Overcoming the Seven Deadly Sins of Podcasting

Around the time my wife (Erin) and I started dating, I had a party and a few friends came over. One of them brought a contribution/gift, wrapped in a box. So, in my best Brad Pitt impression from the movie Se7en, I asked…

“WHAT’S IN THE BOX!? WHAT’S IN THE BOX?!”

My friend responded, “Ohhh, what’s in the box!”¹

Erin is a few years younger than me and had never seen the movie…so she didn’t get the reference².

Se7en is one of my favorite movies, from one of my favorite directors, David Fincher. The movie is about a serial killer who uses the Seven Deadly Sins for his murders.

It’s an incredibly gripping story staring a then and future all-star cast.

What are the Seven Deadly Sins?

If you don’t know, the Seven Deadly Sins (Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, and Pride) are considered in Christianity to be so grave because they lead to a life of immorality, and the eventual death of the soul.

And given the Seven Deadly Sins are hundreds of years old, that’s not the only place in pop culture you’ll find them.

The movie Shazam!, the TV show The Good Place, and Gilligan’s Island all have some portrayal (explicitly or implicitly) of the Seven Deadly Sins.

The Seven Deadly Sins of Podcasting

It got me thinking about how they might apply to podcasting. What “podcasting sins” are so grave that they’ll lead to podfade (the unceremonious death of a podcast).

Let’s take a look at the Seven Deadly Sins of Podcasting — what they are, and how to avoid them.

Lust: Chasing the Current Fad

Lust is an intense desire for something (sex, money, fame, power, etc.). In the case of podcasting, it’s chasing the latest fad in hopes that it will be the thing that finally makes your show a hit.

Currently, that fad is AI and how podcasters can use it to supplement or replace them. This can by writing the script or creating questions for guests, or using the AI editing tools to do replacements where they’d be better off re-recording.

AI isn’t the only fad to potentially hurt podcasters, though. It used to be converting Clubhouse…sessions…into podcast episodes. But we quickly learned that a Clubhouse conversation doesn’t make a good podcast episode — and that Clubhouse didn’t make a particularly good app.

Lust in podcasting can also take the form of abusing genuinely trends. Look at Podcast Swaps and guesting, for example.

This is a genuinely helpful tool for podcast growth. But when you lust after doing swaps or interviews, you put yourself over the medium, and create a bad experience for everyone involved.

You start pitching every show, regardless of if you’d actually be a good guest. Your pitches become generic (if not straight up bad) because you’re unfamiliar with the shows you’re pitching. And then you can’t come from a place where you’re actually helping the listeners.

And when these tactics don’t pay off, you may decide the effort you put in isn’t worth it, and you abandon podcasting.

How to Avoid Lustful Podcasting

I would say that of the Seven Deadly Sins of Podcasting, this is the one you can most easily fix.

I tell my kids, “everything in moderation,” and so it’s the same with the current fads.

I’m not anti-AI, for example. I use AI nearly every day. But I don’t use it to remove myself from the creation process. I use it to supplement my work — and honestly, I use it mostly for ideas.

When I do podcast swaps, I consider the angle and the audience. I don’t consider it to be a content engine I can put on autopilot. My goal is always to help the host deliver great content for their listeners.

When you’re considering ways to use the latest technology, techniques, or fads, ease into them. Remember that there’s no silver bullet — there’s not a tool that’s going to do everything for you without intervention.

That takes work and creating a great show for your audience.

Speaking of…

Gluttony: Saying Your Show is for Everyone

You want your show to reach as many people as possible, which means you need to talk to everyone, right?

Wrong.

Gluttony — overconsumption or overindulgence — is not just about eating too much. In fact, when I asked my AI tool³, Perplexity, to summarize the Seven Deadly Sins for me, it says this:

Gluttony is not just about eating too much, but also about the obsession with consumption and the neglect of those in need.

How does this apply to podcasting? When you are obsessed with overindulgence of listeners by trying to talk to everyone, you neglect a core, niche audience in need of your expertise.

It’s probably the most common deadly sin of podcasting, because it’s natural to want to reach a big audience.

I have experience with this first hand. When my podcast (then named How I Built It) launched in 2016, I was talking to a very specific group of people: WordPress Developers who wanted to be business owners.

But in 2018, I decided to expand and talk to all developers…and then all business owners.

My downloaded plummeted.

In my quest to “consume” more downloads, I neglected my core audience and paid the price. Once I focused on my niche again, my downloads came back up.

How to Avoid Podcast Gluttony

To avoid Gluttony in podcasting, you must define your audience. I think the best way to do that is by creating a mission statement for your podcast that answers these questions:

1. Who are you talking to (be specific)?
2. What problem do they have?
3. How do you help them solve that problem?

“Business owners” and “grow their business” are too generic. But, “busy solopreneur parents” and “run a business while spending time with their family,” or “nomadic web developers” and “trying to work wherever they travel” are great.

Get specific, and you will see growth because those who need your podcast will know yours is the right one to listen to.

Greed: Putting Revenue Above Your Audience

I’m not going to tell you making money from your podcast is greedy. You should make money with your podcast.

I certainly do.

But it turns into a deadly sin when you start putting the money over your audience (or, as we’ll see, other stakeholders).

Greed is often associated with material gain at the expense of others. This can be overselling your ad inventory (we have all heard podcast episodes that are 40% ads), teasing a bit of an episode and then paywalling the rest⁴, or running sponsors that you know won’t resonate with your listeners.

If you create a bad experience, you may find those short-term gains lead to long-term loss. Listeners won’t tolerate your greed, and sponsors who don’t have a good experience won’t sponsor your show again.

How to Avoid Greedy Podcasting

Always keep your audience in mind. They drive your growth, and make it possible for you to have a podcast in the first place.

Similarly, with your sponsors, you want to create wins for them. Overselling your inventory and focusing on what’s best for you above all else doesn’t do that.

If you optimize the experience to create wins for your listeners and sponsors/members/affiliates, the money will come without you resorting to tactics to make a fast buck.

Those tactics might work in the short term, but they are not sustainable.

Sloth: Not Editing Your Podcast

If I had a dollar for every time I heard, “I don’t edit my podcast because people want to listen to a raw interview,” I wouldn’t need sponsors. The harsh truth is that listeners don’t actually want that. It’s a justification for not editing.

Not editing is indifference at best, and pure laziness at worst…especially with the tools we have today.

Even if you don’t edit for content (which you should do), you still need to clean up the audio. Remove distracting sounds, normalize the volume, and put some production behind it.

This is true whether you have solo episodes, pre-recording interviews, or live streams that you turn into podcast episodes. I don’t do a lot of editing for my solo episodes, but I do apply some noise filters for distractingly heavy breaths and mouth clicking.

And if I don’t make a point as cleanly as I’d like, I edit that out too.

Editing your podcast tells listeners that you care about your content. Conversely, not editing tells them you don’t care.

So why should they?

How to Avoid Podcasting Sloth

Editing your podcast isn’t just about post-production. In fact, planning your podcast can help reduce the amount of editing you have to do after recording.

First, do some research and plan the structure of your episodes.

For Streamlined Solopreneur, I create a 3-Act Structure where we take the listener through a story. We set up a problem, introduce a conflict, then have a resolution.

While I don’t strictly follow that for my solo episodes, I still end up scripting a lot of it, and use a story to drive my point.

Planning episodes allows you to define the goal of each episode, and helps you stay the course without meandering too much⁵.

After you have the recording, you’ll want to edit for:

1. Content. Remove fluff — pointless or fumbled sections of the interview. I recently removed a 12-minute story from an interview. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but it took away from the main point of the episode (though I did keep it in for members).
2. Audio/Mixing. Make sure all audio tracks are loud enough, and that they’re all the same volume. Remove white noise, and edit out noises that happen while someone else is talking.
3. Add some music to the beginning and end. A bit of music to set the tone is a good thing.
4. Start with a quick win. This could be finding a quote from your guest, relaying an anecdote, or recapping the episode and letting people know what they’ll learn.

Cleaning up your episodes and adding some structure goes a long way in improving the quality of your podcast. And while it’s extra work, I have always found that extra work pays off.

The smallest amount of effort can help your show stand out.

Wrath: Creating Controversy for Downloads

I’ve noticed a chilling trend with some of my favorite political commentators. They start out making well-reasoned arguments for one side or the other, and appear generally open-minded.

But as they grow their audience, they also grow more extreme. And more often than not, there comes a tipping point — they’re no longer making the same well-reasoned arguments they once did, and I end up abandoning them.

It reminds me of a quote credited to Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin, which I first heard from Jonah Goldberg⁶:

There go the people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.

The point being this: if you’re trying to get downloads through controversy, taking things out of context, and largely creating anger, you’re on a slippery slope.

You’re not building fans, you’re sowing hate and fear, and you’re probably going to have to escalate, or give up.

As someone who’s seen this escalation happen countless times over my years in content creation, I strongly believe that it never ends well.

How to Avoid Podcast Wrath

It can be tempting to create clickbait hot takes in an attempt to go viral. After all, if you only do it once, you might be able to get in front of an audience to hear your “better” content.

That’s what makes this a deadly sin of podcasting: you tell yourself it’s, “just this one time.”

But the people who find you for your angriest takes likely want more of the same. Let’s look at two examples:

1. The YouTube algorithm: If you create a YouTube video that goes viral, you’re doomed to create only videos around that topic, because that’s what YouTube will recommend.
2. Bands that get popular from cover songs: A band will cover a popular song to get attention. But most of the people who enjoy the cover won’t listen to their original songs…dooming them to keeping doing cover songs.

Instead, focus on consistently creating good content — it’s a slower build, but it’s more sustainable, and better for your soul (and your podcast’s soul).

And it creates actual fans.

Envy: Chasing Downloads

One of my favorite South Park episodes is Canada on Strike. It came out in 2008 — before YouTube videos were monetized — and the general plot is this:

Canada goes on strike, and the boys’ favorite TV show, “Terrence and Phillip,” starts playing reruns. So they try to make money to end the strike, and decide the best way to do that is to go viral on “Youtoob.”

They end up going viral and earning 10 Million “theoretical dollars” — one for each view. Of-course, that’s not real money, and the strike goes on.

I think about that whenever someone says, “they want more downloads.”

I get it. You see massive shows getting tons of downloads, and you want those too.

You wonder why your show doesn’t get as many. After all, my show is better, you think to yourself. “These guys talk about literally nothing.”

But that’s the wrong way to look at it.

Much like with Wrath and trying to go viral through anger, just because you get tons of downloads doesn’t mean you have a good audience.

This is a deadly sin of podcasting because it can be the most discouraging.

Downloads aren’t listeners. Chasing the wrong metric won’t grow your show, it will only send you down the wrong path, ending in you abandoning your show.

How to Avoid Downloads Envy

This is a tough one to crack — I still fall victim to it — because downloads are the most recognized metric across the podcasting industry.

The problem with that metric is: it’s confusing, it’s not consistent across platforms, and there’s not a great way to normalize that data in a way that gives you insights into your actual, addressable audience.

Celebrities like Joe Rogan might have mass appeal to garner millions of downloads per episode, and fear merchants stoke anger in their base to keep them coming back.

But that’s not something to be envious of. You want to focus on serving your audience, and helping those folks solve the problem they have.

Instead of thinking about the number of downloads you get, think about your niche. If you only have 1,000 people in your niche, and you get 800 downloads, that’s remarkable.

And if you truly serve them, you can move them onto your mailing list. There, you can cultivate a culture, and see the fruits of your labor.

Then you’ll realize that you don’t need to envy millions of downloads. You’ve built a community of people who care deeply about your show.

Pride: Doing Everything Yourself

Pride is considered the gravest sin because it puts your ego above all else, and that’s what happens when you try to do everything yourself. Here’s what Perplexity AI said about it:

Pride, often considered the most serious of the seven deadly sins, is characterized by an excessive belief in one’s own abilities, importance, or superiority. It is sometimes referred to as vanity or hubris, and is often seen as the root of other sins and vices.

When you have this deadly sin of podcasting, it tells you that only you can perform tasks for your show — book guests, do research, edit, post it online. Or that only you will do them as well as you want.

But that couldn’t be further from the truth. The podcasters who have the most time have also surrendered most podcasting duties to others (team members, contractors, automation tools). They can then reinvest that time into creating a better show.

Similarly, Pride can lead you down the slippery slope of falling victim to the other sins. If you try to do everything yourself, maybe you stop editing because there’s no time (Sloth). You did a great job anyway, right?

You chase downloads (Envy), so you try to appeal to everyone (Gluttony). You hop on every trend (Lust), and try to create controversy (Wrath) because you tell yourself if you get more downloads you’ll get more money to invest in the show.

Then you put revenue above your audience because it never feels like enough money to cover costs and compensate yourself (Greed).

But there’s a better way: put your pride aside and do only what you need to do.

How to Avoid Podcast Pride

This takes some work — it’s scary to let go. I was only able to let go of everything after I had a panic attack because I fell behind.

What you should do is make a list of everything you do for your podcast — then put a check mark next to the things you (and only you) absolutely need to do.

Forget about your pride for a minute and think about the countless other podcasters who are doing the same things you’re doing.

Unless it requires your specific skills or attributes (like your voice/perspective), someone else (or something else) can do it.

Here are the things I do for my podcast:

1. Find guests
2. Find sponsors
3. Record the podcast
4. Write and record the intro

That’s it — and I don’t need to find guests or sponsors myself. I choose to do that because there’s a big benefit for me to forming relationships with people in the podcasting space.

But depending on your show and your own goals, these are tasks you can offload as well. Here’s a video that might help:

Looking at your list, anything that doesn’t have a check next to it can go to someone or something else.

And remember: you don’t need to offload everything at once. Pick the highest leverage tasks (like editing or promoting) and find someone else to do them.

Doing that will allow YOU to reinvest time into understanding your audience, building relationships, and creating a better show — which in turn will grow it.

If you put your pride aside, you’ll let go of the things you don’t need to do, and you’ll have a better podcast because of it.

Don’t Let the Seven Deadly Sins of Podcasting Kill Your Show

Much like the Seven Deadly Sins are actions that lead to the death of the soul, the Seven Deadly Sins of Podcasting can lead to podfade — the death of your show.

The good news is they are avoidable. By focusing on your niche audience, creating good — helpful — content, and moving the things you don’t need to do off your plate, you’ll position your podcast for success.

And by creating helpful content for a niche audience, the downloads (but really, engagement from listeners) and subsequently the revenue, will come.

Here’s a handy infographic to recap:

1. I should note that this is really an emotionally charged, impactful scene…but enough time had passed since I saw it that I could make light of it. ↩
2. We eventually fixed that, though I fear our making light of the situation took away some of the emotional impact. ↩
3. See I TOLD you I wasn’t Anti-AI ↩
4. This isn’t strictly greed if you do it right. Your free content should still provide enough value for your listeners to want to pay. ↩
5. Remember, 78% of people listen to podcasts to learn something. Entertaining is good, but don’t let the extra stuff get in the way of learning. ↩
6. A journalist who’s remained consistent in his views and how he presents them, IMO ↩