My Daily Podcast Challenge: An Unexpected Blessing

Have you ever had a goal or situation that didn’t really turn out the way you had hoped. But in the end, God did something really cool that ended up being an unintended blessing?

That happened to me last month during my daily podcasting challenge, and I’ll tell you all about it in this episode of the More Than a Pastor Show.

Hello my friend! Welcome to the More Than a Pastor Show. I’m Rich Avery, your host. Our goal here is simple. We want to help you take your skills, experience, and ministry know-how and leverage them into sustainable income outside of the church, through a business or side hustle that’s right for you. So you can serve God and provide for your family, no matter what.

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So have you ever had a goal or situation that didn’t really turn out the way you had hoped. But in the end, some really cool things happened anyway?

Last month I set a crazy goal to post a new episode of the More Than a Pastor Show every day from Sept 5-30.

To be honest, I knew it was a tall task, since I’ve been inconsistent in creating content for my show on a weekly basis…so how could I do it daily…if even for a few weeks?

But really, more important than the number of episodes, I just wanted - needed - to get back in the habit of creating content on a regular basis.

And not just for myself, but for you, the listener. Because if you’re the type of person who likes to consume new content on a weekly basis, I owe it to you to have new content available on a consistent schedule - the same day and time each week.

So, to help me get back into a weekly content creation flow, I decided to challenge myself to do something even bigger: Post a new episode each day from Sept 5-30…that’s 26 episodes in 26 days.

I liked the idea of this challenge because it would really jumpstart my content creation momentum, help me double the number of episodes for my show, and bring me to the 50 episode mark, which seems like a great milestone for me to achieve.

But…I knew it was also kinda crazy to think I could jump into something like that without taking time to plan it out in advance, or have any episodes already pre-recorded.

So, how’d I do with this challenge?

Well, I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?

OK, the bad news is that I was not successful in posting new content every day.

But the good news is that I was able to create, edit, and publish 12 new episodes! That brought me to episode 35…so I’m 15 short of where I had hoped to be, but it’s 12 more than I had!

And as I got back into the flow of creating content, I noticed how easy it became to think of ideas for episodes.

I covered some great topics like:

• How to stop settling for less in your life, and start settling for more
• 3 key things pastors need to succeed in business
• 3 reasons why pastors should not start a business
• Make all you can save all you can give all you can
• 11 ways to leverage your ministry know-how outside the church
• 4 ways to differentiate yourself from your competition
• 5 strategies for investing in yourself
• How to harness the power of your defining moment
• How pastors can make extra money with a podcast
• How to start a podcast step by step
• How to start a YouTube channel step by step

And while I had told myself that these daily episodes could be really short, like even 10-15 minutes each, most ended up being about 30 minutes.

It seems crazy to me how a 30-minute episode can take hours and hours for me to outline, write, record in video, edit the audio and video, publish to my podcast and YouTube, and post to my blog.

I feel like I should be able to do them faster. Maybe that will come as I get into a regular rhythm of content creation.

So, 12 new episodes in one month - that’s pretty fantastic. But way short of my goal of 26 episodes.

Looking back, I have a couple of regrets:

1. I wish I would have thought of this idea a bit earlier, so I could have created some episodes in advance to give myself a little breathing room. Because I felt like I got behind pretty quickly and was always trying to catch up.
2. I wish I had scheduled interviews with guests. Because I want to start having guests on, on a regular basis. And what’s great about that is that I don’t have to create content to share…they are sharing from their experiences and you and I are learning from them. So that would have saved me quite a bit of time vs. creating all the content myself.

But on the plus side, there was something really interesting that happened through this challenge…an unexpected blessing…

I didn’t plan to do it this way, but I realized that the topics I covered in these episodes were also things I wanted to include in the book I’m writing.

So that felt like a double win for me.

Plus…it felt really good to take massive action, for a season, and create a bunch of episodes all at once. I think I’d like to do more of that.

So, that’s an update on my podcasting goal for September 2022.

And a reminder to me that our efforts aren’t wasted, even if they don’t turn out the way we had hoped. God is always working and up to something, even when we don’t have eyes to see it at the time.

So what about you? Have you ever had a goal or situation that didn’t turn out the way you had hoped. But in the end, God did something really cool and unexpected? I’d love to hear about it! Let me know at [email protected].

Maybe your church is faced with some serious challenges caused by this season of social, political, cultural, and economic disruption that we find ourselves in.

Maybe we wouldn’t have asked for things to turn out the way they have. But you can see that God is up to something good in the midst of it? If you have a story to share, I’d love to hear it! Again, my email is [email protected].

Well, that’s it for today’s show. Before we go, would you do me a favor and hit like, share, or subscribe if you haven’t already done so. Also, what topics would you like me to cover on a future episode? Please let me know.

Until next time, remember that you are more than a pastor. Saying yes to God’s call doesn’t mean you have to say yes to feeling stuck, broke, or unfulfilled in your life and ministry. Let’s work together to help you create the life, impact, and income you were made for.