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So Monday came, Monday went,
and I didn't publish anything.

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Not because I forgot, because I was
properly buried under the kind of client

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work that eats your whole week and then
burps politely and asks, "What's for

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pudding?" And somewhere in the middle of
all that, I clocked a feeling, a feeling

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that I'd failed, which would've been fine.

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I mean, that's manageable.

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Failure is manageable.

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It's what happened next
that really shook me.

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I started feeling like a failure for
feeling like a failure because guess what?

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I'm the bloke who makes a podcast
telling you not to do exactly that.

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Yeah, let that sink in.

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I had to

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This is Podmastery Podcasting Insights,
the show for people who've had a proper

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go at this podcasting thing, probably got
episodes out, you know your way around

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the gear, but you can feel that there's
a gear that you haven't quite found yet.

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I'm Neal Veglio, 30 years in radio and
audio behind me, and still apparently

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entirely capable of feeling like a rank
amateur on a day ending in Y. This episode

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isn't really about missing a deadline.

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Everyone misses deadlines.

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It's about the thing that you do
next in your own head that turns

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a missed Monday into something
a lot more, something deeper.

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Let me give you the truth about this
first And this is quite vulnerable.

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I publish on a Monday.

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That is my slot.

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I don't know why.

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I think it was really down to looking at
the calendar and going, "Do you know what?

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Monday is probably the most realistic
day that I can get my ass into gear

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and get content published out there."
For this episode, this one right now,

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this is publishing on a Wednesday
because Monday got swallowed whole

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by the work that I do for the people
who actually pay me, and that's it.

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That's the entire scandal.

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There's no drama.

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There's no crisis.

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Nobody died.

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It just happened.

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Now, if you'd asked me on the record on
this very microphone I'm speaking into

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now whether publishing two days late
matters, I'd have told you the truth.

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It absolutely doesn't, not even slightly.

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The day you publish makes not the
slightest bit of difference to

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a single download you receive.

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I'd stake this entire show on it.

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Your feed doesn't know what day it is.

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Your listener isn't sat at home
with a calendar that's got your

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face on it going, "Look at that.
He's late." I know all that.

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I've said all that.

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I could even probably dig out some
clips of me saying all that, and

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yet I still felt like a failure,
and that's the first feeling.

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Honestly, that first feeling is allowed.

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It's just data.

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You make a thing, you had a
rhythm of making that thing,

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and you broke that rhythm,

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and you felt a flicker of disappointment.

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Fine.

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That's human.

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Let that pass through you.

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But then there's the second feeling
that they don't tell you about, and

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the second feeling is the one that
does the most damage to your mindset.

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The second feeling goes something
like this: You feel like a failure.

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You.

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Well, you make the show about this.

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You've literally recorded the episode
telling people the day that you

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release doesn't matter, and here you
are sat in exactly the misery you

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try to get everyone else to avoid.

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What kind of fraud does that make you?

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That's the second feeling, feeling like
a failure for feeling like a failure

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And here's the uncomfortable bit, the
bit I'm not gonna rush past just to make

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either of us feel better about all this,
because it's a good learning moment

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Knowing the right answer to this does not
protect you from feeling the wrong thing.

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Being the person who gives the advice
doesn't inoculate you against needing it.

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If anything, it's slightly worse
because now you've got a second

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charge stacked on top of it all.

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It's not just, "I missed it," but
it's now, "I missed it, and I should

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probably know better." Expertise
doesn't switch that feeling off.

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It just loads it

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It makes the bang louder
I am not immune to this.

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I wanna be really clear about that because
it would be very easy for me to stand

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here and pretend I've got it all sorted,
and you're the one who needs fixing.

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I haven't, I don't, and this
week I was the case study.

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And you know this feeling.

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Even if you've never missed a podcast
episode in your life, you know it.

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It's the exact logic of, "Well, I've
eaten one biscuit, so that diet's

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ruined now. I may as well finish the
whole packet." The failure isn't the

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biscuit, the failure is the story that
one biscuit means you've now blown the

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whole thing, so why bother trying again?

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We do it with diets, with gym
memberships, with alcohol consumption,

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with the untouched novel that
sits atop our bedside table, and

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we do it with podcast production

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So why does it happen?

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Why does a two-day slip on a
metric that measures precisely

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nothing feel like a moral failing?

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Now, I've been turning this over and
over, over the last 48 hours, and I

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don't think it's just about the deadline.

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Here's what I think it actually is.

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Dead air is quite a problem in radio,
certainly live broadcast radio.

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But here's the important bit.

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It wasn't me, it was a
slot, it was airtime, a job.

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The show existed whether
my name was on it or not.

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If I was off, the show carried
on without me, and nobody at

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home was staring at the schedule
thinking less of Neal specifically.

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They were just like, "Oh, okay.
Well, that's different. Someone

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new doing that slot now." This

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podcasting thing, this is different.

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This show has my name on it.

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It is me, my brand, my face, my whole
identity bolted into an RSS feed

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And when the thing is you, a missed
episode stops feeling like I missed

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a deadline, and it starts feeling
like I am failing at being me.

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And that's kind of the trap that
nobody really gets to warn you

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about when they tell you to go
and build your personal brand.

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You make the thing personal deliberately.

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I mean, that's the entire strategy,
and then every little wobble

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in the thing feels personal.

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The stakes get intimate in a way
they were never actually designed

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to be, and a missed slot becomes a
referendum on your character, all

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because of a Monday that objectively,
objectively means absolutely nothing.

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And this is the actual reason
that podcasters disappear.

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It's not the missed week.

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I promise you, it's not the missed week.

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It's the story you tell yourself
about what that missed week means.

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In the dark of your own mind

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You miss one, you feel like a fraud.

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The fraud feeling makes sitting down
to record feel faintly sickening.

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So you put it off, and putting it
off means you miss another, which,

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well, would you look at that?

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Kinda proves the fraud story right.

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And round and round it goes until
one day you're just not really

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a podcaster anymore suddenly.

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Nobody's decided it.

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It just became.

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It compounded.

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The missed episode is a pothole,
and that second feeling of failure

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at the fraud is the thing that
drives you off the road entirely.

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So what actually broke
the loop for me this week?

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Because I'm telling you, something did.

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Well, here it is.

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I didn't bury it.

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I could have.

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Easiest thing in the world, shove
this episode out on a Wednesday

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instead and say nothing, and act like
it always releases on Wednesdays.

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What are you talking about?

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I've never released on a Monday.

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Smooth it over.

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That's what most of us do.

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We hide the miss and hope nobody noticed.

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Instead, I did the opposite.

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I decided to make the miss the
episode, to say it out loud to you.

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And I want you to notice what
happened the moment I decided that

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because it's the whole point of this.

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The shame disappeared instantly, almost
embarrassingly fast, because shame

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can't survive being said out loud.

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It's the thing that only grows in
the darkness of our mind, in that

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private little courtroom in our
head where we're somehow both the

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prosecutor and the bloke in the dock.

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And the second you drag that into the
limelight and you just name it, you

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go, "Yeah, I missed it, and then I felt
like a fraud for feeling bad about it.

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How stupid is that?" Well, now the
shame's got nowhere left to live.

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Which kind of brings me to
something I wanna share with you.

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But before that, a short break where I'd
love to play you a podcast trailer from

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00:10:19,410 --> 00:10:21,360
one of our Podmastery community members.

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00:10:21,640 --> 00:10:23,490
We'll be opening the
doors to the public soon.

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00:10:23,860 --> 00:10:28,410
If you'd like to join the founding
members, go to podmastery.co/waitlist

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So here's the thing I
wanna share with you.

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It's not a list, it's literally one thing.

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The next time you break one of your
own rules, maybe you miss a slot of a

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release of an episode, or you skip a week
because you just don't feel able to do it.

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If you fall short of some standard
that you set for yourself privately,

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told no one about, Name that miss
to your audience, to your co-host,

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to your followers, or just to an
empty room out loud on the record.

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Yeah, I missed it.

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I feel a bit crap about it,
but that's just a feeling.

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That's it.

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Because you can't stop the first feeling.

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The disappointment is
coming and that's data.

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But the second one, the shame around
it, the what does this say about me?

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What does this say about my reputation?

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That needs secrecy to survive,
and the fastest way to kill

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that is to deny it its secrecy.

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Say it out loud.

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Watch it die.

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So that's what I did this week.

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I became the episode.

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It turns out that the failure was
better content than whatever I'd

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had planned for Monday anyway.

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If you've got a podcasting thing that
you're beating yourself up about that

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genuinely is holding you back, those are
the kind of conversations I like to have.

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Head to podmastery.co and get
your podcasting challenge solved.

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It's me on the other end.

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00:12:08,438 --> 00:12:09,588
It's not a sales funnel.

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Everything gets actioned there and then

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00:12:14,778 --> 00:12:19,128
Click Need Help in the top menu,
book your 60-minute call, and

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00:12:19,128 --> 00:12:20,638
we'll get you back on track

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00:12:22,638 --> 00:12:23,868
I hope you found this useful.

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I'm Neal Veglio, the podmaster.

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Good luck with your continuing
journey towards podmastery