SO YOU WANNA START A PODCAST – PART 1

This episode is not about how to create your best day ever, we can do an episode on that later, but I just wanted to plant that seed and remind every single one of you that having your best day ever is really a matter of perspective and setting a deliberate intention. Instead of making the fantasy always outside of you and outside of your control, you have the power and ability to redefine what your day, your life, your job, your career, and everything in it mean to you. The biggest issue most people experience, ironically without even realizing it, is a severe lack of intention and deliberate action. They simply take what comes to them each day and they go to sleep at the end of it. Wake up the next day and do it all again. It doesn’t have to be that way and it all changes when you start to become deliberate and you start to set some intentions. We see it every single day in our coaching program and we talk about it often on our calls. Once you become deliberate about what you want and how you want things to be, and then set some intention to become the person that will experience those things, the universe moves in your favor.

If you’d like to listen to the podcast version of this blog, just click here to be taken to the best podcast for appraisers!

Ok, that’s all I’ll say on that topic for right now because I want to get into the main topic of this episode which is podcasting. As you all know by now if you’re listening to this podcast, podcasting has taken off in the last 10 years and there are literally millions of podcasts on almost every topic imaginable. Somehow you found this one and, whether you were introduced to it and this podcast started you on your journey of discovering other podcasts, or you were already a podcast listener and you happened on this one because of an industry connection or some other reason, you know that you can find a podcast on pretty much anything you’d like to know about, learn about, and be entertained by. There are informational and educational podcasts, there are episodic podcasts, there are fiction podcasts, there are Batman podcasts, history podcasts, math podcasts, you name it and there is a podcast for that topic. The great thing about living in the times we live in is that, what used to be controlled by a select few broadcasting companies, has now been made available to anyone with a cell phone. The same can be said with the advent of YouTube and video sharing platforms like that. With the advent of the cell phone and the ease of recoding audio and video and then having a place to share it, producing content was essentially democratized and everybody was given the power to be a movie producer or director, a short film creator, a radio personality, a documentarian, a singer, a comedian, a fitness coach, or anything else one could imagine. For all the negatives that the advent of cell phones can be blamed for, this democratization of information and content is, in my opinion, one of the greatest inventions in history. To put the power of content creation and the dissemination of information into the hands of every single human being is to open up the collective intelligence that exists at any one time. Of course, it also opens up the collective opposite of intelligence as well, but we’ve always had to take the good with the bad. The great thing about content creation and where it exists in the world is that we all have a choice whether or not to consume it. With podcasts specifically, we all have a choice to tune in or not. You have a choice which ones to listen to and which ones to pass on. Which ones to subscribe to and which ones to keep sampling to see if it’s something you want to listen to regularly.

The same is true for YouTube and any other similar platforms. You get to pick and choose what you want to watch, learn, or listen to at any given moment of the day. I think this is one of the greatest aspects of living in the 21st century. Again, just my personal opinion, but I truly believe anybody can get the equivalent of a Harvard education via the internet since everything you could ever learn in a classroom is being taught somewhere out on the internet. You obviously wouldn’t have a Harvard experience, you wouldn’t  gain the extremely valuable Harvard networking connections, and you wouldn’t have the Harvard Diploma to offer up at a job interview, but the vast majority of us wouldn’t have that opportunity available to us anyways so that point is moot. The great thing about having that choice of what information we want to learn is just that, its your choice! No prerequisite classes to take, no degree path to please mom and dad, and whatever information you’re taking in is solely your choice and because its something you are interested in learning, listening to, laughing at, or watching. Of course, you already know all of this and you don’t need me to tell you any of this. I’m more just still amazed at the riches of information and opportunity available to almost everybody in the 21st century in this regard. You don’t have a cell phone or a computer? No problem, just walk into any public library and start Googling. Pretty much anything you want to know you can find via this method.

So that’s the consumption of content part, which, again, you already know or you wouldn’t be listening to this episode right now. But what about the production side of all of this? What about the becoming the video content creator or the podcast content creator part? Over the years I’ve had many conversations with people on this topic because, of course, I am a podcaster. On a very minor level, I might be able to call myself a video content creator as well, but my real strength, in my opinion, is in the creation and production of this, and several other podcasts. I started podcasting many years ago, as I’ve talked about in some of the earlier episodes of this show, with some martial arts podcasts, which I’ll come back to in a little bit when I talk about the power and reach of podcasting. As a result of starting that podcast, I’ve helped a bunch of others over the years start their own podcasts in a variety of genres and spaces and I have some tips and pointers, as well as some warnings, for creating and producing a podcast. Podcasting and content creation is not for everybody and everybody is not for content creation. I would say that almost everybody can do it, but not everybody should do it, and we’ll talk a bit about that as well. What I hope to do with this episode is give you a few things to think about, maybe encourage you to start your own podcast and try it out, and help you over some of the hurdles and challenges that you may face along the way if you decide to try it out. With the recent introduction of services like Anchor.fm, basically anybody can be a podcaster and produce their own show for free. You may not want to go that route long term, and I’ll share with you why, but it’s a very low bar to hurdle to get your voice out into the world and there are virtually no costs to doing so with some of those services.

So lets start with the first tip that I have, and I dare say its maybe the most important tip of all the ones I’ll give in this episode, which, by the way, will cover the content part, the equipment part, the production part, and then the wrapping it all up part. The first and most important tip I think I can give to potential future podcasters is, know why you want to podcast in the first place. Like most things in life and business, knowing your ‘why’ is absolutely vital in helping to create clarity and intention. When it comes to being a content creator, and specifically, creating a podcast, knowing why you’re doing it will give you some direction. Now, you might be thinking, “yeah, I know my why Blaine, my why is because I want to! I want to share with the world my thoughts on a particular topic and that should be good enough!” And to that, surprisingly enough, I would say, ok, get after it then. However, I would encourage this same individual to think deeply about their why and make it a compelling why because, without a compelling why, the whole project will run out of steam fairly quickly, which we’ll talk about in some of the next tips. By the way, your why can evolve and often does, as a matter of fact. For example, I started a different podcast years ago simply to get my thoughts and voice on a particular topic out into my relatively small local market and make me the go-to authority on that topic, and also have additional content to help out with me website SEO and get me to the top of the search engine rankings for a bunch of key words I wanted to rank for in my market. I had no real interest beyond that and just figured if I could pump out an episode per month on this topic, my name and my business would eventually come up first for all these keywords. And it worked in spades! It put my dojo website on the map and had people flocking to my academy for all sorts of classes that we offered. People would come in to sign up for classes and they would say, “I feel like I know you already, I’ve been listening to your podcast for the past few months.” We became the biggest and the best in our market and that little podcast blossomed into something much bigger than I had initially imagined, which I’ll talk about again when we cover the next tip.

Maybe your why is similar to what mine was with that podcast initially, which is to simply supplement your SEO and your local recognition with a particular crowd. If you’re an appraiser, maybe your why is to be the local valuation expert with your local market of realtors and lenders. If you’re an agent, maybe your podcast covers topics that help homeowners, other agents, maybe lenders, and just talks about the market in general. One of the best ways to become an authority in any market, if you follow some rules, is to get your voice out into the market. That is, as long as your voice and ideas are strong and value added ideas. I’ll talk in the next tips about voice, tone, message, and leadership with all of it, but just know that podcasting is a great way to establish your credibility in a market and add value at the same time. When it comes to having your market come to know you and get a sense of your knowledge, few things beat podcasting as far as overall reach relative to effort and cost. As many of you know, I am a strong advocate for getting out into your markets and doing live talks and classes, but podcasts essentially live forever in the ether. You record it once and its out there for everybody to listen to time and again, and for every successive generation of potential client to hear years later. You spend the time and effort solidifying your thoughts on the topic, you write, record, and upload the episode, and your thoughts, ideas, and voice on that topic are out there and you potentially become the authority in that area of expertise. Know why you want to start a podcast first, and that will help fuel some of the content and the message.

A very close second to knowing your why is to know what you want to talk about and how you want to say it. This is a multi part tip so indulge me a minute and let me expand a bit on this one. This particular point cannot be over emphasized. There are a ton of podcasts out in the ether at the moment that have not been updated in many years. In fact, the podcast I just told you about that I started for the Aikido and martial arts industry many years ago,  called Aikicast, is one of those very podcasts. It’s a show that I haven’t done an episode for in probably 3 or 4 years. I’d have to actually look and see when the last episode was uploaded but I know it’s been a long time! I had a strong why for starting it and I produced 40 some episodes and, as I mentioned, it was a huge hit! What started as a way to grow my local martial arts business and it ended up becoming something that gained me some international recognition.  Even today, after not producing an episode for at least 3 years or so, that show still gets a couple thousand downloads per month with absolutely no promotion, no marketing, and no attention. At its peak it was getting 50-60,000 downloads per episode. In fact, I get emails and facebook messages from people all around the world occasionally asking if I am ever going to resurrect that show, which I have no intentions of doing, but it shows the power and potential of the medium. Of course, the reason for the success of that show, in my opinion, is because, like all of the shows I have produced, I followed my own advice and I knew what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it. I take great care in coming up with the topics for shows, writing extensive notes, doing extensive research, and knowing exactly what I want to say before I turn on the mic and start recording. And I highly recommend you do as well. As much as I am encouraging every single one of you to venture into the podcasting realm, I am also wearing you all to take great care to think through your why, your what, and your how. Without those three things well thought out, you’ll simply go off half cocked and make some rookie mistakes, which you can avoid if you’ll follow some of this advice.

Knowing what you want to talk about and how you want to say is is so vital, and sounds ridiculously simple, but very often not the case with lots of podcasts. I’m sure you’ve heard some podcasts, especially interview style shows or shows with multiple hosts, where they simply didn’t have a clear path for the show and the show goes slightly off the rails and into territory that can be difficult to follow for the listener. There are a bunch of podcasts out there where you can absolutely tell the hosts did no research on the topic they’re trying to speak on and they just figured the fact that they were having a conversation with a buddy on mic was a compelling enough reason for you to tune in an listen. You absolutely must have a clear path, a clear topic, a clear idea, and some leadership if you want to grow a listener base. If you plan on having multiple hosts on your show, somebody will have to be a strong leader and take control of the show lest it become one of those annoying laugh fests with lots of inside jokes and shit none of the listeners have any clue about or any interest in. Another way to say know what you want to talk about and how you want to say it is to simply be well prepared. Its one thing to know what you want to talk about, it’s a whole different ball game knowing exactly how you want to say it, and its an even different ball game knowing how to say it in the medium that you’ve chosen. Remember, podcasting is an audio only form of content and there are lots of people making podcasts that seem to have no understanding whatsoever of what they sound like on the other end of their voice. If you tend to be a somewhat monotone or dry speaker, which, that type of individual tends not to recognize in themselves, you may have to get some input from somebody else, somebody not afraid to hurt your feelings, and tell you that you need to modulate your voice a bit more. If you’re a quiet and slow talker, you may need to ramp up the volume a bit and pick up the pace. People can listen and think at a much faster pace than most talk and listening to a slow talker on a podcast or video can be very aggravating. Do a few practice runs and ask some friends to be brutally honest with you. If you’re thinking of producing a podcast and would like my opinion, I’m happy to help and will be brutally honest with you so feel free to shoot me some short demos.

So the first tip, know first and foremost why you want to start a podcast. After that, know what you want to talk about and know how you’re going to say it. I recommend scripting out your first few episodes and then learning how to read from a script without sounding like you’re reading from a script. That’s essentially what I do with all of the shows I produce. I write extensive notes first, I know exactly what I want to say and how I want to say it, and then, because I know the topic and the information, I can go off script whenever I want and easily get back on script when its time. The fact that I have something of a script means that you, as the listener, are less likely to hear a lot of ‘ahs’, ‘ums‘, and annoying speech habits like me saying, ‘like’, ‘right’, or ‘ya know what I mean’ throughout the episode. Now that I’ve mentioned this to you, listen to some other podcasts in other genres and industries and see if you can identify those kinds of things. They may be somewhat unnoticeable if you really like the content, but they can be extremely annoying ticks that will simply turn certain segments of the audience off, never to come back again. When you know what you want to say and you know how you’re going to say it, you will say it with confidence and your message wont be lost in random off topic thoughts and annoying speech patterns. It may sound harsh, but I’m simply giving you my own opinions about what I’ve noticed with other shows and some of the things I have coached other podcasters on and gotten positive feedback after they’ve made those changes. So know what you want to say and how you’re going to say it. By the way, as a happy benefit, for those of you wanting to do live talks and classes in your market, starting a podcast is a great non-threatening way to practice delivering your message in a medium whereby its just you and a mic. There’s no crowd to contend with, no questions from the audience, no on the spot situations or hostility to deal with, and essentially no immediate feedback to worry about. Personally, I love the immediate feedback of a live audience, but I can tell you that years of podcasting has helped to hone my message and, more importantly, the delivery of my message when on a stage or with a live audience. Podcasting is a great way to hone your message and your delivery of that message.

The next suggestion or tip, after knowing your why, your what, and your how is to have at least 10 episodes in the hopper, so to speak. I can’t yell you how many people have come to me thinking they’re going to just blow up the world with their podcast only to pump out two or three episodes and then have nothing else to say. The show dies after 5 episodes and they’re on to something else. If you have the thought that you want to produce a podcast, knowing what you want to say and why you want to say it will hopefully lend some motivation to your project so that you can say it over more than 2 to 4 episodes. Just because you got really excited about telling the world about what you thought was a great idea, does not mean that its going to make for a great year long podcast. In fact, as harsh it may sound, just because you want to say something to the world doesn’t mean it will make a good podcast. The beauty of podcasts, however, is that it doesn’t really matter if your topic is interesting or not, you’re free to put it out there. Anybody can say anything they want in a podcast and, especially with all of the free services out there, you can do it for little to no cost. However, one of the main reasons to do a podcast, in my opinion, is to build some kind of following and to become the recognized authority in a field or a market. The information is, of course, important. But consistency with your show and your message is important. I’ve seen way too many podcasts, and this goes for blogs too, that come strong out of the gate only to peter out and disappear after those first few episodes. My suggestion is to sit down and first make a list of topics or titles for your shows and have at least 20 ideas or titles. From there you can start to create outlines for 10 of those 20 and start coming up with content for them. I recommend when you’re ready to start recording and unleashing your show onto the world that you have 7-10 shows already recorded and waiting to be uploaded before announcing or marketing your podcast. If you have 7-10 shows already recorded and your show is a weekly show, you’ve just give yourself a 7-10 week development time for new episodes. When you know you have 6-8 shows still in the can and ready to be released, you’ve got all that time to flesh out new ideas and titles, do your research, write your scripts, and record new episodes. If you come out of the gate hot and heavy with your one or two big episodes and nothing else in the wings, you’ll feel the pressure to come up with shows each week and if you get busy with life, as inevitably happens, the podcast and blog get pushed too the side. If you have 7-10 shows already recorded and your podcast is a monthly show, you’ve got 70-80% of the year filled already. Be realistic about what you think you can do and get a jump on writing and recording episodes before uploading and marketing them.

As you all know, I have a weekly show and coming up with content, researching, writing, recording, editing, uploading, and promoting is a constant in my week. It is on my weekly to do list and is part of almost every single day of my life. Writing is one of the first things I do in the morning and I’m often making notes throughout the day as well. It’s a passion of mine, which makes it easier to do, nevertheless its work and its constant. If you’re going to build a following and get your message out there with a podcast, you have to be consistent. And consistency is the next tip. Again, you cant have 4 or 5 shows and think you’re the local authority. Getting traction with a podcast can literally take years and not just years of every now and then effort. Years of every week, every other week, or every month consistency is absolutely required lest you become like the millions of other 5 or 10 episode podcasts that litter the ether having been abandoned by their creator because life got too busy. If you’re having the thought to start a podcast, one suggestion is to think in terms of seasons. Instead of coming out of the gate with no end to your podcast, set in your head that you are going to produce 1 season of shows with 10 or 12 episodes. Tell your audience right from the get go that this is season one and this is episode one of twelve. After the twelfth episode, the season ends and, like Netflix, your audience may have to wait and beg for season two, which will come out in a few months. If you find yourself super motivated and its become part of your DNA to produce your podcast, great, season two starts the week after season one ends and you’re building your fan base. Consistency in life, habits, business, relationships, and podcasts is the name of the game my friends.

Ok, lets talk equipment because you’re going to need at least $10,000 worth of high end recording equipment which should include a nice XLR condenser mic, an 8-16 track mixing board, a MacBook Pro for editing, and some good software to edit the show on. Folks, the good news is that what I just said is a complete lie. Your podcast can literally be started, written, recorded, edited, and uploaded on your cell phone. Although high quality audio is important, in my opinion, much like cell phone cameras these days, the technology has come so far that your pictures and your audio from a good cell phone is almost as good as professional equipment. The difference between a good cell phone with an attached lapel mic and the kind of XLR mic I’ve been using for years is probably negligible at this point. I use a nice XLR mic, a nice mixing board, a digital recorder, nice headphones, a recording studio environment, sound absorbing tiles on the walls, and nice software to edit on and I have heard similar quality shows that were recorded on a cell phone in the speaker’s car. I don’t recommend it since there can be some hiss, some external noise issues, and some potential interruptions, but my point is that if you’ve been using the excuse that you don’t have the proper equipment to podcast yet are listening to my voice on your cell phone, you absolutely can start today. If you’re going to use your cell phone, I do recommend investing a few dollars in a decent lapel mic. You can pick up a decent mic for your cell phone for around $20 on amazon. Every cell phone has a voice recording app that you can use to record and, if you’ve written a script, you can just have it on your cell phone and read it write from your phone while you’re recording. Now, do I recommend this method? Not necessarily, but if it gets you started then absolutely yes! Start on your phone.

My recommended method and equipment list would include an investment of maybe $100 for a decent USB microphone that you can plug directly into your computer and record that way. You can download a free audio recording and editing program called Audacity, which is an open source recording and editing app or program that some of the most popular podcast in the world use, or have used, at some point in their evolution. With a decent editing program like audacity you can increase or decrease volume, you can cut out unwanted sounds, coughs, and sniffles, and you can tweak the audio a but to make it sound more professional. Nevertheless, I started my very first podcast with a Zoom h1 digital audio recorder and a $30 headset mic plugged into it. I would sit in my bed at night with my yellow legal pad with notes and record that little Aikido podcast that turned into 60,000 download per episode show. The only reason I upgraded equipment was because I love tech, I love gear, and I love buying shit. I would study sound engineering and audio recording and mixing videos and then invest in better gear. Did I need to? Nope! I just wanted to and it made me feel more professional about it so it kept me motivated to keep doing it. I’ve recorded episodes while traveling that you would never know I wasn’t in the studio though because I brought some decent mics and a digital recorder that I could plug the mics in and monitor the sound levels. If you want to go that route eventually, awesome, I’d love to go shopping with you because I love that stuff. The point, though, is that you do not need all that to start your show.

After the equipment side of things you have one more big decision to make and that is how it will be hosted and delivered to the listening world. If you want to go the free route with websites like Anchor podcasting, you absolutely can. Services like Anchor let you record right into their system and they will host the audio for you, give you a URL to give out to the world, and upload your podcast to iTunes so you don’t have to mess with any of the technical stuff. I don’t personally recommend this method as there is a dark side to the free hosting format, one of which is that Anchor will run ads and commercials over your content, they only let you choose one content category within Itunes, instead of the 3 that Apple allows, and they’ll change the format of your upload which can mess with aggregating your show to other platforms. It’s a great free way to start a show with no investment whatsoever, but its also the biggest repository of what is often referred to as podtrash, which is like dead satellites that float around in space. Once people are done with them they just leave everything sitting there for people to amble upon only to realize that nobody has updated that podcast in several years and there are only 3 episodes.  Easy way to start, not recommended if you’re serious about your show long term. If you’re serious about your show long term you’ll need to pay for hosting with a service like Libsyn, Bluberry, Captivate, Buzzsprout, Transistor, Simplecast, and a bunch of others. While some have free offers, those typically come with limitations, which may be fine for you at first. However, you’ll typically pay $15 to $25 per month to have a quality service host your show. What this means is that they provide some sort of dashboard and the bandwidth for you to upload your audio file to, your thumbnail artwork for your show or episode, and then a way to aggregate your show out to other podcast services like Itunes, Spotify, Googlecast, Iheart Radio, and so on. From there, most services will give you some way to embed your episode with a built in podcast player right into your website. When somebody clicks on the player on your website, they can listen to the episode that is being hosted by whatever service you’re paying for that privilege. You’ll always own the content, you just have to have a service with the technology to host your audio and your artwork, and a means to send it out to the world. This can be a little confusing for beginners, just know that there are lots of videos on YouTube about how this works and, of course, you can use me as a resource, Dustin Harris, the Appraiser Coach has been putting out weekly shows for years and would be happy to help, the great Jamie Owen of the Cleveland Appraisal Blog and the newly released Home Value Stories podcast would love to help, I’m quite sure, and there are several others out there who can help if you just reach out. It can be a little bit to set up but once it’s all set up and you’ve got your system down, you’re good to go.

From there, once you’re up and running and have 6 months or a year of episodes under your belt, I would suggest hiring a virtual assistant to do much of the uploading and aggregating process for you so that you can just focus on creating content and not all the technical stuff that goes along with the process. Either way, know why you want to start your podcast, know what you want to say and how you want to say it, know what you sound like on a podcast and modulate your voice, your tone, and your message if needed, write out 20 topics or titles, flesh out at least 10 of those 20 topics and start writing episodes for them, and then record and edit 7-10 episodes before launching your podcast so you have backup episodes in the can after you launch. This will allow you to be much more consistent with your show than 90% of the people who start a podcast or a blog. To recap, you can do it all on your phone, if you choose, or invest in a decent usb mic like a blue yeti or a Samson G Track pro and use your computer with some free open source software like Audacity for recording and editing. Choose a hosting platform to host your podcast on and spread it out to other services like Itunes and Spotify. Come up with a title, make a thumbnail on Canva.com or go on Fiverr.com and have somebody else do it for you inexpensively. If you want to take it further, buy the domain name associated with your podcast and build a small website using WordPress, Weebly, or Wix and embed your podcast on your very own podcast website. If you don’t want to go that far, create an additional page on your existing website for your podcast and then just embed those episodes on that page. From there my friends, congratulations, you are a podcaster!

Thank you my friends for tuning in again this week and investing your most valuable currency in yourself, which is, of course, your time. If you’ve ever considered starting a podcast, hopefully this episode has added a little to your knowledge and maybe give you some things to think a little deeper about and start writing out before doing it. If you thought you needed a bunch of equipment to start podcasting, hopefully this episode has helped to shatter that myth and encourage you to take the plunge. If you need help with your podcasting project, don’t hesitate to reach out to me, or any of the other podcasters in the industry you want to podcast in. Almost everyone I’ve ever met in the podcasting community is super helpful and willing to help out anybody at any level of their journey. Until next week my friends, I’m out.