Want to Podcast, Write A Book, Help People? 10 Important Lessons

So I'm kind of different because I like the adrenaline rush of waiting until the last minute to do my Christmas shopping. But I'm almost done because I got everyone I care about. Cozy Earth sheets and PJs and casual wear. Why? Because I live in Cozy Earth all day and I know how relaxed it makes me feel. And it's kind of fun using my own code calm at CozyEarth.com to get extra savings on their Black Friday specials right now. I'm even getting gifts for Casey's friends because I want them to be cool like me. So last year I bought myself Cozy Earth pullovers joggers and three-quarters zip shirts because I knew that's what I wanted. And that was even before they were sponsored. Black Friday has come early at Cozy Earth. So use my code calm to get 40% off in savings on top of their site-wide sale at CozyEarth.com. Start your holiday shopping today at CozyEarth.com and use code calm for up to 40% off great deals. And let Cozy Earth know the Calm Parenting Podcast guy sent you. When I asked Casey what his favorite Christmas gifts were from childhood, he didn't mention electronics. His favorite gifts were always hands-on experiences, something he could build and play with over and over again. Kiwi Co. crates make the perfect holiday gift. They're hands-on, fun and educational. Kiwi Co. projects get your kids off screens and allow them to discover how things work and experience the confidence it comes from creating something you are proud of. This holiday season, every Kiwi Co. crate is a chance to spark wonder from babies exploring colors to big kids engineering robots. Give kids the joy of making their own fun and the memories that come with it. Kiwi Co. projects are a fantastic gift from grandparents. So tinker, create and celebrate this holiday with Kiwi Co. Get up to 50% off your first crate at KiwiCo.com promo code calm. That's up to 50% off your first crate at KiwiCo.com promo code calm. Aloha, I'm Gina Ryan, host of the Anxiety Coaches Podcast. Each week I share calming conversations and simple tools to help you ease anxiety, find peace and reconnect with your natural calm. If you're ready to step out of worry mode and feel more centered and free, this show is for you. You can find the Anxiety Coaches podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen. Join us and let's bring a little more peace into your day. And I hope that that helps to maybe inspire some of you to take the next step and to jump into the unknown. I hope it saves you a lot of money and hopefully helps make some money and you can actually do what you love and help other people. So I normally say that's what we're going to discuss on today's episode of the Calm Parenting Podcast. But this isn't really about parenting, but what it is about is personal growth. Because if you are going to do this, you are going to deal with your own worthiness issues. You are going to have to be vulnerable and face rejection by other people. Oh, you're going to grow a lot. So let me throw out some ideas for you. No particular order that I've learned over the years. Number one, just begin doing it. Don't overthink it. Don't overplan it and think, okay, I've got to do this and then we're going to do this. No, because it never goes as you expected to. There are going to be wrinkles in this and you're going to go down different paths. Start now. Number two, do not collect certificates way back in the day when we started. I used to train people to basically use our methodology to help people. And then I stopped doing that. You know why? Because almost every person who came to our training was like, well, I've been through the nurtured heart approach. I am a certified teacher of positive parenting. I've done this and they have like 18 different certifications, but they hadn't actually done anything. Because what happens is, and many of you are like this, and I know this is hard, you want to wait until you feel qualified. You're never going to feel qualified. What you are going to feel is afraid. You're going to feel vulnerable. You're not sure if you can actually help people. You're going to have to wrestle with your own self-doubt. Many of you are going to deal with your childhood issues because maybe because the way their parents treated you, you don't feel worthy of being paid for things. You don't feel like you have enough to give other people. How am I going to charge people? And so you go through endless trainings. You know what? I just need to do one more class. Then I'll jump into it. No, stop that. Start now. I promise you, you will learn more from just doing it in that process, from learning from people. You're going to learn more from that than any training you will ever do. Number three, if you want to start a podcast, do this today. Go into some room in your house. You don't have to have a recording studio. Go into a room on your computer, on your phone, and just start speaking 5, 7, 8, 10, 12, 15 minutes about what you're passionate about and about what your expertise is, and see what comes out of you. You can't plan it out. You're going to need to find your own unique voice. But to do that, you just have to start talking. And so I had a little bit of an advantage because, as I'm going to go through a little bit later, for many, many, many years, we spoke all over the country. And so I'd spoken in front of live audiences, so it kind of had a voice. But it is different when you're staring at a computer instead of a live audience. Number four, do not invest a lot of money. You don't have to have a lot of money. We started this podcast. All I'd use for recording was that those old Apple earbuds that stick into the side of my laptop, it didn't sound awesome, but it didn't sound awful. We built the podcast that way. You know why? Because our podcast grew because it has really good content. And so it wasn't until this past year, when it really started kind of, you know, becoming really popular, our son Casey finally said, "Dad, you have to actually sound professional." So we have a sure. It's S-H-U-R-E, sure seven. I don't have any deal with them. I should. A sure seven microphone. I think they're about $250. That's it. I don't have a studio. I am in our, we have a small house with two bedrooms. I am at a desk in our extra bedroom. That's it. Don't get business cards. Some of you are hiring business coaches. Maybe that's fine. I don't know, but they usually spend more people on the business coach than you're actually bringing in. You don't need fancy stuff. You just need good content to do this. To get our podcast out, at first, we used Simple Cast. I think it was $15 a month, and it automatically sent it out to Apple and Spotify and YouTube and everything else. So keep it simple. You don't need fancy stuff. I record on GarageBand. I mean, it's free through our MacBook. I'm not bragging. I think we have the number one parenting podcast in America. We have a lot of downloads. We do this. There's no, we don't have staff. I'm on podcasts all the time with people, and I'm not meaning to sound jerky, but they have not many listeners, and they have a producer and a production staff, and they've got all this equipment and a studio, and I'm like, you don't need all of that. Look, you don't need all of that at all, and especially to start. Just start talking and get into it. Throw yourself into it. Number five, help people. Just start helping people. What problems can you solve for other people? What is causing other people pain? Our two top emails are, I'm at my wit's end, and you describe our child and our home. Can you please help us? So start just doing it. Jump in there. If you want to speak to people, do small events. Don't turn anything down. When I first started, it was talking to two people, eight people, five people, because then you'll get it down and you'll make mistakes in front of a small crowd instead of a bigger crowd. Number six, make it easy for people to give you money. Have a simple website. Be clear what you offer. Take all payments and get paid. Start with your prices low, so you get paid for something, because it builds momentum. It feels good. If your prices are too high, nobody's signing up for it. Look, parents and people are really busy. Simplify everything. Don't assume that people read through everything on your website. Make it simple and lower your prices, so you just start getting experience doing this. That's what you want. Number seven, be true to yourself. Here's a weird thing. I tend not to listen to other people's podcasts who are in this parenting space, and here's why, because I know if I listen to other people, I will immediately feel like I need to be more like them. I need to use more brain science. I need to call things a hacks. I need to do it the way she did it, the way he did it. I know that about myself, and I don't want to stray from who I am and what my lane is. I stay in my lane, whether that's good or bad. I know some people will like me and other people I'd be really irritating because I talk really fast. I do the podcast the way I want to listen to podcasts. I hate listening to podcasts when there's lots of music at the beginning. I'm like, "Kan, get to it. Get to it." I don't want to hear like, "Well, I'm just coming to you and I had this over the weekend or two hosts are talking. I don't care about your life unless they're really funny or good." I do the podcast the way I want. There's no music. It starts with, "Hey, is your child struggling with this? Do they do this? Good." Boom. I'm Kirk Barton, founder of Celebrate Calm, and in less than a minute, I'm starting on strategies to help because that's who I am. It doesn't make it the right way to do it. It's kind of like our website. You know those websites you go to and there are pop-ups that come, "Hey, before you go, sign up for this. Hey, here's $10 off." Those people do that because it's extremely effective. I hate those, so we don't use those on our website. We could sell more stuff, but I find it irritating and I'm irritating enough and I don't want to do it that way. We used to have at the beginning, we had all these business consultants, "You need to do this. When you come out on stage, you need to..." No, that's not who I am. Be true to you. Know your gifts and know your strengths and you do you. Number eight, this is going to be hard for you. Ask for money for your services. When we did that training back in the day, here's where people stopped. "Well, I just want to help people." Well, I know, but you can't help people if you don't get paid. You'll be out of business. And asking for money for your services is not a bad thing. It's not because that's a lot of people. Forgive me for this. I don't want you to be offended by it, but a lot of people do nonprofits because it sounds more virtuous. "Oh, we're a nonprofit." Well, nonprofits in our for-profit company have the same thing. You have money coming in, some do it by donations or selling products, and then you have expenses. It's just they're treated differently in a tax sense, but it's not more virtuous to have a charity. So, share a story. We used to do these conventions, and I remember this guy was up there, super nice guy, great guy, and he's like, "Hey, we're really trying to encourage families, and we have these books, and if you'd like to support us, I'd really love for you to buy a couple of our books." Well, he was basically asking people to buy his book so they could do good work helping families. Well, then I would go up and I'm like, "Well, I'm doing really good work helping families, but I sell our programs, and it does require an investment, but here's what I learned from that. When we sell our programs, I need to put in so much effort to make them so good that they change your family, so you're willing to pay for them. And then the end, that will change more families than just asking for donations. Does that make sense? Because a lot of you get hung up on like, "Well, I just have a big heart. I know, I do too, and I found I help more people by creating things of value that they need. I hope that makes sense to you, but it's going to be hard because you're going to have to be vulnerable. You're going to have to face rejection by people. You've got it at number nine. You've got to market yourself. Know what you stand for. Who's your target consumer? Use case studies on your website, or when you talk and say, "Hey, I was working with this person," and here's the process we went through, because other people say, "Oh, yeah, that sounds like me," and they can identify with you. You know what the best marketing is? Good content. Do good content, and people will really appreciate that. And then number 10, be willing to fail. Be willing to listen, try new things, adjust, because you're going to get into this, and then eventually you're going to be like, "Oh, I thought we were going to do this to help people," but then we found out this is what people really needed. And by the way, I found out I really love working in that area. And so that's why I want you to be flexible with this. Throw yourself into it now. Not tomorrow. Okay, tomorrow's okay, but not the next day. Let's start this now. Now, what about writing a book? So I have a very different take on writing books. Now, here's a caveat. If it has always been a dream of yours to write a book to see your name on the cover of a book and see that in a story, by all means do it. If it would give you a sense of accomplishment, if you'd make yourself proud or your mom proud, do it. If you think it would give you a sense of legitimacy of like, "Oh, I wrote a book," do it. But here's why I don't like the idea of writing a book. Now, personally, I don't want to write a book because the publisher is going to make me write the book in their style. I've had several book offers. I've sent them manuscripts and they're like, "You need to make these changes. I am a strong-willed person. I don't like to be, I want to do it my own way. I like the autonomy. I don't want to make 1,500 edits." And in previous times when they've tried, they're like, "Well, you just need to sound like this more." I'm like, "No, this is my voice. This is how I want to write my book. And I don't want to give up my freedom in order to write a book. I want my autonomy." There's also this, when you write a book, you're going to spend countless hours and then there's usually at least three to six months between the time you get your manuscript done and then it finally gets printed. It's in bookstores. And then for me, so much of my stuff would be, I like to update it. Part of the reason that we do a podcast and we have audio downloads is this, a couple of reasons. One is, so much of this with our strong-willed kids is in tone of voice. And I can't model that in a written book. What I can do in the podcast and our programs is model, even matter of fact, tone. I can give you scripts to use. I actually go through conversations of how it's supposed to sound and I find that to be helpful. Also, people don't tend not to read a book two or three times. People listen consistently to our audio programs over and over again. And here's the other thing, flexibility. See, if I have a new idea, I can go in and update our audio programs whenever I want. And then I put them that new updated file right in the app. So people, in the last couple months, I have updated the discipline program, the calm couples marriage, and the 30 days to calm program. And I continually go through all of our programs and I update and I bring my newest ideas and new insights in the podcast. I can do that as well. So that's important to me. Here's the other thing financially. On a $20 book, you as the author are only going to make two to three dollars per book. Amazon and the bookstores and the publisher get all the money. And philosophically, I have a problem with giving away my life wisdom for $20, in which case I'm only going to get two dollars from that. I don't think that's right. And you are going to do all the work. The publishers, no matter what they say, they do not promote your book. Unless you are a big name author, you're going to do all the work. And here's what I've seen happen with most people, including a lot of my friends. You're going to put all this energy into it and it becomes all-consuming. And then the publishers are going to be like, "Hey, we've got to get pre-orders." Because what happens if the launch date is, say, February 27th? All the pre-orders that come get added in that first week. And so it makes it look like you've got a lot of orders that week because you're trying to get on a bestseller list. But I know one thing. How many of you have seen this? Every single book that comes out, or author is like, "Oh, bestselling author." It's become meaningless now. And so what happens is that you don't have a nice way to say this. You become obnoxious. I have good friends who've written books lately. And I'm like, they're becoming obnoxious because every Instagram post, every podcast, "Hey, please buy my book. Please buy my book." And you're begging your friends to do it. And it becomes all-consuming. And you don't get much out of that. And so there's also an opportunity cost all that time and energy that you're putting into it. You're not getting a lot of return for that. And you don't get that time back. So again, if it means something to you, if it's a dream, by all means do it. But I hate the process and I won't do it. So you could write your own book and then just sell a PDF version of it online for $8 or $10. Guess what? You get to keep all $8 or $10 for that. And it could be an adjunct thing that you do. Okay, let me give you a couple quick examples to encourage you to jump in. So way back in the day, we were working with kids doing all this cool stuff. And a friend came up and said, "Hey, we've got this big PTA event at our elementary school. The speaker just backed out. Do you do speaking engagements?" And I was like, "Sure, I can do that. I've never done it before." But there's nothing like the pressure of in three days having to speak to a couple hundred parents about parenting issues. And so it forced me to come up with our methodology of philosophy, concrete examples. And so I jumped in and did it. And then I started getting invited to other places. And then over time, we were traveling sometimes 20 days a month. We get into a town, into a school. Casey would do student assemblies teaching kids how to control their own impulses and emotions. That became the basis for a straight talk for kids program. I would then train the teachers in the afternoon and the parents at night. So everybody was on the same page. And it was really interesting because every night I'm meeting dozens and dozens of parents and talking to them about their different issues, different age groups, learning so much. And I'm learning that whether I'm in Iowa or New York City or the Czech Republic, everybody's struggling with the same issues. So then I pick up, I just start doing in about 2012. I think it was called Blog Talk Radio. Before podcasting was a thing, I just started sharing our experiences. I think we probably had like 18 listeners. But that led eventually to this podcast and during COVID, it really picked up. I didn't plan on, I didn't have some master plan of like, we're going to do this and then we're going to corner the market on this. It just grew because our content is really good, I believe. And because we just put it out there. And then so let me tell you the Instagram thing really quickly. So 14 months ago, I remember very distinctly where I was and I was adamant with my family. I was like, I will never do Instagram. I hate Instagram. I hate social media. I don't like technology. I don't like all that negativity. I don't want any part of that. And so my family kept saying like, come on, you're a good communicator. I think you'll be good at this. And I was like, you guys know me. I was like, I get dressed in the dark. I shave by a nightlight. I don't like, I don't like to look at myself. For the time I was a little kid, I didn't take good pictures because I just felt awkward. And now you wanted me to carry around a phone, a camera, and videotape myself and I'm watching myself speak. Do you know how awkward that is? So I started doing it. At first, I did it while I was walking and talking because that's what this guy did. And I thought, well, I should be like him. And I found out I don't like that. People said it's making us sick to our stomach. So I just started, I like to hike. You know that. And so on our hikes in these beautiful places, I get to combine a passion for hiking with teaching. And I remember the thing that blew this up was this. So we were passing through Sedona, Arizona, where at this really cool hike called Cathedral Rock. And then there was nobody up there in that moment. And I was like, okay, let me do like a 90 second video. So I was racking my brain. Oh, I'll do it on video games. It was a horrible video. I would be embarrassed to put it out. But I didn't know any better. So I put it out there. And all of a sudden, we're getting all this, these comments. I love it. I hate it. You're a boomer. You don't know what you're talking about. This is the best thing ever. We had virtually no followers at first. And overnight, we started getting like 20,000, 40,000, then 100,000. And I was like, oh, maybe I should start really taking this seriously. So I started doing a little bit better quality, but I don't edit anything. I leave imperfection in there. I do it all myself. There's no fancy graphics or anything. But I think what happened is people started to see, oh, this is my, you're describing my child. This is my home. And so it just grew organically. And now we're at, we joke about it all the time. I have almost 900,000 followers. I'm a 58 year old influencer. And it's just kind of funny, but I didn't plan it. I didn't intend on it doing it. So my encouragement is this, do what makes you uncomfortable. Get out there and just start doing it. Don't have it all planned out. Don't wait until you feel qualified enough. Don't listen to the doubters. Do what you love and start doing it. Don't throw a lot of money into it. If you need some encouragement with that, just let me know. Email me about it. I'll help you as much as I can with this. I don't do, I don't want to do any of that like business consulting stuff. I just want to encourage you with this. Okay. You guys have a lot of gifts and passions out there, man. And so I want you to use them. And by the way, the millennials, because that's who I'm connecting with, with Instagram is I'm getting the beautiful part is I'm getting immediate feedback from all these young people. And it's like revitalized every, it's just so cool when you put yourself out there. So thank you all for listening. Thanks for listening to our podcast. You are family. So when I sign off and I'm like, Hey, love you, I mean that you're like family to us. And it means a lot to us personally that you're so engaged that you tell others about us that you, that you share our Instagram videos and all those things. This is a very, very, very personal to us. And I think that's partly what has helped it grow is I don't know if I mentioned this before, like everybody was always, everybody emails or tests like, who handles your social media? I do. I upload the video and I'm in the comments section on Instagram. By the way, I do not have time for Facebook and TikTok. So if you're on there, migrate over to our Instagram page because I interact with people on every single post, try to answer questions because it just is a good place for me there. But anyway, hey, I respect you all love you all. Okay, go crush it. Go kill it. You can do this stuff. Follow your dreams. Bye.