My Biggest Failure, and Success, of 2024

2024 has been a transformative year for me. I learned a ton about myself and my business, and for the first time in a while I feel like I’m not flailing. I’ll have the clearest plan I’ve had in a long time in 2025 — one that’s reinforced by conversations I’ve had, not just hunches. So for the last episode of the year, I wanted to do a quick year in review where I talk about my biggest success, my biggest failure, and the lessons I learn.

Plus, some feedback from last week’s episode on using AI.

My Biggest Success

This was definitely ranking #1 in Google for “Podcast Coach”. It shows that my work to grow this area of my business is working out!

Biggest Failure

My Be everywhere strategy. I made a big deal about it and abandoned after 4 months, since it was very clearly not working. It was basically all downsides. It also resulted in two other outcomes:

• Going to stop publishing on Medium in 2025
• Shutting down my membership

Lessons

• Know your niche. I thought I knew mine but it got a lot clearer the back half of the year, and I saw a positive impact because of it.
• Don’t discount SEO/Google, and even ChatGPT, which is being used for search more. As social media is fracturing further,
• Focus on one thing at a time. My Be Everywhere strategy left me trying to do too many things at once, and none of the succeeded.

Links

• PodMatch
• Maker and Moxie
• Podcast Advent
• My Experiment with Substack and Being “Everywhere”
• My Be Everywhere Strategy was an Incredible Failure
• How to be a Scrappy Researcher (to Actually Sell Products) with Becky Pierson Davidson
• I’m Shutting Down my Podcast Membership
• We Need AI Disclosures
• Matt Medeiros
• The Podcast Setup
• Mike (Bagel) Barugel

• (00:00) - Intro
• (01:32) - My Biggest Success
• (06:01) - My Biggest Failure
• (09:34) - Social Media is Fracturing
• (11:30) - 3 Lessons from 2024
• (16:25) - Feedback on Using AI