Pod Crew 17/12/21… Top Four Takeaways

Want to improve education? Make peer-based interactions, projects and real experiences the centre, not the shepherding of information.

One of my favourite initiatives to come out of the Constant Student Community is a Thursday call where a very small group from the community gathers together to unpack our podcast projects and level up. Alongside me, it’s Liam Hounsell and James Fricker.

Below are my top four takeaways from the recent week’s installment.

1/ A new rule: 10%-20% friction limit.

2/ Another key takeaway — story > niche.

All the conventional wisdom says to find a niche, but James, Liam and I all realised something on our podcast meetup last night.

… none of the people we follow really have a fixed ‘niche’. Seth Godin, Tim Ferriss, Derek Sivers, Cal Newport, Ken Robinson…

Liam has been tossing up how he orientates himself within the community-building space. I think a lot about my topics which spread even broader, and how to streamline the focus of my podcast.

When talking to him, it hit me… story > niche.

The story is the packaging together of who you are, what you’re interested in, what you share and the transformation you drive.

I want to refine mine for the podcast — ‘unlocking creative contribution’ and ‘everyone is a Da Vinci’ (more on this to come)

3/ Podcast Miro Board

Miro is a fantastic tool for online collaboration. You can visually map out ideas, projects, flows of any kind, customer journeys, team projects and much, much more.

Think Whiteboard online.

You can’t trust the mind. It’s made for having ideas not holding ideas.

I think the podcast projects should be mapped out on online Miro Boards that we can check and review together each week. Aspects:

• Story — who is the host, what is the podcast and what is the transformation?
• Quality — The overall episode quality
• Format — Breaking down the parts of the show
• The Craft — Process for continually upgrading skills
• Actionable Metrics — What metrics matter, how are they measured, and what’s the feedback loop? How is feedback integrated?
• Process & Procedures — looking from a high level at everything from editing, repurposing content, and identifying guest out-reach
• Top-of-Funnel — where do new people discover the podcast?
• Retention — how do we retain listeners?

4/ ‘What do I need to stop doing?’

Liam: We always state our priority and what we need to start doing, or do more of, but what do we need to stop doing?

Note to self: start asking this question every week.