Radio Who, Podcast What? Linda Zimmermann

Playing radio, that's what we jokingly call it. Podcasting is the new radio, and the internet is your new favorite station. With almost two million active podcasts worldwide, one may think it is impossible to make any kind of splash in the pool of streaming content. I was one of them. I have been working in podcasting for over 13 years, in some way or another, and I have seen shows blast off, and others fade away. Creating a show with my husband and niece seemed like the logical next step, which is precisely what we did. Enter "The Real Housewives of Reality', a podcast that focuses mainly on The Real Housewives franchises and also other reality tv shows. We had no idea what was in store.

Creating a brand identity seen through the noise of all those millions of other shows seemed like a hefty task, but I was up for the challenge. Seeing how I do that for a living, owning a boutique marketing and

I seriously underestimated the time and creative energy it would take to make this all happen. With the help of my co-hosts, I created social media content, hustled for exposure on other shows, and did anything else I could do to contribute to our inevitable success. As we watched our listenership grow week by week, it became clear that the hard work of all of us on the show was working. Before we knew it, one year had passed, and we received the email that would change the game. PodcastOne wanted us to know that they were interested in taking us on as branded content, and a significant payday would be included, but only once we grow further. And to help us do that, they picked us up and featured us on their second-tier platform LaunchPad One. We went from being just another podcast to being in the top 2% of all podcasts WORLDWIDE!! A true Cinderella story. However, we were not prepared for what was to come along with all our success. Haters.

Sure we may have a popular, NSFW, overly opinionated, and comedic podcast, but not everyone was

Listen, y'all, the trolls are working hard to keep you down. Saying things that make zero sense, calling names, and making false claims, are just a few things that some people started doing. Finding out that most of them were doing it to help lower our ranking because their favorite show on the same subject would lose a spot to our show didn't make it any easier to swallow. Words hurt; words matter; words mean something. As our position grew, so did the negativity. Was this a sign that we had made it? Isn't that what they say? You have haters; you must be doing something right. We decided to stay playing the villain in someone else's story and keep doing all we could to give a quality product to the people who want to listen. The moral of the story is? Maybe it is this. Creativity comes at a cost. Sometimes the price is time, sometimes it's money, and more than likely, the price is a piece of yourself. How do we, as creatives, people, and human beings, combat the negative that comes our way and not let it stop us from continuing? I think it is by staying the course. Never ceasing, never relenting, never stopping. That painting can become a collection, that poem a series, that chapter a novel, that script a play, that song an album, that podcast a sensation. No