The Cutting Room Floor

I’m done with the first draft of my upcoming book, a podcast launch plan.

This is an “intro” that didn’t make the final cut …

Know What You’re Up Against

You’re not fighting for “listeners.” You’re fighting for attention.

Your competition isn’t just other podcasts—it’s everything. It’s TikTok, Netflix, Pornhub, inboxes, kids, jobs, and a million distractions that don’t care how passionate you are about your show.

This book is built for that fight. It’s not theory and it’s not fluff. It’s tools that move episodes, build loyal listeners, and make your show the one people choose when everything else is screaming at them.

This book isn’t a checklist of commandments. I’m giving you tools, not rules. Use them like a pro: one at a time and when they matter most. If you try to load them all into your brain at once or aim for a “perfect” launch, you’ll overcomplicate things, strangle your message, and quit before you publish your first episode.

Embrace that your first draft will be raw, messy, and fast. Then come back with these tools and sharpen the hell out of it.

Over time, you’ll start to hear these techniques everywhere—hit podcasts, great radio, live talks. You already use some of them without realizing it. This guide just gives them names, shows you how they work, and helps you weaponize them inside your own niche … even if the examples come from podcasts that are nothing like yours. If it grabs an audience, there’s something in it you can steal.

It’s not bad, but in the grand scheme of things, it didn’t fit. It was too close to something else within the book, so I chopped it.

You don’t need to say the same thing twice.

Sound familiar?

It can be a tough decision to make. You justify why something belongs. For example, telling yourself that it was said differently. Or that people need repetition for something to stick.

But people also want you to get to the point. They want the info, the laugh, or the feeling you’ve promised … and quickly.

Cutting material is part of respecting the audience. If a point is strong, say it once and move on. Every extra lap risks slowing the momentum of your message.

The goal of any podcast isn’t to prove how much you know, it’s delivering on the promise.

When in doubt, trust the cut. Doing so will make what’s left will hit harder.