Uploaded and Unfiltered: Conversations about Personal Growth, Mindsets, and Advice with BIPOC Creators for Creators

Secrets to a Year of Uninterrupted Creativity

• Jermaine Pulliam • Season 1 • Episode 53

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Can you imagine hitting 53 consecutive weekly episodes in just one year? We did it! Join me, Jermaine, on this special anniversary episode of "Uploaded and Unfiltered," where I open the curtain and reveal the nuts and bolts of creating a seamless content creation system. 

From the early stages of planning to managing guests, promoting episodes, and battling decision fatigue, my journey is filled with insights that can help you achieve the same level of consistency and stress-free content creation. I shed light on the importance of contingency plans and the goal of staying ahead by having episodes ready weeks in advance.

Don't miss our reflections on past achievements and future plans, and join us in celebrating this milestone by subscribing, leaving comments, and suggesting potential guests.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome. Welcome back to another episode of uploaded and unfiltered, the podcast in which I, your host, jermaine, interviews another content creator. In regards to the journey thus far, you have reached the 52nd slash 53rd episode of the podcast. It's been a year since I started this podcast and since the birth of this podcast on July 9th 2023, I have hit every week of uploading an episode of the podcast. I can't say that I'm surprised. I am very grateful and humbled and happy as hell did my planned work. This consistent streak that I have today is what I wanted, is what I set out and intended to do when I first started. And here we are, a year later, 53 episodes in, and the reason I was able to do this I am going to share with everybody. We're going to get really in depth of how the podcast works, what my mindset is in regards to getting guests on and splitting up the workflow, but, at the end of the day, it all comes down to creating a system. So, before we get into it, I just want to thank everybody who has found the podcast, either organically or have seen me tweet about it or seen me post about it in my streams. I truly appreciate you listening. Thank you. I could not be here without you Although, let me be real, if nobody was listening to the podcast, I still would be here, because the intention was to set that routine, get into that mindset, get into that workflow of doing it weekly, and I was able to achieve that. So, again, I'm about to drop some knowledge for everybody, the system I'm about to drop. I believe you can replicate and do it elsewhere. That's my plan going forward, and so let's just go ahead and get into it.

Speaker 1:

So you want to be able to stay consistent on a weekly basis or whatever metric you decide to give yourself, you need to create a system. You need to create a system. You need to create a routine. Having a routine takes away all of the choices we have to make when it comes to content. Creating and having a bunch of choices can lead to fatigue. I don't know if you've ever been in a situation where someone's like, hey, what do you want to eat, and there's all the restaurants in the world for you to choose from. That is a fatiguing choice for most people. Most people can't just be like, hey, what do you want to eat, and there's all the restaurants in the world for you to choose from. That is a fatiguing choice for most people. Most people can't just be like let's eat steak and you know what. Those people who can, who are quick and decisive you have a skill set that you should cherish but for the other people, who hem and haw over what they want to eat, that is a fatiguing choice. The same thing happens in content creation. So when you create a system, when you create a routine, it takes that piece of the stressor out of the equation.

Speaker 1:

So how do you go about creating a system For me? When I first started the podcast, I sat down and I said OK, what do I want the podcast to be? What do I want the podcast to be? So, whatever your situation is, what do you want the system to replicate? I wanted this system to allow me to create a podcast, invite people on it, upload it, get it uploaded to YouTube and do some promo on it.

Speaker 1:

So my system had to take into account each component of the podcast, and so, before I started anything, I still have the notes when I roughly broke down all the components of the podcast. Over time, that list has grown and has been altered to reflect what truly is part of the podcast, and even when I was doing notes for this episode, I thought of a piece of the podcast. And even when I was doing notes for this episode, I thought of a piece of the podcast and y'all are going to probably laugh at this, like, really, you didn't do anything with that, but I have a reason for it, a part of the system that didn't exist until now. That is going to let me go forward with the second season of the podcast with some directions more strategy to grow the podcast and get the numbers up so I can affect more people. We can get more people out of stuckness. So these are the components of my system. I'm going to read each component and then give a few components that are in that piece and it'll make more sense once I go into it. So, essentially, all of these things that I'm going to mention are the podcast. They equal the podcast.

Speaker 1:

The podcast is not just this episode, but the podcast is everything that it goes into creating a podcast, and when I looked at it that way, it was uh, it allowed me to create a system around it to got me here a year later posting an episode a week without any issues. They were we went on vacation. There were times where I didn't have any guests. I had a contingency plan for everything. There were the. The best parts are when I had an episode uploaded like two or three weeks in advance. Those times were great going forward. That's what I'm going to strive for for the rest of this podcast existence is being like two or three weeks ahead. So if something comes up, I don't have to fret over posting an episode. I know something's in the chamber and it's about to go live. So back to it, the components of my system.

Speaker 1:

The first component that starts off this thing is the invite. Typically, I like to have guests on my podcast to dive into their creative journey so we can hear their mindset, hear their lessons learned, hear things that they wish they could have did differently or things that they would definitely tell people to do before starting this journey. So the invite starts off my journey. I usually reach out either via Discord if I have their name in Discord or social media, mostly Twitter, because that's the easiest to DM on. I don't really DM on Instagram I should probably figure that out and do that but it usually starts with a DM. Hey, my name is Jermaine.

Speaker 1:

I do X, y and Z, I'm a fan of your content because most everybody, like everybody if I had on the podcast, I've seen their content, so I was somewhat familiar with it and I would love to be a guest on a podcast uploaded and unfiltered. I give like a one sentence description. It's a podcast where I talk to other creators about their creative journey and then, if you're interested, I got an invite for you. It goes into more of the podcast philosophy, the flow of the podcast. It has some links to get started, to schedule an appointment and then we were good to go With that spiel. Most everybody is like yeah, let's do it, I'm ready and as I'm going over the components of this system, I'm going to give them some more little life lessons that are attached to these.

Speaker 1:

The invite taught me how to reach out to people. It taught me that when I reach out to people, they're not saying no to me. They're saying no because they don't even have the time. Or even if they do say no like, nah, I don't want to be in a podcast which, again, nobody has said yet that it has nothing to do with me. I don't have to take it personal, just shoot your shot, simple and plain, like I'm asking everyone, like this year I'm going to, I'm asking everybody I want more artists, I want more musicians, I want more painters, digital painters. I want to step outside of streamers and tick tockers and expand what we think of as a creator. So the guest list hopefully, no, the guest list will expand in the next year of this podcast. So the invite has taught me that just shoot your shot, you ain't have nothing to lose. So some of the components that are tied to my invite I use Canva to create the invite.

Speaker 1:

I use JotForm to grab any information that I need for the podcast. So JotForm is a place where you can create a form, have a questionnaire and get some information from your guests before they get on. My typical questions are I need pronouns, I need what you want to be called in the podcast, things you don't want to talk about in the podcast picture for the album art. Give me a social media. Is which one you wanted me to talk about the most things of that nature? Oh, and the awesome thing I do is I have them write their own bio, because twofold One. I want you to give me the best version of you and it gives them practice on bragging them about themselves, you wouldn't be surprised about how many people do not like talking good shit about themselves, so that gives them an opportunity to do that. So, once I have all that information that gets saved in the jot form I just created a link Right now that jot form is getting put into a Google doc, so it gives me access to it.

Speaker 1:

It saves that information because I'm not paying for jot form, I'm using the free version. Going forward, my wife gave me this awesome idea and I don't know why I didn't think about it beforehand. But I could just create the form in google and it'd probably be more flexible. It'd probably be cheaper if I have to pay anything and it'll automatically go into a google doc or I can export it out to a google doc relatively easy. So, going forward, I might switch that over to google forms, but regardless, I think everybody who has a podcast or has something that they want to have people on, have guests on, should invest in creating a form that you can fill out so you can get some information. I'm telling you that information is priceless and it helps the flow of the podcast. Other things I use in this section social medias. I'm going to start using Instagram a little bit more Calendly is what I use for my scheduling program, and Discord is my main source of contact, but I think I'm going to invest in looking into WhatsApp to broaden my communication horizon.

Speaker 1:

So second component of this system is the episode itself. For me, all my episodes have been remote, so I'm recording in a studio that I invite the guest onto. I was using PodCastle. I do not like PodCastle, honestly. I don't remember what those reasons were. I just remember it was a headache to get each episode up at the beginning. Sometimes episodes were getting chopped up because they didn't get recorded correctly. The very first episode shout out to the Homer Bomber Tank got ate up all kinds of crazy and so I still want to have that man on here to do another episode so we can have a real convo, and that's the plan. Maybe when I do my first video podcast I'll have him do it, since he was like the first guest, if he's down to do that.

Speaker 1:

Anyways, right now I use Riverside FM, love it. I have the ability to stream to various websites, including Twitch, if I want to. Uh, the recording has been smooth. I think I can have up to four guests, which I will be utilizing going forward with the podcast and overall, the audio I get out of it is great. Most importantly, it allows me to download the audio raw for me to go bring it into my editor of choice, which is Fairlight, another program that I use in this part of the system. I use Fairlight on the iPad. If you edit audio and you have an iPad and and an apple pencil, editing on the ipad is the most fun way to edit audio. I don't give a shit what anybody says, it's just a joy to edit my podcast on the part on my ipad. I have a 12.9 inch ipad pro. It's great.

Speaker 1:

Anyways, what else do we use? Google to send out emails, canva to create the album, art Calendly again to get the invitation and the schedule going, and JotForm is where I grab all that information in regards of the form and put it into the show notes and stuff like that itself. Third section of this system is the promo for the show. This is where I edit sections out of the podcast and create a little 15 to 50 second clip for Tik TOK Instagram and YouTube. I need um this section. I'm looking to see if I can streamline this.

Speaker 1:

I actually was able to with Riverside. They automatically click the automatically clip clips. That sounds where they cut clips from the podcast that are great for social media. There's just a little bit of tweaking that I do to it because I don't like the way it looks when it first comes out, but with that I was been able to cut down time on the promo that I want to do for the podcast, also increasing it because I was only doing one a week because I was lazy. If I'm being honest, now I'm striving to do at least three a week and with the video ones, if the guest is cool with doing video, those have been the most engaging. But the audio ones have been dope too, because I'm doing different good things with the background. I have the album art, which is usually one of my dope ass guests, and so that grabs people in and then we got words going. Anyways, promo for the show is getting worked on, but I like where it's going right now, thanks to riverside fm.

Speaker 1:

I use the venture resolve for my editor, so I edit a clip in there. Get, get that thing going. I throw it into captions. I used to throw it into captions when I needed captions. Riverside actually does captions as well. I also use Canva again to create some of the art itself.

Speaker 1:

The podcast to YouTube is straight audio because Google podcast has gone away. Youtube has implemented a section where it actually pulls in podcasts. So if you have a podcast, uploading to YouTube is relatively straightforward. I actually change a few things so I make the process a little bit, but it's cool. It only takes like 10 minutes.

Speaker 1:

I edit the episode, the album, art or the uh, the thumbnail. I do that in Canva. I changed the description and I add some, some icons to highlight some of the paragraphs. I then add in the person's social media and then I usually tag them. If they are on YouTube, I'll tag them as well, so they'll get that. And then I do all the keywords. Thanks to again, Riverside, I can just pull keywords from there, plop them in. I usually will make my own keywords depending on what the episode was about. And then I do all the other stuff you got in ending screen titles and all that fun stuff, and then I'd upload it. Once you upload it the cool thing about YouTube short you can relate a YouTube short to a video. So thankfully, any YouTube short video I upload, I can relate it to the episode itself and that has been good for growth. Like that's been very helpful. I think that is it on the YouTube side.

Speaker 1:

Once that's uploaded, I update the website. I have a website for the podcast uploaded and unfilteredcom, I believe, is the URL. I am currently uploading every past guest's album art as well as a link to whatever social media they decided to be. Their primary no-transcript was like yeah, if you don't have a blog, you should be getting the blog. It's relatively easy marketing. You don't have to pay any money into it unless you don't want to write it. You pay somebody else to do it. Anyways, all that to say this there will be a blog on the website going up as well. And then the part of the system that I have neglected up until now is social media in general. So when it comes to social media, I've have been counting. The promo is my social media for the podcast, and that is unfortunately not the way I should be doing this. So my goal going forward is a hefty three times a week post on social media, and I just need to decide what I want my social media persona to be.

Speaker 1:

I definitely want to be very encouraging, I want to be very inspirational, but I also want to be fun and lighthearted and engaging. Like I don't want to be seen as just the positive mindset what was me type do. Like I want to be seen as yo, I have no worries in the world because I don't worry about what doesn't pay me, I don't worry about what doesn't sustain my soul, what isn't good for me to do. You know what I'm saying. Like I have given up those worries about oh my God, what's going to happen in the future. Like those thoughts I remember I used to remember having those thoughts about worrying about future events and now the thought of doing that it makes me laugh. Like I can't. I can't even do it. I can't worry about shit that doesn't either it hasn't happened or has already happened. If it's not happening now, you're not going to catch me worrying about it and it's such a freeing feeling to be in that mindset.

Speaker 1:

Like that's what I want to portray on social media and that is what my goal is with my coaching business is to get people to think that way. I'm not saying, believe everything I believe, because, come on now, there's years upon years of things that people believe and I'm not trying to combat that, but I 100% am trying to combat what we think Like, just think like this with me a little bit, even if it's just on this one subject, and let's see what it does for you. That is, oh, that has me excited. So, going forward, social media will be a part of the podcast and I need to get on it and do it correctly. So I'm excited to start that. So once you have your system in place, all of those sections I read off the invite, the episode itself, the promo for the show, the YouTube assets, the updating of the website and now social media in general you want to create a task for each of those sections of what you do in those sections. So, as you're doing it, you can just check it off and then, once it's all checked, you check that whole section off and you move on to the next one. This portion is, I believe, what has provided me the success I have seen thus far in regards to posting consistently with the episode.

Speaker 1:

I have never made a system like this for streaming or YouTube or Tik TO. Those have very much been, unfortunately, off the whim. I'm feeling it today. I'm posting three videos or I'm getting three out. There was every once in a while, like when I do my advent calendar videos, when it's one a day, those are a challenge. And like, when I get into that rhythm and I just need to remember this, when I get into that rhythm, it just goes and I don't know if it's busy for you, but simpers are usually busy for families and like I'm still able to bang these out one a day. I can't believe it took me this long to create such a system.

Speaker 1:

But I really wanted this podcast thing to work and all I could keep thinking what was what would successful jermaine do? What is successful Jermaine doing when he is thinking about his podcast? Oh, he probably has a system set up so he doesn't miss anything. Oh, he's probably doing X, y and Z. And I was like you know what? All the things that I could do right now because there's some things that I want to do Like I don't want to edit the podcast anymore if I don't have to, like, if I have enough money, like the podcast is making money and I don't have to edit the podcast. I just give somebody my vision and that vision comes out. I'm doing that. That gives me time to go do other cool dope stuff. So that's going to happen. And social media for the podcast. I want to like just shoot a video, shoot that off and somebody busted down the three and knock it out for me. Like those things I'm not doing right now because I don't have the podcast is not making the capital that it needs to for those things to be a reality.

Speaker 1:

But I can create a system and that's exactly what I did. So each system gets its own task, exactly what you're going to do in those tasks. So you have something to check off and know that you did this thing that was supposed to be done. So I use Notion. To capture is my is everything. All my notes for the podcast are in here. All my notes for my business are in here. Everything that, like I'm making notes on, is in Notion for the most part and if it's not, it's getting important in here.

Speaker 1:

I love how easy I can section things out. I love how easy I can bust out an idea and it gets captured. I love how searchable it is. There's things that this program does that I have not tapped into yet but I do plan on in the future. So Notion amazing. If you haven't heard of it, go check it out. But the other thing I use and this might be an iOS, macos only type thing, so figure out which one you want to use but I use things for my task creations.

Speaker 1:

Things is an app on iPad, iphone and on Mac OS and unfortunately it's not a universal app. So if you buy it on your iPhone, you still got to buy it on your iPad and you still got to buy it on your Mac. But when I tell you it is worth it for me because it does exactly what I wanted it to do, I know reminders. You can create task lists and you can put a due date on it and you can probably even like have them. Once you close it, it reopens a new one. But in things, the way that is laid out, I can have this bucket being rated and reflection that's my business and then I can have task under there. And there's other bucket I can have family and have task under there. And there's other bucket I can have uploaded and unfiltered and have task under there, and then. So I'm going to set those tasks to be due either today, someday or whatever day in the future and have them repeat Once I close one.

Speaker 1:

I have a template for let's see podcast to episode, start to finish. That's the template. Podcast to YouTube. That's the template. Podcast to promo. That's the template. Invite guests to podcast. That's the template in which in in each of those templates is six or seven tasks that I need to knock out. Of those templates is six or seven tasks that I need to knock out. So whenever I start a new template or a new project, I just say, oh, what are we doing today? Invite guests to podcast? Boom, I copied that one. Start a new one, set that date to today and then I put in whoever I'm trying to invite in the top. So it says like a T pain slash invite guests to podcast. And then everything that I need to do to get T-Pain on the podcast yeah, I'm talking this into existence T-Pain is going to be on a podcast.

Speaker 1:

I haven't started that work yet. There's no task that says that yet, but there will be and we're going to make it happen anyways. And I think this is the magic that has kept me going for this year is I'm able to replicate this routine. That has become easier over time. I know what I'm going to do each week. It doesn't feel like work and because I have no choice. I have no choices to make. I have no decisions to make. I just need to see what the tasks say, do the tasks and then check it off.

Speaker 1:

It gives my brain this nice rhythm of things to make. I just need to see what the tasks say, do the tasks and then check it off. It gives my brain this nice rhythm of things to do. So when I'm editing the podcast, I like that rhythm, it feels good. So I get into this like edit flow, when I'm just like, and with the pencil, I'm telling you, with a pencil, it's so much fun because it feels like you're just like writing out music or something I don't know. It's just I feel like a wizard when I'm doing it anyways, and that's it that has sustained me thus far.

Speaker 1:

Is it perfect? No, of course not. But has it gotten me this far? And do I plan on replicating this for YouTube videos, for TikTok videos, for ideas that I have in the future? 100%, I'm going to clean this up a little bit, I'm going to probably PDF it and I'm just going to provide it to people. I'm like, hey, listen, this is how you create a system. This is the benefit of creating a system. This is, psychologically, why you want a system and why you want to create a routine for yourself. Go ahead and be successful.

Speaker 1:

Again, I'm excited to be here the next iteration of the podcast. I don't know when that's going to be, but video is definitely going to be a part of it. But more social media presence, more of us talking about our mindsets, more of us talking about our beliefs, more of us just dialing in what it is that makes us us. Because, again, I believe wholeheartedly the best content creators are those who are being their authentic selves and are unwritten from these weird societal pressures that have been put upon us. I think that type of creator can do wonderful, amazing things, and it is my goal to shift the way we think about ourselves. Like I'm excited with that. We're done. We're going to go ahead and wrap this up again.

Speaker 1:

If you don't already subscribe to the podcast, go ahead, do so, uploaded and unfiltered. You can find us everywhere. Just do a search and I'll pop up. Go ahead and subscribe. Leave me a comment, send a message to the show and if there's any guests out there that you would love to hear on the episode, go ahead and send me the information. I will do my due diligence and reach out to them. To them, let me if they're a good fit. Other than that, again, everything that we think comes to fruition. If you put your mind to worrying about things in the future, then your whole reality is going to be filled with worry. But if you look to the future with some excitement for what you're going to accomplish, I guarantee you things around you in the present start to seem much better, it starts to seem way more rosier and you start to enjoy stuff a little bit. Seek that out for me. All right, as always, protect your mental, keep creating content, and I'll talk to you on the next one. Peace.