Your Fun & Profitable Online Business · Episode 52
Podcasting: What I’ve Learned After a Year
After 52 episodes, the biggest lessons are not really about microphones or episode formats. They are about service, perspective, connection, consistency, and learning to trust your own voice by using it.
Press play and hear what 52 episodes changed
Having trouble? Open the audio directly.
The shift that made podcasting lighter
Move the spotlight off yourself
Early on, the questions were about performance. A few episodes in, the better question became about service.
Did I mess up that word? Am I explaining this right? Is this how a podcast is supposed to sound?
Center the listener, trust your perspective, and let usefulness matter more than polish.
Episode 52 is a milestone, but the value of the year is not the number itself. It is what became visible through repetition: what matters, what gets easier, what creates connection, and what Wendy would do differently if she were starting again.
Service changes the whole experience
When the focus is “How do I sound?” every stumble feels important. When the focus becomes “What does my person need to hear right now?” the work has somewhere useful to go.
That shift applies far beyond podcasting. It can change an email, an offer, a sales conversation, a workshop, or a business decision because it moves the question from how you are being perceived to how you can help.
Your perspective gets clearer when you use it
Wendy did not begin the podcast with complete confidence in her voice or perfect clarity about what made her different. That confidence came from publishing, watching what resonated, hearing what people remembered, and noticing which ideas kept coming back in conversations.
The point is not to wait until your perspective is fully formed. Sharing it is part of how it becomes clearer.
Repeatedly explaining what you believe helps you hear your own point of view more clearly.
Preparation gets lighter when you stop trying to sound perfect and trust that your perspective matters.
The real reward is hearing, “It felt like you were talking directly to me.”
Weekly repetition turns something intimidating into something familiar, useful, and even fun.
Podcasting is connection on a bigger scale
The surprise was not simply downloads or publishing 52 episodes. It was the emails, DMs, and moments when someone said an episode was exactly what they needed at exactly the right time.
Podcasting is not about broadcasting. It is about connection on a bigger scale.
What Wendy would tell her day-one self
You do not need everyone. You need the right person to hear your message when they need it.
Batching can help, but for Wendy, recording closer to release keeps the content connected to what is happening now.
Getting podcast production help from the beginning reduced second-guessing and made the whole process stronger.
The hardest part was starting. Once the podcast became part of the weekly rhythm, it got easier and more fun.
You can refine after you begin
A polished plan is not the price of admission. If you are on the fence about starting something, identify the smallest step that makes it real, choose a date that works in your actual life, and put it on the calendar.
And if you are already creating consistently, pause before the next piece and ask one question: what does my person need to hear right now?
Your action step
Use whichever version fits where you are:
- If you are starting something new, choose the smallest first step and give it a real date.
- If you are already creating consistently, ask what your person needs to hear before you make the next piece.
- Let service matter more than polish.
- Trust that clarity can come from doing the work, not only from planning it.
Questions about starting and sticking with a podcast
What did one year of podcasting teach Wendy?
It taught her to center the listener, trust her own perspective, value connection over broadcasting, build a rhythm that keeps her close to the conversation, and start before everything feels fully figured out.
How did podcasting get easier over time?
Part of the shift came from moving away from worrying about how each episode sounded and focusing more on what the listener needed. Repetition also built confidence and a more natural workflow.
Does Wendy recommend batching podcast episodes?
Not as her default. She found that batching too far ahead made her feel disconnected from the content, although she still uses batching when travel or a busy week makes it useful.
What should I do if I want to start a podcast but feel unready?
Choose the smallest first step, give it a specific date that works with your real life, and begin. The episode emphasizes that you can refine later, but you have to start first.
Your question could become an episode
Ask Wendy Anything
Have a business question you would love to hear Wendy unpack on the podcast? Send it in. Your question may become a future episode.
Read the full episode transcript
Episode 52 transcript: Podcasting: What I’ve Learned After a Year
Hey there, and welcome to episode 52 of Your Fun and Profitable Online Business. This is the podcast where we talk about growing your business in ways that actually feel good. I’m Wendy Muzzy, a certified money coach and online business strategist, and I help women entrepreneurs grow fun and profitable businesses. Today’s episode is a big milestone for me. It’s been 52 episodes. That is one full year of podcasting. Now, when I started doing research for this episode, it astonished me that less than 10% of podcasters get to this place. This isn’t an episode, though, about how much I’ve accomplished. Rather, I want to share with you the things I didn’t know when I started, what surprised me along the way, and what I think actually matters if you’re building something consistently. So if you’re thinking about podcasting or currently doing it and wondering if it’s worth it, this episode’s for you. Now, I’ll go ahead and give you the short answer. From my perspective, it is 100% worth it. But it’s because of all the reasons I’m going to share today. Now, when I hit record on episode one, I was freaking out. I didn’t know how my message would land or if I was going to even like podcasting at all. Looking back, though, I can see something way more clearly. My problem was I was making it more about me rather than you, the listener. Not in an ego way. That’s not my style, but more that I didn’t know what I was doing, and it felt so unknown. I was focusing on things like, did I mess up that word? Am I explaining this right? Is this how a podcast episode is supposed to sound? I was very much in my own head. And then around maybe episode five, something clicked. I stopped asking myself, how does it sound? And I started asking, what does Elena need to hear right now? Oh, if I haven’t shared before, Elena’s one of my ideal client avatars. She’s the reason I’m doing all of this. And I think of her whenever I’m creating any content. it. Whenever I shifted my thoughts to Elena, it opened the door for me to step into a space to trust myself, like really trust myself. And it made all of this so much easier. So if you’re early in something and you feel unsure, or if it feels like a lot of effort, I challenge you to move the spotlight from yourself to the person you’re actually helping. And that leads me into the first lesson I learned, which is podcasting as a service, not a performance. The moment I centered on the listener, the heaviness dropped. And this lesson amplifies far beyond podcasting. It shows up in our offers, in our conversations, in our business decisions, in our emails, and the list can go on and on. It shifts the focus from how does this look to how does this help? And in that space, everything gets lighter. All right, moving on to lesson two. Our perspective gets clearer when we share it. Specifically, podcasting has helped me hear how I’m different, not in theory, but in real time. I’ve learned what resonates when I look over my metrics, and I think through the conversations I have with people and the questions that they may bring up weeks or months later. This confidence is a byproduct of doing it because it surely wasn’t there at the beginning. Up next, lesson three. The secret sauce is in sharing our thoughts and perspective. Early on, a 10-minute episode could take me hours to prepare and record. Now, I can typically do it in about 30 minutes. Not because I care less, but because I trust what I have to share matters. And I know my episodes are not perfect. And that’s okay. My perspective and voice are the parts that matter. Hear me out here. Your lived experiences, your angle, your viewpoint, that’s what people want to know. Share it with the world in a way that’s meaningful for you. Now, let’s talk about what surprised me most in this process. It’s the connections I’ve made as a result of this podcast, specifically. It’s the emails, the DMs, the people that have said, it felt like you were talking directly to me. Or how often someone will say, that episode was exactly what I needed to hear at that exact moment. That’s when this really landed for me. Podcasting is not about broadcasting. It’s about connection on a bigger scale. It’s about you, you moving your business forward in a fun and profitable way. And that’s the real reward for me. All right, now it’s time to share what I would say to the version of myself on day one of podcasting. Number one, worry less about the noise out there. People obsess over how noisy the market is. I know I did. But that’s not the point. The point is your voice for the right person at the moment they need to hear it. This isn’t about reaching everyone. It’s about reaching someone who needs your message today. Number two, don’t batch episodes on typical weeks. Now, I love batching. Truly, I do. In fact, I have an episode about it, wendymuzzy.com/31. However, for me, doing episodes four weeks ahead of time came at a cost. I felt disconnected from the content by the time it went live. Now, I stay closer to the conversation and what’s currently happening. Here’s how. My typical rhythm looks like I record on Friday, I get it edited by Monday, uploaded on Tuesday, and it’s live on Wednesday. That balance totally works for me, and it keeps the topic front and center and it makes it easier for me to bring the content from new episodes into my weekly conversations. And sometimes batching makes total sense, like when we travel or have a busier week than normal. I’m good with that, but batching episodes is no longer my default. Number three of what I’d say to day one podcasting, Wendy. Don’t think twice about hiring a podcast producer. I was on the fence about bringing someone in because it felt like something I could do myself. I chuckle about that because hiring someone to help from day one was the best decision I ever made, hands down. It keeps me from second-guessing myself. And I get to strategize my approach with someone that specializes in this whole area. Hiring a podcast producer, 100% a game changer. I highly recommend it. Finally, number four, breathe and just press record. The hardest part for me was starting, but once I started, I put it in my weekly routine, and the podcasting train had left the station, and everything got so much easier and a lot more fun. But I had to start to get there. All right, that leads to your action step for today. If you’re on the fence about starting something new, like podcasting, identify the smallest step to make it happen. Then commit to do that on a specific date. Make sure that date works for you and what’s going on in your real life. Then put it on your calendar and make it happen. Make that commitment to yourself. It doesn’t need to be fully planned and it’s okay if you feel unsteady. It just needs to be started. And if you’re over there building something consistently like a podcast or your weekly newsletters or an offer, before your next piece of content, pause and ask yourself, what does my person need to hear right now? Focus on the person you’re helping, not what will perform best, what is everyone else talking about, and what sounds the most polished. Just focus on how you can help them. This small shift alone can change how everything else feels. All right, to recap, move the spotlight from yourself to the person you’re actually helping. Ignore all the noise out there and ground into your own perspective. Stay connected with your content, and don’t think twice about hiring help if it’s out of your scope. Specialists are so worth it. And finally, just start. You can refine later, but you’ve got to start. Now, if you have a question you want me to answer here on the podcast, ask away. I’m here for it. It’s super easy to submit your questions. You can go to wendymuzzy.com/ask. And who knows, your question may be the next topic we talk about. All right, until next time, happy sharing your amazing perspective with the world.