Day 10: The Ick of Self Promotion - 30 days, 30 episodes

I'm Matt Gilhooly, and this is the Life Shift Candid conversations about the pivotal moments that have changed lives forever. Hello, my friends.

Welcome to day 10 of this 30 days, 30 episode little bonus series that I am doing for the Life Shift podcast, in which every day I show up, I look at my list of prompts, I think about what I might want to talk about, and then who knows what's going to come out of my mouth? So here we are again on the 10th day in a row.

My goal is every day this month, I show up on the same day on that day, Record, edit release shortly after.

My window is shrinking from about a little over an hour now we're down to like 45 minutes from the time that I record the episode to editing it and putting it on YouTube and all the streaming platforms for the audio version. So it's been a good experiment. I'm thinking by the end of the month, I'm going to learn a lot about myself and about this process.

And so thank you for coming along this journey while I kind of just explore different prompts and questions.

So today I'm going to talk about something that a friend of mine, Jackie, gave me, I guess earlier this month, just less than a week ago maybe, where she gave me a couple prompts that she was thinking about. And one was self promotion. And this is something that is really hard as a creator.

So if you're a creator out there, you probably love doing the process and all the things that come along with it.

So if you're a podcast or probably the conversations that you get to have with all these amazing people across the world, and you get to learn all these tools of editing and creating all these different things so that you can put it out there for the world to hear. But if you're a podcaster, you also know that there are about 400 billion podcasts out there.

And there are so many different ways that people consume podcasts, all different platforms and YouTube now. And then you have social media and all these things, so you have to try to cut through the noise.

And it's really hard if you're an independent podcaster like myself, where you don't have the backing or you don't have the reach that maybe some of the more popular podcasts that everyone know naturally goes to every day. Like, that you see in, like, the feeds of promoted shows in Apple or Spotify, all these people have these networks backing them.

They've probably created a big career, and then they kind of pivot into that or they're part of a network, say like a crime junkies or something, they have audio Chuck.

So any of their shows that they put out there, a new episode can be cross promoted and you naturally kind of get that audience in some capacity or a big portion of that audience.

But as an indie podcaster, you're just kind of like throwing things out there into the world and hoping that the stories that we're trying to share are finding the ears that need to hear it most. That being said, I'm 150something episodes into the show. I think there's a steady group of people that are listening.

Of course I would love to grow the show, but you know, it is what it is.

So there is this part of self promotion that we need to do and I struggle with it because I feel like people may come across, or especially my friends, they might see my posts about my show and they just kind of discounted, oh yes, Matt, we know you have a podcast and you've had it for almost three years now, and we get it. But at the same time, if I don't put that stuff out there, then maybe new people are not going to come across it.

They might not get interested in the show.

And so I spend a good amount of time creating assets that I can use on social media and then I try to talk about it and then I try to share these stories and then I try to give the links and, and all the assets to the guests and sometimes they ghost me and I don't know if that's because they're just busy or if they didn't like the conversation or I don't know what it is.

But sometimes I never hear from some of the guests that I talk to and then I have to promote it on my own and I try to find all these different ways of doing it. One example, to celebrate 150 episodes, which happened to coincide with the latest hurricane that came through Florida.

So it didn't quite work out as well as I wanted to. But I found this site, I think it's called Cassie Co.

And they basically sell space on billboards and digital signage and things like that across the globe, I think, or you know, in whatever countries that they work in.

And so I chose a bunch of billboards here in Orlando and some up near where my father lives in Massachusetts, and then some where my friend lives in Chicago, just to kind of put it out there and put a little digital advertisement about my show out there.

And I didn't want to spend a lot of money because you know, again, I'm doing this all myself, so all the money that I spend is coming from either Patreon or my own pocket. And so I threw a couple hundred dollars at it and chose a couple windows of time and days, just a couple days, obviously. And it was a complete bust.

You know, if I'm going to be honest, it was cool to think about it, right? And it was cool to create the assets and select the things and try to, like, maybe put it out.

And maybe other people will see it and hear it, not hear it.

They'll see it and then maybe start following the show or listen to one of the episodes or listen to that 150th episode on the particular day that I started the ads. And I don't know that they ever. I mean, I. The website shows that they did show up, but I wasn't able to catch any of them live.

And, you know, part of it is. It is this cost per click kind of thing. And I think people outbid you.

And naturally it's going to be like, I can't compete with the ad spend of total wine or some medical center or a law office or any of those kind of things. And so I guess mine didn't kind of pop up as much. And the windows that I took maybe were more popular. And so I didn't really see anything.

Someone at the gym said that they saw one nearby the gym. I don't know, I guess, maybe. But in my opinion, the coolness of it was so much higher than what actually came of it.

But if I didn't try it, then I wouldn't know.

And it was kind of like, I don't know, it was this weird, like, anticipation of, like, something really cool coming from it and, like, really hoping for that. And then things kind of falling flat.

And the same thing happens when you try to do, like, a press release about something really cool that's happened, some kind of newsworthy thing that's happened in your show or. I was really super fortunate.

Frank from Earworthy has these independent podcast awards, and he named my show, like, the top independent podcast of the year. And, like, that's so amazing and, and like, such an honor.

And it's people like that that keep me going because I know that people I didn't know before are finding the show and they're listening to it and they're. And they're liking it beyond the people that listen because, like, they know whoever the guest is on the show. So I don't know what the.

The ick is really in the sense of like, it feels like I have to tell people a lot about my show and my circle knows me. And so I hope that if you're in my circle, you, you're not like super annoyed by it.

And you know that I have to do this because I want to get these stories out there and I want other people to share them and I want to continue to grow the show and continue and see where it takes me. We're about to hit year three in March and so, you know, like, maybe that's going to open some doors because I've had over. I'll.

I don't know, maybe I'll hit 200 episodes in 2025. Feels really cool. But at the same time, part of me struggles because, you know, you get jealous. I guess that's the best word to use.

You get jealous of the shows out there that have the big money to put behind it or they have the big names or they have the network that can support it. But I guess the, the end of the day is that that's not going to stop me.

There's just like this icky part of like having to continually self promote, but at the same time, you know, you have to do it.

And so I will just keep going and I'll keep doing it and I'll keep trying different tools and, and different methods and trying stuff like the billboards and hopefully they all don't fall flat, but if they do, then I've learned from that experience and that, okay, so if you are an indie creator of any sort, you do stuff on the side as a side hustle or maybe you're not even making any money from it. You know, just keep going. If it's, if it's fueling your passion, then just keep doing it.

I know that those things and the self promoting and buying billboards, that don't really work for me, it's not going to stop me because really the value in this show is knowing that each episode is finding the ears that need to hear that particular story the most.

And hopefully whoever is listening that is maybe feeling alone in that circumstance by listening to the story, they feel a little hope or they feel a little less alone or, you know, whatever it may be from that.

So that part is driving me also selfishly, each story and each conversation that I have with someone on the life shift gives me something, gives me some kind of healing part of my journey.

I can't think of an episode in which I didn't, you know, take a little nugget away and so I hope if you're a regular listener that you're taking little nuggets away and, and you know, each episode is, is kind of finding its way into your heart and maybe you learn something from that or choose to do things differently moving forward because of that story.

So in any case, day 10 was all about self promotion and the things we have to do and knowing that we're fighting against the, the big Goliath out there or those big media companies out there, or the Joe Rogan out there, or the caller daddy out there, crime junkies.

All these shows that are so good, but they have such a backing and they have such a built in fan base and I know they've been working on it for so long that maybe this will come, you know, and if it doesn't, that's okay because we're sharing the stories and I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing. No moral today, just letting you know that it's not all perfect and wonderful behind the scenes.

There's a lot of work that goes into trying to get more people to hear the show.

So if I could ask of you if there is an episode or something that's touched you, I would love it if you would help me promote the show and share that episode. Share a link, send it in an email to your friends, ask me for any kind of clip or anything like that. I'd be happy to share that.

If you want a link to a certain episode, I will find that for you and run it to you.

So any kind of help you can give this little indie podcaster back here doing the Life Shift podcast all by himself, if there's anything that you want to do to help, I would greatly appreciate it.

So thank you for listening to day 10 of the 30 days 30 episodes of the Life Shift podcast, letting me share a little vulnerability from behind the scenes. And with that, I will say goodbye. I will be back Tomorrow for day 11 of this little series that I'm doing here.

So thank you so much and thanks for helping to promote the show. For more information, please visit www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com.