming up in the next couple weeks, and we'll see you next time. And toodaloo.

Lindsay [00:14:49]:
Till next time. Thank you so much for listening. If you loved what you heard, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, or share this episode on social media. And don't forget to tag me on instagram. Lindsaysmithcreative. And if you do all three, I'll be your best friend forever and invite you to all my birthday parties. That's it for today, and I'll see you next time.