Kristiana Corona:
But if you've got a little spark inside of you that is curious or interested in podcasting, maybe it's time to give it some oxygen. You will never know where it could take you. Ever feel like everyone else has leadership figured out, and you're just making it up as you go? I've been there. I spent two decades leading design and technology teams at Fortune 500 companies, and for years, I looked like I had everything pulled together on the outside, but on the inside, I felt burned out, overwhelmed, and unworthy of the title leader.
Then a surprise encounter with executive coaching changed my life and dramatically improved my leadership style and my results. Now I help others make that same shift in their leadership. This podcast is where we do the work, building the mindset, the coaching skills, and the confidence to lead with clarity and authenticity, and to finally feel worthy to lead from the inside out.
Hello and welcome back to The Worthy To Lead Podcast. I am your host, Kristiana Corona, and I'm so glad that you decided to join us today because we are celebrating something exciting. Today is our 21st episode, and I know that probably doesn't really mean anything to you, but to me it's very exciting, and here's why.
There are four and a half million podcasts in the world, okay? And 485 million podcast listeners, which is a lot. However, 90% of those podcasts don't get past the first three episodes, so. That's not a lot, right? The world gets in the way. Life gets in the way. People get burned out. They don't realize what they're getting into, and suddenly they only have three episodes.
However, if you can make it to 21 episodes, statistically, you are in the top 1% of podcasts in the world. So I would like to celebrate Worthy To Lead podcast officially becoming one of the top 1% podcasts in the world. It's kind of crazy. And I told my friend, Ginny, that if this moment ever happened, that we would have a celebration.
We would not breeze past it. We would talk about it. And one of the reasons why I wanna talk about it is because I've had a lot of lessons learned along the way, and I think they're important to share. Maybe there's some of you out there who are a little bit podcast curious and you're kind of thinking like, maybe, maybe I would do this, maybe not.
I'll just be happy to share some perspectives with you today about what went well, what didn't, and maybe why you might wanna explore doing this yourself. So it's gonna be a fun episode, and I promise this actually has a lot more to do with coaching and worthiness and leadership than you actually might think. So, let's dive in.
So when I started this podcast process, I did it as an experiment, believe it or not. That's what I thought I was getting into. So I was in the middle of high-performance coaching with Brendan Burchard's organization, and I have to give a shout-out to my coach, Sarah Mays Allen, for being really good at finding those places where I was in my comfort zone.
So she was challenging me. You know, I have this full-time design leadership role, and then I was doing some coaching on the side, just a small side hustle. And she asked me, you know, what is one of those things that you could do to get yourself out of your comfort zone?
And immediately in the back of my head, I had this idea of like, oh, maybe I should have a podcast. Like a podcast would be a really, really great way to connect with other leaders and share some of these coaching inspirations that I keep having, and I want to tell people about. Right? But I don't have a forum to do it. But in the back of my head, I'm like, I'm not that person.
Like that's for witty extroverts, people who love talking on camera. Right? And that's not me. I am actually probably one of the least comfortable people talking on camera that, you know, I have just figured out how to become okay with it. But she didn't let me get away with that because I was like, I'm not that person.
And she said, well, let's examine that for a minute. How do you know that you're not that person? How do you know that's not just fear or discomfort standing in your way, and what is this actually telling you about your own worthiness? Ugh, that one kind of hurt. Right? So, Sarah did a really great job of challenging my beliefs.
She tied this belief to not thinking that I could do podcasting to, you know, maybe this is saying something about your worthiness. Do you think you're not worthy to be heard? I was like, wait a minute, that's not true. And then she also challenged me to think about whether those beliefs were serving me or holding me back.
So, of course, then my reaction was like, well, fine. If this is a challenge, then challenge accepted. So of course I'm gonna do this. So. All the reasons you can think of. I was giving all the excuses, right? And she just kind of helped me work through all of those and get to a point where I actually committed, and I did this.
And I am so thankful. I'm so thankful 'cause I could have either gone in and fallen on my face or else maybe surprised myself. And I couldn't have imagined what would come from this. So anyway, I'm excited to talk about this today, so I can share a little bit about behind the scenes. And you know what, it's really like having a podcast.
So before I started this process, here were some of the things I thought about podcasting, and then I'll share what I actually learned. So first of all, I thought that podcasting was really just for people who feel very comfortable with the sound of their own voice, who love being on camera, who like performing.
And for those of us who do not, you know, that really felt like it wasn't me at the beginning. And I also thought. Oh my gosh, this is gonna be really expensive. Like, I'm gonna have to buy all this fancy equipment and all this software, and I don't know how to do RSS feeds and all of that kind of stuff. I also thought, you know, I'm a really busy mom.
Um, I'm a working full-time. I have this side hustle. Like, when in the world am I gonna have time to actually do this? And what if I run out of things to say? Like, what if I just think this is a great idea? And then a few episodes in, uh, everything just dries up and suddenly I'm like, oh crap, I don't have anything to talk about.
And then, you know, at the end of the day, it was like, well, there's probably no one that's gonna actually listen to this anyway, so what's the harm? Let's just go for it. And so I'm really glad I did. Here's what I actually learned about podcasting. So first of all, it is not about performance. It's actually a really amazing way to connect deeply with other people.
And like sometimes when you're recording, it does feel like you're having a one-sided conversation, but I always imagine the person on the other side, like who is out there listening that actually needs to hear this message today. You know, maybe someone is out there that's going through a really hard time, and I can find a way to share a coaching question that changes their day or their week.
So, I always, always think about the person on the other side, and it allows me to connect deeply with people, but then also people reach back out. Like I have had such an incredible response of people in my network reaching out and saying, Hey, I listened to this episode and here's what I thought. So, absolutely didn't expect anyone to listen to it, but I'm so glad that, you know, there are people out there that have found value.
Another point to keep in mind is that you do actually get used to the sound of your own voice. Whether you love your voice or you hate your voice, whether you have a late-night DJ voice or you just. Always feel uncomfortable hearing it. It is kind of like one of those things where if you just keep immersing yourself and exposing yourself to it, eventually you stop worrying so much about that and you start really leaning into, you know, what are the messages that I'm sharing.
Another thing is that the text side actually can be quite simple if you let it. So I am usually not a simple person. I usually go kind of. All in when I do something, but in this case, what I found is you can have a really, really simple tech setup pretty quickly and get things out there and start trying them and learning along the way.
And so I'll share what my tech setup is in case you're interested, and just getting started, like, please, please don't invest in tons of expensive equipment because you really don't need it upfront. In fact, I did my first recording using my Apple earphones. A closet. So it was pretty great. I don't know if you could tell, but the sound quality was really good 'cause it was full of my child's stuff and it really dampened the echo nicely.
As far as topics go and guests, it's really amazing what happens through this process. So from a topic standpoint, you may have a list of things that you come up with initially, but through the course of each week, the conversations that you have, the coaching sessions that I've had, there are always themes that come up, and there's always something that sparks.
And so it is this organic living thing that continues to grow. One of the coolest things is when you go to in-person events or you attend, you know, different meeting or conferences, you meet all of these amazing people. And when you have a podcast, it is like a magnet. Like people will say, Oh my gosh, I know this incredible person that you should talk to, and suddenly the guest list is just forming itself.
So I think one of the. The really interesting things about this is how organic the process actually is, and you don't have to have it all planned out, like you can just react in the moment and be yourself and just talk about it in conversation, and you will actually have topics and guests that just manifest themselves.
So another really interesting thing that happens when you do podcasting is you develop this brand for yourself. And so as you think about your leadership style, what do you wanna be known for? What are some of the things you care a lot about? What are you passionate about? And it just helps you organically sort of grow that over time, people learn to trust you.
They learn to know who you are. They understand your style and what you stand for. And again, it's that magnetic thing where you don't have to necessarily reach out and try and connect as much with people because people start wanting to connect back with you. So there's this beautiful win-win that really happens as you're developing.
What you wanna be known for. It really changes the way that you are perceived within the leadership circles, whether it be LinkedIn or other places, even YouTube, right? I don't know that I ever aspire to be a YouTuber, um, but it has been fascinating just seeing, you know, who else in the search results shows up next to your content.
It's fascinating. So I wanna share five different things that have helped me to make this podcast process easier, 'cause I won't lie. I mean, it is a process, and it does take some work. So this is not gonna be for everyone, but I wanna share five things that really have helped me because I think there's a difference between committing to doing something and putting great content out there, and producing a massive Hollywood blockbuster movie like that is not what you want this process to be like.
So, first of all, one of the key things that I did when I started is I started learning from an expert, and I signed up for Jenna Kutcher's The Podcast Lab, which is a course, and it teaches you step by step, like how to start the whole entire process of having a podcast.
Everything that you need to think about from a technology standpoint, from a messaging standpoint, quality. All of these different things, and it was so, so helpful, especially because you just don't know what you don't know when you're getting started. And so it helped me to really develop momentum and then not feel like I was overwhelmed trying to just get this thing off the ground.
The thing I love about Jenna Kutcher is her podcast and her blog and everything about her brand feels really lovely and authentic. It's very creative. Um, she just has this unique, colorful, fun style, and so I knew that that is who I wanted to learn from. Like if I was gonna emulate anyone, for sure it would be her.
You may find someone else that resonates with you that you wanna learn from, but I think it is worth. Doing that so that as you're getting everything set up, you are not going on YouTube for hours and hours and hours trying to uncover tutorials and videos on how to do this from like a whole bunch of different people.
It can just be really distracting. From a technology standpoint, another thing I would talk about is just the setup that you start with. Again, make it as simple as possible. So my setup is I use an all-in-one kind of platform called Kajabi. That is where I host my podcast. That is where I have my website, and that's also where I do my email marketing.
So if in the future you ever wanna have an email list for people to sign up. And subscribe to get notified when you do a podcast. It's really nice that all of that kind of stuff is connected, and then, you know, you can have automations that talk to each other. So, um, that is where I host all of that. And then from a recording standpoint, I use Riverside.fm.
And shout out to Peter Pop because he is the one who introduced me to Riverside, and I am in love with Riverside. It is so fun. It's so easy to use. You can literally pick it up and have zero training and know what you're doing. The editing is like super simple. You can go in and just. See all of the transcript from your recording and just cut chunks of it out by deleting words in the transcript.
Lots and lots of features available on Riverside. I would just say for anyone who's never done online recording, um, it is a great place to start, and they have tons of great tutorial videos, so highly recommend them. So, from a standpoint of adding additional flair like animations or B-roll video or words or things like that, I use Canva because it's super simple.
And so you can kind of export your files out of Riverside and then import them into Canva. You can add music. Everything is super simple in Canva, that is not where I started. And I'll talk about that later in the lessons learned. But, um, this has made it very, very simple. And I would say, especially for people who just don't wanna be video editors, it's a great way to kind of plug and play and add stuff in a very simple way.
In addition to the software, you also need a really great microphone. And when I say really great, I'm saying. Less than a hundred dollars. Okay, so like $75. I have a Logitech for creators. It's a blue microphone, blue Yeti, and really great, again, just like plugs right into your USB, um, in your laptop. And you just need a pair of headphones, and you can use earbuds.
Whatever works for you, but you just wanna have something where you can help reduce the echo in the room because a lot of times rooms will have echo or you'll have like a fan going on in the background or other kind of noise, and this really helps to reduce it and make it feel much more like studio quality.
I can't show it here, but my husband also made these really cool acoustic panels for me. So it's just literally pieces of wood that have those foam squares on them that help dampen the sound. And so I can kind of roll those around and put 'em up. And again, this is. Totally not necessary to set up your tech at the beginning, but it is nice to have like something that dampens the sound.
When I started recording, I recorded in a closet, like I mentioned, which helped to reduce the echo. And then also some people have recorded, like in their car, or they put, you know, hang laundry up or have a blanket, and there's a million ways you can kind of dampen the echo in the room so you can have fun with it.
It can be really messy, especially if you're starting off and you're not on camera. You can kind of use whatever you want to make the sound. Sound good. So one of the other things I would talk about is finding your rhythm. So you may not really think about rhythm when you get started. Um, you may just be inspired and create a whole bunch of episodes in a row, and you know, that's fine.
But really, when you think about the value of the content and having your content show up, if your goal is to have people find you and to actually listen to the content, it's better to have a consistent strategy than to have, you know, lots of really, really in depth episodes, but only release them occasionally.
So people have all kinds of rhythms from daily to weekly to monthly. I happen to find that every two weeks works really well for me because then I can have sort of an on week and an off week, a preparation week, and a, you know, production and launching week. And it also is important to think about like what kind of podcast you're gonna have.
Like are you gonna have a solo podcast where you're just doing all the episodes yourself, or are you gonna interview guests? And it can be really fun to interview. You guests, but you also have to keep in mind that there's more coordination and it takes time to kind of prep those episodes and have conversations about what you're gonna talk about and get a picture of the other person and their bio.
And so as you think about that, you know, you don't have to do one or the other. You can kind of play around with it. For me, what's worked really well is sort of a 50/50 split. So I like doing a lot of guest interviews to hear people's stories and be inspired, and I'll often record those way in advance.
And then the solo episodes, I kind of like them to be fresh and talking about something relevant that is come to mind. And so often, I'll sort of sprinkle those in between and come up with themes that are really resonating with me that week or that month. Another topic is about how you do the recording itself, and trying to streamline it.
So I'm always looking for ways to streamline the effort because when I started, I was taking way too many hours to produce things. And of course, being a recovering perfectionist, I was not doing it the easy way or the fast way. I was trying to get every single one, like really crystal. Clear and perfect.
And what I've found is, you know, if you can find a rhythm in, first of all, writing your scripts or your outlines, and then when you record the episodes, and then how you launch them, it really makes the process a lot easier. So, for example, if you have to get ready for being on camera, you don't wanna have to go to all of that effort maybe every single day when you're doing this.
So how can you sort of batch those recordings on the same day, or maybe, when you think about writing, you can't get in the mode for writing very easily. You have to kind of do that deep work at a very specific time. Well, if you batch the writing of your episodes and your scripts together, then you can really take advantage of when you're fully in that deep work mode and getting as much done as possible.
So, those are definitely things I'm still working on. I am not the best at doing that, but I admire the people that do, and I think that that's a super smart strategy, and I have worked on trying to do more and more of that as I've thought about this as part of my business. And then finally, the last one that makes it really easy is repurposing your content.
So you put a lot of effort into an episode and you wanna make the most of it, right? And one of the ways that you can really do that is to take one long-form piece and turn it into lots of different types of smaller pieces. So you launch the. Episode, but then you also have little snippets and short reels, and you can turn it into like a carousel of images, and you can try putting quotes from the episode out there or little audio, um, snippets.
And I think the thing that people sometimes forget is that one piece of content can do so many different jobs. In so many different platforms, and so you don't always have to be creating something new from scratch to be able to do that. You can take that one thing and just use it in many, many more formats and more places to get the most out of it.
And I'll tell you, I didn't use to do a lot of this. And more recently, having more varieties of things that we're using to post it, it like creates this momentum for your content. You know, maybe one person will hear it, another person will see it, another person will click through or they'll tap through something that's interactive, and not everyone sees you in their feed the same way.
So it's great to have this whole variety of ways that people can interact with you and find your content. That's been really powerful, and I've seen how that has completely changed my results. So I mentioned that I would talk a little bit also about the areas where it didn't go so well with the podcasting.
And there's pretty much two key areas where that was the case. So, the first area was falling off track. So everybody has times in their life where they lose momentum, they don't follow through, and I am not immune to that. At the end of last year, I had some stuff come up in our family. There were some health issues.
I have three kids, so busy anyway, but life just really kind of got in the way, and for a little while, I was stressed about it. I was kicking myself. I'm like, oh my gosh. I was on this perfect rhythm. I was, you know, putting content out all the time, and it was going well, and I'm getting momentum, and now what's gonna happen because I dropped the ball.
Like, I literally stopped doing everything, and it was months, you know, for months. And what I ended up doing is taking a pause and really thinking about, okay. In the grand scheme of things, how big a deal is this? And is this a moment where I need to be reevaluating my commitment to podcasting? I've been doing it for several months.
Was I at the point of burnout? Was I trying to do too much? You know, how important was this? And it was. A really important moment to reflect because I realized it actually is very, very important to me, and I wanted to make sure that I was gonna give it my all, but I was gonna do it in a way that actually worked with my life.
And so I used that moment to kick off season two, and I did a whole episode about getting back on track. So. As a coach, of course, you know, we want to take these moments of failure and be like, why did I fail? What did I learn from that failure? You know, how can I be better because of that? Um, this isn't a moment where I wanted to quit.
This was a moment where I wanted to, you know, be realistic about the fact that you're not gonna always be perfect, and there's gonna be moments where you fall off track. So if you're interested in that, or if you've kind of fallen off track at some point, there is a guide on my website about getting back on track that might be interesting for you.
The other lesson I learned, again, my tendency is to be a perfectionist, and I like to see things done really well. And I have a high bar for quality. So I started off using Final Cut Pro, which is a very professional editing tool for video. And I spent hours and hours watching tutorials and trying to learn and trying to figure out how to do basic animations.
And I am, you know, in the back of my head, thinking of all of these people who just. Have the keystrokes memorized and could just do this so fast in their sleep. And I was so far from that. It was very hard for me. And I am a pretty technically savvy person, right? And it just was not working. And so one of the biggest shifts I made was saying like, I did make an investment in this tool.
And you know, I would love to not have spent that money, but at the same time, now I know where it works for me and where it doesn't. And I need to, like, look at the total amount of hours that I'm putting into this work and say, is it worth it? So that is when I made the shift to Canva. I'm so happy I did.
It was way faster and way easier. And you know what? Sometimes I didn't even need to do anything in Canva. I could just. Produce an episode in Riverside, call it good enough, not be a perfectionist about all the minute transitions and different things in the video or you know, cutting out all the ums and the ahs and things like that.
And so, um, once I started to let go of a little bit of that, you know, over-polishing, I will say the process definitely. Definitely improved and felt a lot more streamlined. The other thing I would say is when you get to a point where it becomes a part of your long-term strategy, where you really enjoy doing the podcasting and you can see how it fits in your life and how it helps, you know, create a better network for you, a thought leadership brand, or even you know, attracting clients because it's great for attracting clients.
It's great to get some help. And you know, at one point in time, even though I had learned all of these skills and I was doing them myself, I realized, okay, I really need to get some help with production if I'm gonna do this ongoing, you know, for years.
And that is what I wanna commit to ultimately. Um, it is a core and foundational part of my business now. So I actually just recently signed on with a really wonderful production company, and I wanna give them a shout out. So thanks to Kevin Leahy and the Podcast Pointman, which is an amazing team that helps with my podcast production and also my social media posting around the podcast.
And if you are in a place where you're looking to get some help, I would highly recommend them. So I would be happy to do an introduction for you. You might be asking yourself, this is great, but I am in a corporate career, or I'm a mid-level manager or leader. Like, why would I need a podcast? Or why would I wanna do a podcast?
And um, I certainly don't think this is for everyone. That is for sure. But if you are someone that has just a small dream on your heart. Something that has just been in the back of your mind, you know, maybe you have something important that you feel like the world needs to hear. Maybe you have expertise.
Maybe you have something that you have cultivated over years and years, and you wanna give back. You wanna mentor someone else, or you just wanna share something fun. There's a lot of negativity in the world out there, and I just can't help but think. That any of you who have something positive to say, or maybe you're really funny, um, and you just enjoy making people laugh, you know, whatever it is, we need that.
We need that in this world because what we don't need is lots of people who are selling things that you don't want or pushing really hard for things that you don't need, or, you know, just spewing lots of toxic messages. There's so many leaders out there. Who are feeling spread too thin. Who are burned out, who are struggling, and they just need to hear something positive.
They just need to hear some uplifting messages, something that is going to help them have a better experience at work. Right. And you know, what is it that you might be able to share? Your experience or your expertise, or something fun or uplifting that could make their day. I just think that there is this whole group of people who have sort of been left behind, and they need that attention and that support, and so that is why I do what I do.
But I also would encourage you to think about that as well. If you were to step up and take a role in that, you know, what would you be able to put out in the world that doesn't exist today? So podcasting can really be a creative outlet. It can be an extension of something, like if you're a blogger and you love writing, maybe this is just another way for people to hear your messages that they wouldn't have gotten otherwise.
It's also another great way to connect with people and to build your network. So if you're looking to meet people, if you're looking to rebuild those connections after COVID, it can be a fantastic way to do that and to meet people you never would've met otherwise. And finally, from a standpoint of coaching and worthiness.
It is something that feels difficult, but actually isn't that difficult. But really, it's more the friction and the barrier of yourself, right? Where you think about who am I? Am I someone who, and it allows you to realize that maybe you've been capable of doing this all along, and the only person that you needed to convince was yourself.
So I hope this episode has been helpful from a standpoint of just talking through some of the, you know, pros and cons of podcasting. Some of the ways that you can make this easier if you wanna get started, if you're curious about it. And also just the value that this creates. It's not just about. Hearing yourself talk or getting clients, it's really about putting something positive out in the world that is going to combat some of that negativity and finding ways to relate and connect back to people who just really need connection these days.
And so I am thrilled to be able to offer this to human-centered leaders who wanna upscale their level of coaching, who wanna show up differently as leaders who want to really identify with the leader that they're becoming. And so this has just been such a pleasure, and I really, really appreciate you coming today and spending time with me and celebrating episode number 21.
I will put all of the resources that I mentioned into the show notes today in case you are interested in taking that next step. So, to sum up today, episode 21 was not really just about a number. It was really about. Saying yes to something that I did not think I was capable to do. It's about showing up and learning and finding joy in the process of discovering yourself and discovering how you can connect with differently with other people.
So if you've got a little spark inside of you that is curious or interested in podcasting, maybe an idea that you just keep brushing off. Maybe it's time to give it some oxygen. You will never know where it could take you. Until next time, keep showing up. Keep doing the work that matters and keep leading like you're worthy to lead because you are. Bye for now.
