Here's something even Nigel Risner didn't know at the time. When we decided to do our podcast together, I had no idea how to publish it.
Back then, Nigel and I were trying to figure out the best way to do this podcast thing. If I'm honest, we're still figuring things out.
How it started
Nigel and I had shared a stage at an event. A couple of weeks later we had a call, and I mentioned that I was planning to launch a podcast.
He suggested we should do it together. And Your Best Year Starts Here was born.
Well, sort of. It wasn't quite that straightforward. We didn't really have a theme. We didn't have a name. What we had was a willingness and a very rough idea. Two monkeys and two microphones, as we liked to put it. What could possibly go wrong?
The bit Nigel didn't know
I knew how to talk, and I knew how to record. Getting it out on to all the platforms people actually listen on was a complete mystery to me.
But I figured two things.
One: you can't publish anything without recording it first. So recording was the first job, and that was the bit I could already do.
Two: enough other people were publishing podcasts that I could either learn how, or find someone who could do it for me.
I didn't tell Nigel at the time, in case he doubted me. I only came clean once I'd got it figured out.
You only need the first step
Please believe me when I tell you I learned this lesson the hard way. You don't need to figure everything out before you start.
All you need to know is the first step. That's it.
Get clear on the outcome you're trying to achieve. Work out what the first step is. And start.
The rest tends to reveal itself once you're moving. Questions you couldn't even have asked at the beginning become obvious once you're three episodes in. And the answers are usually out there, in a how-to video, a book, or a person who's done it before. It's the idea behind my book, Done Beats Perfect, and behind The one thing you need to know to start something new.
If we'd waited until we had a theme, a name and a perfect publishing plan, there'd be no podcast. Instead the episodes are now here on the site, starting with Episode 001: Do we need an intro?. The theme tune came later too, written on Christmas Eve, and I told that story in Writing my own theme tunes.
It doesn't matter that it's no longer the first of January. The whole point of the podcast was that your best year can start whenever you decide it does.
So is there something you've been putting off because you can't see every step yet? And what's the first step, the one you already know how to do?
