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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Darrell Darnell, last Friday evening my son beat the original Super Mario Bros., and I believe if you are learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I share lessons I’ve learned in the last year since I launched Pro Podcast Solutions.
Today’s fun fact: You’re probably aware that colors affect our moods and emotions, often times without us even realizing it. But do you know what emotions are evoked with each color?
Yellow: Clarity, Warmth, Optimism
Orange: Cheerful, Confidence, Energy
Red: Youthful, Bold, Courageous
Purple: Imaginative, Wise, Compassion
Blue: Dependable, Strength, Trust
Green: Growth, Health, Harmony
What I learned yesterday.
It’s hard to believe that it has been a year since I launched Pro Podcast Solutions. Time has truly flown by. If you’re a long time listener to this podcast then you know that I am the type of person who likes to set goals and establish benchmarks. I like to be able to track progress and measure results. I think that stuff is important.
I think it’s important because it helps paint a picture of what has happened over a period of time. However, I also know that looking at numbers on a page is not the only thing that should be considered when trying to evaluate progress or assess a situation. Still, they are a very valuable tool to use. Of course, numbers only mean something if you have a framework to put them into. For example, we have to look at numbers in context such as a specific time period.
Today I want to talk about some of the decision processes I went through as I created Pro Podcast Solutions, share some of the results I’ve had over the last year, talk about some of my failures, and even share some numbers with you.
I mentioned the colors as today’s fun fact, because that was one of the many decisions I had to make when I created Pro Podcast Solutions. I also had to come up with the company name, and even decide whether or not I should even mess with starting another company.
When I quit my day job and became a full-time podcast producer and consultant, I did all my work under the Golden Spiral Media brand. After all, that was the brand that I was known as and that was the brand that had been nominated multiple times for best produced podcasts. However, most of the folks that came to the Golden Spiral Media website came there because they wanted to listen to podcasts. They didn’t need help starting a podcast or with their existing podcast. This meant that I couldn’t give a lot of real estate to my podcast services, and that meant that I wasn’t really doing a very good job marketing myself.
It caused confusion. I had prospective clients ask me if this was a part-time gig or if I was serious about editing podcasts for other people. I had listeners say that they weren’t sure if their monthly contributions went to support my production work or the podcasts they were listening to about their favorite TV shows. It was a mess.
I consulted with several friends and trusted business associates. Their opinions were split about 50/50 as to whether I should continue as just Golden Spiral Media, or if I should create a new stand alone brand to represent my production and consulting work. Of course, I ultimately decided to create a new brand, call it Pro Podcast Solutions, and make the logo blue. I liked the idea of evoking Dependability, Strength, and Trust.
I started full-time in May of 2013. At that time I had 2 clients. One of those clients, TV Talk was a lot of work. In fact, it was so much work, I really wasn’t able to take on any new clients. So for the remainder of 2013, I didn’t. I ended the year with those same 2 clients.
At the beginning of 2014, TV Talk began to taper off some of their work. Their finances were beginning to run thin and I was concerned that they might decide to shut down their operation. The good side of that was that I was able to start looking for other clients. In April of 2014 I landed 2 new clients and in May I gained 2 more. However, in June of 2014, TV Talk was completely shut down and I completed my last work for them.
I felt confident though since I’d landed 4 new clients in the previous 2 months. However, the next several months were hard. I landed no new clients in July, August, or September. We were paying bills out of our savings account and bleeding cash fast. We went on a family vacation to Hawaii, and felt guilty about it. We’d paid for 75% of it while I was still making good money with TV Talk. Now that we were bleeding cash, the trip seemed like a luxury we couldn’t afford. I used that time to reflect on the future of my business and returned ready to make decisions and move forward.
As I returned I landed 2 new clients in October, and 1 new client in November. While that was exciting news, they were all leads that I had been working on before Pro Podcast Solutions existed, so I couldn’t really attribute them to my new business model. However, this did mean that December became the first time in 6 months that I didn’t have to dig into my saving account to pay bills.
As we turned the corner into 2015, things were looking up. By that time I had converted all of my existing clients over to Pro Podcast Solutions, and had several good leads working. In the spring of this year, things started looking up. I landed new clients in February and March. Where the summer of 2014 was a complete drought, the summer of 2015 was amazing! I landed new clients in May, June, July, and August. I came back from Podcast Movement with a lot of momentum, and that momentum has continued to grow. In fact, I’ve landed more clients in the last 3 months than in the previous 10 months combined!
It hasn’t all been a bed of roses though. I lost 2 clients who thought my new prices were too much, and I lost 4 clients because they stopped doing their podcast. Not only that, but I’ve had a hard time adjusting to the growth. I had plans to start a blog that would create podcasting tips, review podcast gear, and promote the growth of my brand. The good news is I’ve been too busy to do that. The bad news is, I know that my brand would be better off if I reworked my workload so that I could do the blog. I also planned on created a training resources and community component so that my clients could have better information and even interact with each other. That also has had very little development done this year.
Furthermore, it has been a difficult challenge to manage my clients. I’ve done a good job with it, but there are times that I’ve taken longer to complete a project than I would have liked, and I’m working more hours than I should be.
So what have I learned?
I learned almost immediately that creating a new brand was the right move. There’s no question that I am financially stable today because of the decision to create Pro Podcast Solutions. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been given a compliment on the website, or I’ve been told how impressive the brand is. I set out to create a brand that represented my experience and would establish Pro Podcast Solutions as the industry leader in podcast production. I’m proud to say that that goal has been achieved.
Of course, we aren’t the only top brand in this industry, and I’m totally okay with that. I can’t possibly serve every podcaster out there, and our industry needs trustworthy brands that can take care of all the great podcasters out there. However, a year ago no one knew who I was or what I did for a living. Now I’m highly recognized. I get recommended via Facebook or receive referral emails almost every single day of the week.
I’ve learned that growth is exciting, scary, confusing, overwhelming, and euphoric. There have been times when I’ve hung up the phone after having just landed a new client and gone through a series of emotions. It usually goes something like: an exciting happy dance because I have a new client, a sense of anxiety while brushing my hand through my hair as I think through how I will blend them into my workflow, confusion as I rearrange things to figure out what my next step will be, and thrilled relief as I work it all out and begin the work ahead.
And that’s really the big takeaway today. There are probably a dozen more things I could talk about, but this episode is already pretty long. So today’s takeaway is that life is a series of choices and emotions. Despite the fact that I had some very trusted and knowledgeable people were advising me to keep my work under the Golden Spiral Media brand, I had to eventually make a choice. Once I made that choice, I had to move forward in a direction that supported that choice until I reached a point that it was clear I made the wrong decision. Of course, that point never came, so I kept pushing forward toward building the Pro Podcast Solutions Brand.
It is too easy to get caught up in paralysis of analysis. That is, we’re so overwhelmed by the sea of data and decisions in front of us, that we don’t move. As a result, we never go anywhere.
Every single day we have to make the best decisions we can. Sometimes those are as benign as whether or not to eat tacos or hamburgers, and sometimes they involve big issues like whether or not we should sell our house and take the new job, or stay where we’re at.
I know that there are things I want to do and ideas that I want to pursue. However, I also realize that I can’t do them all at once and I have make decisions on which ones I will do first. I have to establish a priority system with every task or request that comes in to me, and work that system. I can’t let myself get distracted by lower priority items, and I can’t waste time by starting projects that I can’t finish.
Lastly, I’ve learned that I can’t do it alone. Delegating has never been something I’ve excelled at, but I’m a lot better than I used to be. I have a great team that I work with that has allowed Pro Podcast Solutions to get to this point. Together, and only together, we’ll be able take Pro Podcast Solutions to a company several times as big as it is now, and continue to make the world a better place by helping other podcasters connect with the masses.
I’m Darrell Darnell and this has been stuff I learned yesterday.
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