5 Things I Wish Knew When Starting A Podcast | Ep 20

It's always easier to look back and say "here's how to start a podcast" once you've already started one. 

The Single Girl's Guide to Life podcast started over 3 years ago, back in July 2021, and this podcast, Big Vision Business Owners, started 6 months ago. 

So from my two experiences starting a podcast, I'm gonna peel back the content to reveal how creating strategic content and fostering genuine engagement trumps any trending chart position. 

In this week's episode, I'll share my weekly ritual for turning a single podcast episode into a treasure trove of repurposable gems that will guide your listeners through that all important customer journey. 

And by the end of the podcast episode, you'll be equipped with five key strategies to cement your podcast as a vital part of your business ecosystem, turning listeners into loyal customers and amplifying your brand’s voice in the most effective way

Want to start a podcast? Download the FREE Podcast Starter Checklist, a 15-point guide created specifically for entrepreneurs, life coaches and course creators.

Music by Kadien: Instagram | Spotify | SoundCloud

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

The downloads on your podcast do not matter as much as you think. Your podcast needs to solve one problem Whatever equipment you have when you first start doesn't really matter. Hello and welcome to the Big Vision Business Owners podcast. This is the place for business owners that have a message that they want to share with the world, and we'll be talking on this podcast about how to get seen online, how to raise your visibility and actually get your message out there so that you can have that impact on the world. We are all about creating a true connection with your audience, building a community around your podcast, what you do that feeds in to your business. That can lead to growth leads and more sales. And, finally, we're all about changing the world changing the way the world thinks by helping you to share your message so you could have that impact, leave that lasting legacy and be part of greater change in the future. And I'm your host, sean Tell Dyson, who's here to do it with you. Along the way, I'll be sharing my expertise and experiences with being a Big Vision Business owner, with being able to create content online the clever way, which means not having to spend hours on your phone, and together we'll be looking at how we can raise your profile online to get your message seen and heard. And with that, let's get on with today's episode.

Speaker 1: 1:26

Welcome back, and today we are going to be talking about the five things I wish I knew when I first started a podcast. And this matters because, no matter what scenario you're in, you can always learn from someone who has done it before you, and the best thing that you can do is to avoid their mistakes. Now it doesn't mean that you're always going to listen, because if we were going to do that as humans, if we were going to follow and pay attention to all of the mistakes that other people had made, we'd all be living perfect lives, and we are not. There are still tragedies that happen in the world, mistakes that are made, big and small, whether that's in the marketing, business or just in your life. So this is not necessarily something you're going to pay attention to entirely, and it doesn't always go in the first time. When you hear something, maybe just one of these five things is going to resonate with you as something that you know you've already done wrong and you need to change Something that you've already learned before. But pay attention to something that you can implement. You know out of these five, which one has really caught your attention the most and do you think could have the biggest impact on your business. And I'm not going to take any time getting into this. We're going to jump straight in to the first of those five things to get going Now.

Speaker 1: 2:42

The first thing that I wish I knew when I first got started is that the downloads on your podcast do not matter as much as you think. Other people will have you believing that the podcast downloads are absolutely everything to your business, and there's a few reasons that they aren't. One of the biggest things is that podcast downloads dictates the Apple podcast charts as well as every other chart, and it's on a rolling system as to how you sit in that chart. Now, getting charts positions obviously shows a level of popularity and it shows how well you're doing at something compared to your peers, let's remember. It's like you can select which chart you're appearing by choosing the categories very carefully, and I've noticed that some Amazon bestselling books are in some really peculiar categories in order to get themselves to the top of the charts better. And we have to be careful with this, with podcasting, because that doesn't necessarily dictate or determine that we have success in business. And whilst I didn't focus on the charts, it was very exciting the time that I was starting to peek and be around the names of opera and Matthew Hussie in a society and culture category. It was not something that made my business a success. I spoke about this on a previous episode, episode 19, where I was able to get thousands of downloads a week on certain episodes or in total across all the episodes, and I didn't have the business background to make it actually work in the system so I could get all of the attention but couldn't do it like else.

Speaker 1: 4:19

And when you're working out what your podcast is doing, download numbers are something to keep away from. You wanna focus on getting your podcast out there, saying the things that you wanna say in a way that is effective at getting people to listen, to want to know more, and you wanna do that without the pressure of hundreds of thousands of downloads. When you first start Like get the messy bit out of the way, when hardly anyone's paying attention, that's the best thing that can happen to you is that no one pays attention. Obviously, if you already have a following, like we've seen recently, is that Olivia Atwood's gone straight to number one and hasn't even released a podcast yet. Ridiculous, but obviously it shows that she has a following that's listening to the trailer enough, and that counts as downloads when you first start out. So she's already got a chart topping podcast before she's even released her first official episode. So it's lovely to have, but it doesn't necessarily lead to the business that you need if you're launching a podcast within a business context, which is what most people are here to do when they're working with me or listening to this podcast, and so I want you to remember that when you think 20 downloads isn't very much, please make sure you go back and listen to episode 19, which is what if no one listens to my podcast, and I address all of it there. But that is something to detach from very, very early on that the download numbers do not dictate the actual success in your business in terms of the podcast.

Speaker 1: 5:47

Now, number two is not something that I wish I knew when I first started a podcast, but to me, if I don't mention this one, then I'm doing you guys a disservice. This one is about the tech that is required to get started. Now, I am a sound engineer by trade. That is what my university degree is in. It's what I studied in theory for the longest, but my experience is longer in teaching, so I'd say I'm a better teacher than I am sound engineer. But even so, technically I spent longer studying that than I did to become a teacher.

Speaker 1: 6:23

Now, when I first started with a podcast, I was sat in the corner over there, not on this sofa. I did eventually move to the sofa and there's reason for that, and I'm bringing that up in number three. But I was over in the corner and I had a little microphone that I had bought. It was about 150 pounds. I've still got it here somewhere and I also have a little box to dampen the sound.

Speaker 1: 6:46

Now, that actually I wouldn't say was a bad purchase. But for anybody that thinks that they need to have a proper microphone or a proper setup you don't necessarily, because I know that budget can be a stall for people or they start to overthink what they need. In front of me sits a blue Yeti. Technically speaking, it is not the best microphone for podcasting. Because of the type of microphone it is, it actually picks up on a lot of sound. Yet in our industry of entrepreneurs starting podcasts, it's one of the most popular, and so, as long as you know what settings to put it on and how to have it set up, it's not bad at all. And the microphone that I had when I first started I would say is actually better to some degree, but I like the look of this one more when it's in shot. I don't find it so offensive as the other little one I have. The other one's actually more portable and that's why, but it did the job.

Speaker 1: 7:38

Whatever equipment you have when you first start doesn't really matter, and I often tell people that come to me and say I don't have a budget to start. How do I get started? I say use your phone. Your phone has the technology on it now to just get started. If you've got an iPhone, grab your phone, go to the voice memos app and use that to start recording your podcast. And the beautiful thing is is that if you hit record on it and then hit the side button to lock it, send it to sleep. When you relight it up, it will come up in a slightly different screen and there's a pause button. If you go wrong during your episode, you hit pause, you drag the cursor back and then you hit record again and it will go over that stumble that you made.

Speaker 1: 8:16

You're actually editing as you go and, quite frankly, for anyone that knows from already doing a podcast, that can be a bit of a game changer. If you could edit as you went. I'm not gonna do that with this every time it happens. Well then, maybe I should. I'll think about that. Oh no, the video would be out of sync. That's why we don't do it. I remembered, but when you're first starting your audio only, it is perfect for that and it's all you need. Get that, upload it to Buzzsprout and apply Magic Mastery, which only costs at this point in time, five or $6 a month extra for two or three hours of content. With Magic Mastery applied, source out all the volume levels and so long as you don't stutter or arm or arm too much, you're good to go.

Speaker 1: 8:57

You don't need all of the big equipment, and the same goes for your video as well. Every video you've ever seen of me on a podcast has been recorded on an iPhone 12 Pro Max the same one I'm recording on right now that you might be watching a clip of. If you're watching on YouTube or seeing a little clip of on Instagram, you do not need all of the tech, all of the setup. You certainly don't need to be in a studio. I never have been and I do not plan to be. Why? Because I don't believe you need a studio environment to have a successful podcast, certainly not one that fits into your business, because if people are going to like you, they want to see a setup that reflects you. And when I think of all of my favorite podcasters, some of them have like studios, but they're still built within their houses. But when I think of people that I see online, there's definitely people that use a sofa, like me, and they have their books in the background and it is their home. I know it's their home and I love that touch. I think it's personal. You want a recognizable space, no matter what, but there's something about knowing that this is authentically them talking, and I think with the rise of personal channels over television, that's going to really matter.

Speaker 1: 10:03

As to if people want to listen to you and listen to what you've got to say and what you're doing, you don't need a studio, you don't need all the equipment. You may want to have some sort of software to be able to record your episode on, whether that's audio only or then to edit on. Now we've only ever used iMovie for the video. One day we may have invested something more, but it does the job In terms of audio. I love Reaper. I've used it ever since I was a sound engineer student, even prior to that. It's what I discovered online when I was probably about 16, and it was great and I've always used it. I fan it. I pro it. Go use Reaper. Other people like Audacity or Descript, whatever it might be, but you don't need a lot to get started with the tech. Please don't think that you need to have it perfect and have all of the equipment to start. It's actually one of the biggest barriers, but actually one of the easiest to overcome.

Speaker 1: 10:56

Now number three is related to technology, and this is that I wish I had started with video sooner. For those that don't know, when I first started my first podcast, it was audio only and I hadn't even really thought about the implications of video at that time. Even though I was making reels and dancing and pointing to stuff on Instagram, I didn't think, oh, I might need a video one day. In hindsight it would be handy to have those episodes and ultimately I don't miss them. But my recent advice to people has been that if you're starting a podcast and you can only stretch to audio only through your technical capabilities or the person helping you and from a financial perspective, record the video anyway, whether you happen to be using Zoom or if you happen to be using your phone that you've got, keep that file somewhere safe, upload it to Google Drive, edit the audio only and get that uploaded and sent out as your podcast, but keep the video. Now, this is because, should you find that you say something fantastic during that episode and you go, you know what, that'd make a great reel.

Speaker 1: 12:01

People are not gonna listen to your audiogram, the audiograms, the little things that they create for you, these podcast hosting platforms or whatever you can adopt, just don't perform that well, because the minute someone sees them, it comes upon their feed on Instagram, unless they already know you and the podcast and know they wanna listen to you. As someone that listens to you for the first time, it says nothing about you. I've got to look at it. It looks like a little. It is a graphic. It's not a picture of you. It's not a moving video of you, which, based on the psychology of users of social media when we're leveraging our podcast on social media. They wanna see who you are. They don't wanna be listening to the radio.

Speaker 1: 12:40

When you think, if you've ever seen a clip of Greg James on Radio One, on Instagram as a reel, it's a video of him. Very rarely is it audio only. So even the radio stations a radio station which is predominantly audio only is throwing out content with the video because it is necessary to get people to pay attention. I mean, first and foremost, people know who Greg James is, so they're gonna pay attention, potentially if they like him as a presenter, as a celebrity, whatever you might deem him. But they see that and they go. I'm gonna watch and people are gonna respond better to you visually than they are to you, just orderly.

Speaker 1: 13:17

So if you find that you say something really good or powerful, it's great to have the video. You can get the rough point of where you're at, go back and cut that clip out. But the best bit about it is is that full length video now can be transferred into plenty of clips, tens of clips. I do this every single week with my 20 to 30 minute podcast episode and it gets chunked into about 20 little clips. I don't love all of the clips. Sometimes they are not as good as I want them to be, so I get rid of a few, but I end up with at least 15, and I certainly don't get time to post all 15. I have an incredible bank of content that can go out whenever. Someone could literally walk into it and plan. Well, probably I've got at least 10 episodes with 15 clips that probably haven't been used. So 150 days worth of content if you posted one a day or go all out, post three to five a day, and that's a fair few weeks worth.

Speaker 1: 14:14

So if you have the video, whilst you might not use it now, it's gonna be vital for using it in the future. So start with video, even if you don't love talking to the camera. The sooner you do it, the sooner you'll get better at it and you'll soon get over being on the camera. I promise Number four links to number one, where the podcast downloads don't matter, unless you're actually doing something with those podcast download numbers. And my biggest error was that I didn't do it well enough.

Speaker 1: 14:45

Now I think I understood the concept of it, but I didn't execute it as well as I could have done. And that's this whole ecosystem of pipelines and customer journeys and understanding the listener and being even more strategic with the content. So my content is even more strategic than it used to be. It's a lot more thought through and it's gonna move people through effectively when they're listening to wanting to work with me at some point and I do a lot of tests at the time so sometimes you're gonna listen to an episode and think that I'm doing something that's gonna try and get you to do that, but it's not necessarily, because sometimes I'm just doing something as a hunch. I'm just thinking what's that gonna do? Will that do that? What's the intention of this? What's this? Obviously, I'm still talking about things that are relevant to podcasting, getting seen online, building confidence in that, et cetera. But the order in which they're in, or what I'm saying, is thought through, and then there's always gonna be a way for you to find out more information, to join a community, to download a freebie or to even buy a course or think about signing up to a program, whatever it might be.

Speaker 1: 15:54

I didn't focus enough on that because I didn't do the problem that I'm gonna explain next, which is number five. But your podcast needs to be very specifically part of your business model. It is not just brand awareness. That's what I used to be very, very good at and can still do. It should be part of what your podcast does. But your podcast is also responsible a key point of your whole customer journey of developing the relationship with the listener, of bringing them into your world and of offering them an opportunity to keep working with you and finding out more from you so that they could have the success that they're after and what you help people to do and on that note is number five the one last thing that I wish I knew when I first started a podcast is that you should be hyper-neishing in on a problem.

Speaker 1: 16:47

Now some say that this should inform the name of your podcast too. So if I was going to do that for this podcast, I would need to rename it something to do with podcasting, and I haven't, because I started with a different approach and I was thinking more about who I served, because I felt like single girls guide to life, it really focused in on the single girls part. This focuses in on business owners with big visions who wanna change the world, and I think that still resonates in the right way. But in terms of the content that you deliver on your podcast, whether you align the name specifically with that or not. Your podcast needs to solve one problem Now.

Speaker 1: 17:25

My issue was single girls guide to life. I diversified too much and, whilst it was still within a particular realm, if you look at the experimentation of it afterwards I really should have stuck down with a few more, because it was just a bit too wide, it involved a few too many people and it meant, whilst it increased some of the views, didn't necessarily increase people's loyalty to the community and understood what it was really about, whereas this podcast is very specifically about podcasting. Whether the title says that or not, you can go back. The earlier episodes are a little bit less hyper niche. They're still niche because they're online visibility branding. This is very hyperniche into podcasting and it's part of that experimentation.

Speaker 1: 18:11

I mentioned a few episodes ago that even just delivering it, I can also tell you it's so much stronger and I know what I'm saying. The content that's going out online is consistent, not just in terms of how it's being posted. It's what I'm saying and what I'm talking about and therefore what I'm gonna get known for, and so I still did get known as this sort of empowerment character for single women. But I could go into a lot of topics and actually I needed to rein it in even more than I had, and that's why I believe I've had so much more traction with this podcast and this branding compared to the other podcast and branding, even if the numbers don't match in terms of how many followers I've got.

Speaker 1: 18:59

I can tell you now that more people, I would say, know me as the podcast girl in their circle than they did the single life girl, necessarily. And from a business perspective, the leads I have in this business are particularly strong and that they're in the pipeline for a reason to do with podcasting very specifically. So, compared to lists I used to have for the single world's guide to life, which, whilst I had them, I was like, ah, you need help with that and you want help with that and you want help with that, and this is not coherent. And you, I have no idea why you're here. I don't know why you're here, whereas I've got a lot clearer picture on what I'm doing now and then I've got to think about how to scale that.

Speaker 1: 19:39

So let's recap those five things for you. Number one is to realize that downloads are not the determiner of business success. Number two is that you don't need all of the equipment on the studio to get started, but you've probably got half of it in your hand as you're listening or watching right now. It's not very far away from you at all and you can just get started, basically tomorrow, with what you've already got in most cases. Number three is that you should have started with video from the very beginning, if you can. You're going to be able to leverage it later on and you might as well start getting used to it and doing it from now so that by episode five, six, seven or eight you are ready and raring on that camera with your technique and your camera presence.

Speaker 1: 20:21

Number four is to make sure that the podcast is part of your business system, and that means thinking about customer journey, being strategic with the content and having ways to move people through and not just staying listening to the podcast forever.

Speaker 1: 20:33

And number five is an underpinning way to pretty much do all of those better is to hyponish into a problem that people can then associate with you and your podcast, so that people know what to come to you for, know what to recommend you for and for you to make better content that's gonna help more people and create that movement through that pipeline.

Speaker 1: 20:57

They're my five things that I wish I knew, or that I hope that you knew or know when you start a podcast very shortly and if you've already got a podcast, then start readjusting in some of these. If you aren't doing them, have a little breather, take a step back and think what could I do to change this, cause these things make the difference in your business. If you stop chasing the numbers, if you start getting hyper specific on what you're gonna be telling people, and if you make sure that you've got enough content to leverage all of the messages that you're creating, cause you're getting started with your podcast and focusing on getting that out there very specifically for people, that is when you're gonna see the success of your podcast and the leads coming in through the podcast, running into your business and generating sales, moving properly and all starting to work together. Until next time, keep changing the way the world thinks, one podcast at a time.