anyone else find starting a successful podcast harder than the guides suggest?

yes, because the guides are written by people selling hosting and mics. the gear is the easy part. a decent usb mic in a quiet room is enough. what's hard is that discovery inside the podcast apps is weak, so nobody finds you just because you exist. growth tends to come from outside the apps: clips cut for short video, guesting on other people's shows, swapping episodes with similar podcasts, an email list if you have one. record three or four episodes before you launch so you're not scrambling, and pick a release day you can actually keep for a year. most shows die around episode seven.