SO YOU WANNA START A PODCAST – PART 2
Just as a very brief recap, in the last episode we talked about the importance of having a clear ‘why’ for your show, along with a fairly clear who, as in who will your show be for. Then we talked about the what and the how of developing your content, whether or not you’ll have an interview type show, a co-hosted show, a one person show, and what kind of content you’d like to produce. We talked about developing lots of extra content in advance of creating your show so that you have a bunch of episodes you can work on to give yourself the greatest chances of success and traction with your show. We talked about the importance of getting clear on what you want to say, going so far as scripting out the show as completely as you can so that your ideas have the greatest chance of making it through the airwaves and into the ears and minds of your listeners. Some of you might be in the category of what one of my mentors and OG’s of the real estate training world, the founder of the sweathogs training program, the great Floyd Wickman used to say is having the great gift of gab, meaning you can just start up conversations and keep them rolling with almost no effort.
If you’re one of those people and you can just come up with a topic, hit record, and ramble on coherently for long periods of time, I applaud you! I am not one of those people, at least when it comes to my podcast. Maybe its not so much that I cant do that as much as I would worry that the information I want to get across to all of you might not come out exactly the way I’d like it to and what happens if I cant formulate the thought on the spot. So I have to make extensive notes on the topics I’m speaking on even if it’s a topic I’m well educated or experienced on. By doing so, you’ll give yourself the best chance of having that information at your fingertips when it comes time to hit record.
We wrapped up the first episode with a recommendation to have 20 or so potential topics and titles already written down on paper, and then 7-10 of those 20 fleshed out further with copious notes and even scripts. I also suggested one way to dip your toe into the podcasting world is to create seasons with a set number of episodes which can become like a goal for you where you’re time bound to creating all 6, 8, 10, or maybe 12 episodes. Instead of starting your show and having it be a never ending show, you tell yourself and your audience that you are only producing 8 episodes of season one and the theme of season one is whatever you’d like it to be. If you’re an appraiser, maybe the theme of season one is simply all about the appraisal process or maybe its called, ‘A funny thing happened on the way to the appraisal’, where you talk all about common misunderstandings about the appraisal process. If you’re a real estate agent, maybe the theme of your first season is ‘building wealth through real estate’, or ‘everything the first time homebuyer needs to know before taking the home buying leap’. If you’re a lender, maybe the theme of your first season is, ‘Top ten mistakes people make when borrowing money’, or, like the agent podcast, ‘building wealth through real estate’, just done from the lenders perspective. Maybe your show is a host/co-host show with a lender and an agent, or an appraiser and an agent, or maybe every week you interview somebody from one of the related industries to give a 360 degree picture of related issues. The choice is completely up to you and the world is your oyster, as the saying goes. Whatever you’re thinking, my suggestion is simply to get your ideas down on paper first, decide and imagine what it might sound like, what the tone of the show might be, what your position will be on certain topics, and how the information will be relayed.
Now, before we get into hardware and software, I want to talk about something I didn’t mention in part one and something I’ve been teaching and coaching on for over 20 years. I’ve done podcasts on this topic and its something I learned from my Zen and Aikido teacher, Mr. Toyoda, and that is to have a teachable point of view. Leadership author, Noel Tichy, also talks about this in his leadership books, The Leadership Engine and The Cycle of Leadership. What is a teachable point of view? Quite simply, having a teachable point of view means that, first, you have an opinion on a topic that is based on an educated view. Second, you have a clear set of values that your opinions are imbued with, and third, you have what Noel Tichy calls the three E’s of leadership: emotional energy around a topic, energy that can be shared and given to others to help elevate them, empathy for other people’s views and positions on topics, and finally edge, which is having a clear line of what is acceptable behavior and what is not, what you will say yes to and what you’ll say no to, and a clear understanding by all of where you stand on the topic. Emotional energy, empathy for other people’s positions, and edge. Having a teachable point of view is when you make an impact. Having a teachable point of view is being able to articulate your opinion or point of view in such a way that it becomes persuasive in a positive way. Having a teachable point of view is taking into consideration other people’s view and positions on a topic but not necessarily being swayed by them. And having a teachable point of view is having the courage and strength to make yourself very clear where you stand and what you’ll accept. How does this all factor into making a podcast? Its simply a suggestion to you that, depending on the type of show you want to produce and the type of following and impact you’d like your show to have, having a clear and articulate set of values and positions on topics that can be transferred to others is important. If you’re going to produce a comedy podcast, maybe having a teachable point of view isn’t all that important. But, if you’re considering developing an educational podcast, I strongly recommend thinking through what your message is, what your values are, and what your particular edge will be. How do you plan to convey your message and educate the listeners on the topics you’ll be speaking on?
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 condenser mics that we’ve been using for years is probably negligible at this point. I use a nice XLR condenser mic, a nice mixing board, a Tascam 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 literally just have it on your cell phone and read it directly 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 or tablet 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 bit 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 a yellow legal pad with my notes and record that little Aikido podcast that turned into a 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 also recorded episodes while traveling that you would never know I wasn’t in the studio 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. Some of the best shows out there are recorded on equipment that costs less than $200 and you probably have already. I will say again that I believe quality is important and is second only to the quality of information. Depending on the quality of your information and how interesting it is to your listeners, most will forgive you for not having studio quality sound and they’ll also forgive you for not having a radio announcer voice. Listeners and subscribers want real and they want honest so making those your highest priority is a strong recommendation. However, having at least decent quality sound is a very, very close second to the quality of the information because listeners will only tolerate so much. They will correlate the quality of the info with the quality of the sound since sound is all they get with a podcast. Do some practice runs on your phone and play around with ways to get the best quality before putting your show out there.
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 are 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 or 4 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 there are 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, and depending on how big your show has gotten, you could consider 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 today’s episode, 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 or tablet along with some free open source software like Audacity for recording and editing. Then 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 now a podcaster! I know it took two episodes to get all of this out and that may make it sound like its much more difficult than it is but that’s simply because I wanted to emphasize the importance of thinking through your why’s, what’s, how’s, who’s, and how oftens before jumping head first into the world of podcasting.
And with that my friends, I’d like to thank you 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.
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