My Baby's Ugly, Now What?
by Rod Rodriguez
I run a podcast, manage its social media accounts, and maintain the website. I started doing all this about a year ago and I have lived through the typical ups and downs of starting a small business centered around a passion with no real idea of how to monetize. This story is hardly unique now a days but what makes it unique to me is that it’s the story of me…so that makes it important.
With valuing the story of my podcast comes a certain level of guarded protectiveness of my product. I’ve often described my podcast and its associated mediums as “my baby”. Like a real baby, I’m proud of what I made! I look at my podcast through the eyes of a proud father, all the Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter followers are a collective of folks I happily whip out the 100-pic wallet to show my kid off to every time I post. I want to sit back and continue watching my kid grow as he is gently directing him toward what I envision as the best podcast it can be. But here’s the terrible truth. It’s not my baby, it’s a business. And if I want to hold on to the baby analogy then the harsher truth is, maybe my baby is fucking ugly.
That’s a hard pill to swallow for any proud parent, the admission that your kid might be stupid, ugly, and not destined for greatness if they continue down the path they’re going. Now perhaps it’s the not the smartest thing to say about your own product, I doubt you’ll see a Pepsi advertisement any time soon with the tagline “Not as good as Coke to be honest but we do just fine””. One of the purposes of starting my podcast was to document my own journey trying to be one of the Veteran entrepreneurs that I was dedicated to interviewing. I was hoping that by sharing my story of growth others would learn some valuable lessons. Well here’s such a lesson that I’m learning and it’s caused me a little heart ache.
It started when I ran across a YouTube page for an interview format program that seemed to center on Veteran business owners. I’d never heard of this show and they only had a handful of episodes but I quickly recognized the format as being identical to my podcast. I looked at the thumbnails, read the descriptions, and checkout out the banner. Then, I clicked away. I clicked on another video and found myself looking at something else completely. A moment later I had a realization, I hadn’t clicked on any of that sites videos. A site that was for all intents and purposes my competition, I didn’t bother to click on anything. I sat back and reflected on that for moment. Why? Why didn’t I click on a video to at least see what my competition was doing, what it looked like, what it sounded like, after all as I was looking through it I had been feeling a strong sense of déjà vu. Then it hit me. It hit me hard. I hadn’t clicked on anything because…it sucked. I mean damn, did it ever suck. The thumbnails look like garbage, the video quality didn’t look appealing, and the people being interviewed didn’t seem interesting to me because I didn’t know who they were. I even had better reason than most to check it out because they were my competition but I still felt so little interest that clicking for the sake of business wasn’t enough to compel me to click.
Was this what people saw and felt about my podcast? Nah! No way! My baby’s beautiful, right? It’s got followers! It does well, and people have told me it was good…right? For the most part the feedback had been positive but then again, how often does someone tell you that your baby’s ugly, especially when those people are your friends? I went to my own YouTube page and looked around, then all my social media, then my website. I had a moment of detached clarity, looking at my content objectively…my baby was fucking ugly. Damn…
Ok! I’m not ready to toss the ugly baby over a cliff like the Spartans! In fact, this baby has potential, that I know but if I’m going to be honest with myself this kid is going to need a LOT of work, which I’m willing to do and I WANT to do. And so, began a few hours of emotionally depressing honest appraisal of my own work. From coming to terms with its ugliness to facing the facts that I may have reached the limit of my capabilities. Unless I was willing to devote a few hundred hours into developing new skills this podcast might be at the point of where it’s time to move forward and invest some cash into refining the product or this baby goes airborne, after all in the world of business this is Sparta.
I made a list of what I’m doing next. Some pretty exciting things about how this baby is going to evolve and I’m genuinely excited because I think it’s not only going to make the show better but by making the show better I’m improving the chances of making a real impact on Veteran entrepreneurship and advocacy. But here’s the take away, my baby was ugly from the start. In fact, if I were to compare my baby now to when it was born, well one might have questioned my ethics for birthing such a little abomination of a poorly put together podcast. That’s ok though!
Look, your business baby is supposed to be a little bundle of dumpster fire. That’s the point of building your business. I can’t think of one business that was born looking like it belonged on the cover of Entrepreneur magazine. It’s our job to own the mistakes that make our babies so damned ugly then work our butts off to help said baby develop into the visions we have for them. I am my own harshest critic, and is my podcast perfect? Far from! But is it a good show? YEAH! It’s got great content if you’re willing to give it a shot! When I talk about supporting Veteran businesses that’s part of it! It’s like going to the ugly kid’s soccer game! Sure, he’s clumsy, falls down a lot, and a few times almost scored on the wrong goal, but hey that’s someone’s kid and you’re here to support that proud parent. And here’s the kicker, if you stick around long enough you might see the spark of genius in that little ugly little kid.
My podcast is called The After Action Review, and it’s my ugly baby. If you give this ugly kid a chance you’ll find some genuinely helpful stories of entrepreneurship from guys you’ve never heard of through video that screams amateur, but those guys being interviewed are REAL Veterans with REAL stories who took the time to talk with an ugly baby because they care about the parent. Perhaps more important they want YOU to have your very own ugly ass kid!
So now I’ve got a lot of work to do and I’m going to have fun making it all happen…but first I have a soccer game to attend on a YouTube page I had ignored, I here someone’s ugly ass kid is playing.