Nina: Welcome to Dear Nina, conversations about friendship. I am your host, Nina Badzin. I have been writing about friendship for over 10 years. Podcasting for almost four. Today’s episode is one that might not be for you. It might be for your friend. It will be for your friend who is curious about starting a podcast or it is for you if you are somebody who is thinking about starting a podcast, or maybe it’s for you if you have a podcast, but you wanted to hear how someone else started it and maybe some tips that I have for improvement.

First and foremost, I want to tell you in this episode that you can do it. I know you can do it. If I can start a podcast, you can start a podcast. So even though what I’m about to get into is a lot of information that’s going to seem very overwhelming, I don’t want it to turn you off from starting a podcast if it’s something you have been thinking about.

Alright, let’s get into it.

This episode will give you some tips for success . Things I maybe wish I had [00:01:00] known before I started, things I would possibly do differently, but also things I would do exactly the same way. Also setting expectations and one of those expectations does have to do with friendship. But we will get there when we are closer to the end of the episode because that’s not even relevant unless you have put the steps in place to start your podcast.

Why am I doing an episode like this? I get requests for something along the lines of, I want to start a podcast, can I pick your brain? It is very overwhelming to start a podcast. That is why people need help. it’s also a lot to ask one person to download to you. So instead I decided it makes sense for me to do an episode like this that I can then refer people to.

Nina: one reason starting a podcast can feel very overwhelming is like if you go online and you just put in how to start a podcast, there are just so many options. There’s not one place to host your podcast. We’ll talk about what that means in a moment to host it.

There isn’t just one way to do your show notes or to have posts, like maybe a blog post that goes along with it. I mean, [00:02:00] there’s many, many, many, many ways to do this. I’m going to try to tell you what I think is a simple way to start, but it’s not the only way. What I’m hoping to do is save you time, still you may run into other ways to do it. And a huge part of podcasting, just like anything, is experimenting. I do things differently than I did in the beginning, and that’s just going to be the same for you too because you learn more and you see ways other people do it, or new technology comes out and things change and you need to change with it or not. But there’s all these decisions to make along the way.

I do offer a service now called Podcast Strategy Sessions where I will talk to you about you and your specific idea. If you’re thinking of starting a show or whatever ideas you may be considering and you want someone to weigh in, or if you already have a podcast and you are having a hard time getting people to listen or finish an episode. There is a way to see if your episodes are getting more than a couple minutes of a listen. I will give you honest feedback. I’ll listen to some episodes and give you the honest feedback you won’t get [00:03:00] from a friend. That is called Podcast Strategy Sessions, and it is in my show notes.

But this episode might be enough. Maybe this is all you need to get that podcast started and to even assess for yourself how your podcast is going.

So starting a podcast is simultaneously really easy and incredibly hard. It’s easy because anyone can start one, which is great. I actually think it’s really wonderful that you don’t need permission. There’s nobody at Apple or Spotify who’s gonna tell you, you can or can’t start a podcast. Any person with a microphone and a computer can start a podcast.

Once you learn how to record, edit, where to host, how to distribute your show, then your show will be available everywhere. Sometimes people who don’t understand a lot about podcasting, which why would you if you’ve never done it, seem really impressed that I’m on Spotify and Apple, and that’s just not impressive.

Every single person who has a RS S feed, which is the place your show is living, basically think of it as like a little house for your show, once you have that URL that web [00:04:00] address, you distribute that yourself to Spotify, to Apple. You just have to fill that out one time and then anytime you post a new episode, it is going to every single service.

But like I said, it’s easy and hard and it’s hard because there are some steps to manage in the setup that are overwhelming at first. I promise you, they’re not actually hard, but they seem hard because it’s something you’ve never done before. There is some serious technology learning curve and not just in one area there’s a lot of technology in different parts. The recording, the editing, even, you know, making the graphics. You really can’t get around that unless you have unlimited funds to pay someone else to do it. And that’s great. If you do, that’s probably a good use of your time, especially if you are trying to start a podcast to go along with a really time consuming business then it probably is the best idea to get someone else to help you launch it and to do your artwork, to edit the episodes. Editing is the thing that takes me the most time, when we get to that section, I’ll [00:05:00] explain why I do it myself, but that isn’t the answer for everyone.

It is completely acceptable and pretty common to have other people edit your show. Just get comfortable with the fact that you’re going to be paying a couple hundred dollars per episode, most likely, and you kind of get what you pay for too.

Okay, I have broken down how to start a podcast into nine sections. Are you ready?

Number one, what is your concept? What is this podcast going to be about? It is a good idea for your podcast to be about something, meaning it is not just you and a friend talking about whatever you guys talk about on a phone call.

What is your concept? And also a little bit of terminology. A podcast is your show, and an episode is one of the episodes of the show. A lot of people use the word podcast when they mean episode. I’m not going to do that here because that’s a big pet peeve of mine. This right now is an episode about podcasting on a podcast about friendship.

What is the entire podcast about? And then [00:06:00] what are your episodes going to be about within that bigger concept. Run it by people. You need to be able to talk to people about this topic all the time. So I think it’s a great idea to mention it to trusted friends or family. See how they respond. If right away that person has episode ideas for you, you’re probably onto something.

When I started telling people I was going to do a podcast about friendship, immediately every single person had topics they wanted me to talk about. And still to this day, almost four years later, people email me, text me, tell me all the time about ideas. That’s how you know you’re onto a good topic.

What is your concept? You need a name. I workshopped my name with different friends.

I knew I wanted my name in it because there are a lot of shows out there about friendship. part of what makes my show about friendship different is that people write me letters all the time and they’ve been writing me letters for now over 10 years. But at the time when I started the podcast, it was about seven years.

I wanted somehow Nina to be part of it. Also, [00:07:00] Nina’s a little bit more of an unusual name. I think if my name was Jennifer, maybe I wouldn’t have felt as compelled. My website also has my name in it and I just didn’t wanna completely start from scratch. What I assigned to myself and to anyone who was helping me brainstorm.

I wanted the word friendship in there so that people would know what it’s about. And I wanted the name Nina in there. I told you at the beginning of this that I would mention things I wish I’d done differently. the full name of this podcast is Dear Nina, conversations about friendship. A little bit of a mouthful. I didn’t wanna just do Dear Nina, because then that doesn’t tell you it’s about friendship. That could be about anything. my belief is that, like I said, your podcast should be about something. So the conversations about friendship part is pretty important. But it does sometimes come at the end of a breath.

if I’m a guest on a podcast and I say what it’s called, dear Nina, conversations About Friendship, that’s a very long name for a podcast. I can’t tell you I’ve come up with a better name. Certainly at this point, I’m not changing it. I do wish I’d put even more time into the [00:08:00] name that I did.

Artwork. I hired two different people to work on my artwork. right away I hired the person who helped me with my website, and it’s totally different than what I ended up with. It was good for the time. I needed something to start with. After about six months, it just did not feel like it fit the tone of my podcast.

So I hired someone who doesn’t even usually do podcast art, but she does beautiful graphic design and other art. I basically begged her to let me hire her to do the podcast and she did a beautiful job. They were colors that I never would’ve put together myself, but they’re bright and fun and happy.

Nina: The artwork really matters. You are going to be tied to that artwork a lot. It is your brand that is recognizable. It is the first thing that people see because when you are on Spotify, you are on Apple or anything that is what you see. You don’t hear the person’s voice unless you press play. So that artwork is essential.

Some people, I’ve noticed there’s a really a trend towards putting [00:09:00] your face on there. I, for the past year, was wondering, oh, should I do that? I, I see so many podcasts with that, I decided, Nope, I just love the beautiful artwork that Heidi is her name and I, I not gonna put her information in the show notes because I’m not sure that she wants to be contacted about this kind of work. If you’re ever going to reach out to somebody about artwork, music, anything you need help with editing or even can you help me start my podcast, which is why I’m putting a link in my show notes about how to hire me to do that.

You should be offering to pay, even though you’re not gonna make money on your podcast at first, most likely. I mean, if you do, that’s wonderful, but it’s not that common. I think people should be paid for their time. And if you are talking to a graphic designer, if you’re talking to an editor, if you’re talking to someone who’s been doing a podcast for a long time and you want their advice, you’re talking to a musician. These are professional people who deserve to be paid for their time.

Of all of those things, the thing that will add up the most is the editing, because that’s episode after episode after episode. So I personally thought it was really [00:10:00] worth it to pay a graphic designer to make me a fantastic logo because that is used on every single episode.

Nina: Same with the intro and the outro music, and we’ll get to the music in a moment. But then when it comes to your episode art that you might wanna use for individual episodes, you can do that on your own and you can make your main logo on your own too. You absolutely do not need to pay a graphic designer, especially if you are really good with Canva, for example. Canva is a great free program. CANVA. There’s a paid version and a free version. You can do probably everything you need on the free version. So that is a major recommendation I would make to you, especially if you’re trying not to throw so much money at this thing that’s probably not going to make much money at first or possibly ever. you hopefully have a why for this podcast beyond making money.

I probably should have said that from the get go. Canva is a great program. If you’ve never used it, you will find yourself having a little bit of a learning curve, like with anything, but then you’re like off to the races making your own graphics. So that’s what I use [00:11:00] to make an Instagram post for every episode and to make a post for my website. I’m telling you, plenty of people make their entire podcast logo on Canva, so it is doable.

So that was the artwork, the name, the concept, I mean, the concept is just the most important. Everything comes from the concept. The name comes from the concept, the artwork comes from the concept. The music. You don’t have to have music. I love having intro music and outro music. My music came from my daughter’s guitar teacher who I paid to come up with some intro music for me.

So he and I, his name’s Neil again. I don’t think that’s something he does regularly, but maybe you know someone who you also could pay to do this. I just liked his vibe of guitar playing. this was before I had the show. It was just the concept again.

So I told him the concept I sent him a couple episodes of other podcasts I liked that had intro music that appealed to me. And I’ve been using it since day one. It’s been almost four years. And the music you hear at the beginning and the end, it’s the same song I just used the beginning for the beginning I used the end [00:12:00] of what he wrote for the outro, which is the end of the show. And I want to mention that music is also something you can find for free. For sure. just Google free music for a podcast or free music for a YouTube video because it’s the same kind of music you’re looking for.

Some of those sites, they change all the time, so I’m not even gonna name them here and a lot of times you have to make an account. You’ll have to sift through a lot of music. But you certainly can do that with no cost. So the music and the artwork are two areas where you . Cut costs

okay, we’re moving on. Number two, what is your format? Are you going to do interviews? Are you going to have a show where it’s just you talking like this episode? Are you going to do both? I do both. If you’re going to do interviews, there’s some pros and cons. The pros are, it is nice to have someone to bounce things off of.

That’s more like a real conversation that the listener is a part of as a listener. When you’re doing a solo episode like this, you really better have a lot to say all the time. And it can be a lot to listen to one person drone on. This is probably already getting long for just my [00:13:00] voice.

Uh, the con of interviews though, it is a thousand times harder to coordinate, schedule and edit those. Because if you were just on your own schedule, this was kind of a joy. I woke up a little earlier than I normally do because the house is quiet. I just felt ready to talk about this topic today.

I tossed on a little makeup because my episodes are also on YouTube. I hit record. I didn’t have to worry about the guest. But I do like having guests because we’re also getting other people’s opinions and experiences with friendship. It would get really dry and old to only have mine.

But where are you getting these guests? That’s something to think about. At the beginning I was pitching people, asking them if they would be on the show, but it actually did not take long for people to start pitching me. People have a lot to say about friendship. They really do. So if you are either hoping to get pitches from other people or not hoping to, either way it doesn’t matter. You’re probably going to get them. You also need a way to deal with that. That’s going to be part of your time, is sifting through people who want to be on your show and also taking the time for you to send out emails to invite people to be [00:14:00] on the show.

Nina: The last thing to think about on format is length. How long are you picturing these episodes to be? And that’s something to mention when you’re trying to get a guest. If you are emailing somebody and inviting them to be on the show, it’s helpful to give them a sense. They need to know how long they are invited to talk about the topic. You don’t want someone to come prepared with an hour’s worth of stuff if you really like to have short episodes, because you’re gonna have a hard time corralling them to keep it short. I like my episodes to be no more than 35 minutes if possible.

Number three, and this is where things get techy. Now we’re going to have to deal with some equipment. three, four, and five is gonna be all mushed together in this, but I’ll have them separated in the show notes. So that’s kind of the only reason I have them numbered. number three is equipment, like basic equipment, microphone number four is recording. Number five is editing.

And number six is hosting and distributing.

I want to say that you can start your podcast alone. You can watch a bunch of YouTubes, do some research, and listen to an episode like this and just go step by [00:15:00] step and it really is doable. I kind of did a combo. I would not say I started my podcast completely alone. I did a lot of the work on my own, a lot of the pre-work, I had figured out the name, the concept, the artwork, the music.

And then when it came time to sit down and press record, I realized I was going to hit a wall and I was going to give up. I hired my brother-in-law, Dave Dluger, who’s a very talented audio technician.

He does concerts and big stadium shows. he was very encouraging. He is like, yes, you can do this. he helped me figure out how to set up my microphone.

I use a pretty basic microphone. It’s a Samsung Q2 U. It’s nothing special. I think it was $60. There are some basics of recording And how to talk into the microphone. You can find videos on this. I’m not even gonna attempt to link them because there’s so many. Just go into Google and put how to sound best on a microphone and you can probably find a million YouTubes and just watch the first few.

Things have changed over time. Dave, help me figure out a boom, I think [00:16:00] it’s called to my desk so that the microphone was closer to my mouth and I had a little stand that the microphone came with, it was still too far from my body and it was too hard to talk directly into the microphone. And this arm boom none of that is a lot of money. But like I keep mentioning, this stuff does add up. I mean, I don’t wanna mislead you that the different parts of podcasting. Some things are free, like Canva, you could find free music, but then these little bits of equipment and then software, they add up. But you use them all the time, like this mic and this boom. I’ve had them for almost four years.

But back to Dave, something Dave helped me with is learning how to record. He helped me understand how to use Riverside. And we’ll talk about Riverside a bit more when we get to how you record, like what you’re going to record with. Riverside’s sort of like Zoom.

And Dave also helped me with the editing originally. There are things I think now in hindsight, I could have done. I just didn’t have confidence in myself. now that I do it, I’m like, of course I could have done it. But it was a lot to take on at the time.

Number [00:17:00] three, At the very minimum you need a computer. Microphone. And headphones. Then there are things you could add onto that.

If you are using a laptop with a camera built in, it’s not a great camera. So then there’s a decision to make. Are you going to do an audio only show or do you wanna have video? I did audio only for probably two years. If I were gonna do one thing differently, I would’ve done video from the start. I didn’t know it at the time, but it is no different to edit the video than to edit the audio. Unfortunately, the first two years of my episodes, I only edited the audio. I have the video because I use Riverside, I liked seeing the person when I was talking, but it’s unedited now and when I wanna pull clips it’s the unedited version.

Had I known from the beginning that I would wanna use the video for things like YouTube and social media, I would’ve from the get-go always looked like I wanted to be on video. That’s another thing. It’s hard to use clips from the first couple years because oftentimes I am in my pajamas with glasses [00:18:00] on and a bun on my head and zero makeup. Not saying you can’t put video of yourself up there like that if you want to. I personally don’t wanna do that, so that means I have all these great interviews where I only can use audio clips, and that’s kind of a bummer in today’s podcasting climate, which is pretty video focused.

So what I’m saying is you might want a better camera. That’s my point. I have a MacBook Pro. The camera’s just horrific. It’s always blurry. It doesn’t matter what kind of lighting I have, it’s not a great camera. So I have an external camera. It’s not expensive, and it makes all the difference. in the past six months, I’ve added a little light that sits right next to it that just makes my face a little brighter on the video.

If you’re trying to do this on a really strict budget, you know, those would be two things you don’t have to have. I’ve also added a mixer, a sound mixer.

You also don’t need that. You can plug your microphone, if you have a USB microphone right into your computer and you don’t really need a mixer. It’s something I added when I thought I might want to have guests record right here with me once in a while. [00:19:00] the mixer is cool to have for other reasons.

I’ll link mine in the show notes, but that’s kind of Advanced. You don’t necessarily need to have a sound mixer. I will say there’s a lot of cords in this office. I do wish that it was less of a mess.

We’ve got the light cord, the camera cord, the mixer cord. The microphone, the headphones.

And then you need a place to edit that recording and put that recording in a place. And that’s your host. So these are all different things we’re talking about at once. It’s physical equipment, there’s the software where this recording is happening. There’s the editing software that’s also software. Then when the recording is the place you want it to be, there is the place where that recording needs to live, and that is your host.

It’s kind of like having a website that has all of your episodes on it, and then that website then distributes it to Apple, Spotify, and so on. So I’m gonna try to break that all down.

Don’t lose steam. This is where people give up.

This is where podcasting becomes one of those things you’re like, I can’t do this and I’m gonna say it again. I’ve said it several times. If I [00:20:00] can do it, you can do it.

The reason I stopped working with Dave. It had nothing to do with Dave. It’s very hard to have to rely on someone else for a show that you are putting together on your own schedule. So that’s something I may have done differently is started earlier myself, but I would not change having started with Dave. Dave was doing my editing back then. But the way we would do it is I would listen to the episode and I would write down places I wanted the change, and that was just time consuming. finally, my friend Pam, who’s the other person who really helped me get started, she’s been on two episodes, Pam Moore. She was three months ahead of me in podcasting and was doing everything herself. And when I explained to her the way I was editing, she was like, Nina, you can do this. You’re letting yourself be way too intimidated by the technology. And she was right. She did the most beautiful, wonderful thing as a gift. She screen shared and showed me how she edits. she showed me how when, I know I wanna cut a certain thing, how on my computer to do it myself on the software.

Nina: [00:21:00] I use Descript. It’s really a great software. I’ll have the link in the show notes that will show you your transcript.

Okay. I’m clearly itching to get to the recording and the editing part that’s where the action is. So you’ve got your equipment, you’ve got your concept. More importantly, you have decided, uh, if you’re doing guests or by yourself. And now you are ready to record.

We already talked about it, whether you wanna do video or just audio. then what are you going to record on? If you are going to do just audio, which a lot of people do, and that’s just fine. I mean, a podcast is first and foremost an audio format and you can even put your audio on YouTube now.

People use YouTube a lot to listen to podcasts and they’re not really watching. Even if you have the video. For a lot of people it serves as a way to listen while they’re doing something else. It’s just that they like YouTube. I do wonder if YouTube, it seems like it does prioritizes the videos more in their algorithm.

So something to consider. You need to record onto something so you have your computer. I know at least Macs, I don’t know if, other PCs [00:22:00] are equipped with QuickTime. I just don’t know. QuickTime is a built-in recording on your computer that you could record right onto there, but it’s just going to be audio.

If you’re going to use video, then you are probably going to want an outside service, such as Zoom, or Riverside where you and the guest can see each other. Or even if you’re doing a solo episode, like right now, even though it’s just me, I’m recording on Riverside because I’m going to need the video.

I just like the look of Riverside better when I’ve been a guest on zoom podcast, I don’t think it looks as good. I don’t know why. Riverside also has built in abilities to help you make clips. You can edit on Riverside. I personally don’t like to edit on Riverside. I think it’s choppy. I guess it’s improved over time. I think it’s a little too AI dependent and I think human beings still do a better job. That’s my opinion. Although I think they make great clips if you, you just don’t have that ability on Zoom to make your clips right on there. Now, again, I wanna say I don’t make my clips on Riverside. I’ve done it before. I actually make my [00:23:00] clips from my edited version.

Nina: so what is Descript? Descript is how I edit my podcast and how a lot of people edit their podcasts. There are other ways to edit your podcast. There’s GarageBand and Audacity, but what Descript does is show you the transcript. Better for like a beginner podcaster. You record then download those files to your computer and then you upload them to wherever you’re going to edit.

I upload mine to Descript and then Descript will show me the transcript. And will have the waveform, which is maybe what you’re used to seeing, like an emoji of a podcast or something will have that, you know, blinking lines that go across. That’s the sound wave form. You can edit from either of those. And I use both. I’ve learned to sort of simultaneously edit both from the words, but also the waveform is where you see you that you have long pauses and you see where things are too soft or too loud. This is the part a lot of people outsource, I get it.

One thing I’d be careful on with editing is even in Descript, there’s a lot of [00:24:00] AI options, I would be very careful about that. it can make for a very choppy episode. So you can put in there to edit out every time someone says, um, or like, and you would see that you probably want to keep some, but I don’t keep all. Yes, I want it to sound like a normal person talking, but I also want it to move along and I don’t want it to be as drawn out as what an authentic conversation would be. To me, a podcast episode is not just a real conversation. It is an elevated conversation, just like a edited book, as an elevated form of writing. It’s not just somebody’s rough draft. I feel really strongly about that. Use your human brain to differentiate between what should stay and what should go.

One more step on the editing. Once I have edited the episode, I download it to my computer and then I upload it to another program called Auphonic again, will be in the show notes it cleans up the sound. Dave probably didn’t need to do that because he was a total sound master. I am not, I’ve gotten better, but I’m certainly [00:25:00] no professional on sound. And so this is a very inexpensive service where I upload my episode and it just makes the sound a little crisper.

Although, let me say something really important, you cannot do any magical editing to make up for horrible sound. it’s not often, it’s very rare, the guest will log on. I can hear right away, this is not gonna work. we’ll reschedule for when they can be somewhere where the sound is better.

And it’s worth doing that because to go through an entire interview. Then you upload it to your Descript or wherever you’re going to edit and you realize, this sound is awful. Auphonic isn’t a fairy dust you can’t fix really, really bad sound.

Number six is hosting and distributing. We’ve talked about this a little bit, but okay, so now you’ve edited and you have this file. Where is that file going to live? This is where there are a lot of options. You could use Spotify for creators. That’s the part of Spotify you would be looking for to host your show for free.

You can use [00:26:00] Substack. I believe it’s free to host the podcast. Then there are paid versions. I’ve always used a paid version. I mean, you get better analytics. The customer service is better. I started with Buzzsprout. I liked it a lot.

I used that for three years maybe. People use Podbean. There’s so many. This is where you get on the internet and you’re like, how to start a podcast, and every one of those companies, by the way, will also have their own tutorials and then they want you to use their service.

I’d say most of ’em are pretty good. I haven’t really heard anyone complain that much about theirs. I loved the Buzzsprout. I switched to Red Circle because my listenership grew enough that I was eligible to start working with sponsors. Now, sponsorship is an entirely different topic.

I hesitate to even talk about it in this episode because on one hand, it’s not something I’d be worrying about at the beginning. On the other, it is something I wish I put a little more attention to earlier. So I now host on Red Circle where they have relationships with some sponsors.

But I am, as you maybe have heard, if you’ve been listening to the show for a while, starting to work with sponsors on my own, which I could have done from the get go. And I [00:27:00] could have done just using Buzz Sprout. I didn’t need Red Circle for that. that’s a different topic. If you wanna hire me to talk to you about that, then that’s great. Because that’s like a whole thing. I would take an entire episode.

So number six is hosting and distributing. You can’t distribute without a host. Each time you have a new episode, you will upload it to this service. Whether to put the number in the title or not is an individual decision. I used to not have numbers in the titles.

I have now added numbers to my titles. I think it’s really hard to refer to past episodes as your show grows without having numbers in there. So like this is number 1 39. You will see that in the title. I probably would have numbers from the get go, but some people feel, for SEO purposes, it’s taking up precious space.

I think it’s very, very annoying when a host is trying to describe a past episode and wants you to find it. if they don’t have numbers in their episode, that’s pretty hard to do.

so now you’ve hosted it. You need to distribute it. Your hosting service will give you an RSS feed, which is basically the web address where your show lives, so that you can one time, you only have to do it [00:28:00] once, and a lot of the services will have ways to walk you through this.

Have your show distributed on Apple, Spotify, Amazon, anywhere, where podcasts are played. YouTube, unfortunately is an entirely separate process, so if you want your show on YouTube, you have to manually do that. Although I do think some services now have a way for you to distribute to YouTube.

I have a feeling that is just for the audio version. You probably still have to manually put your video version on there, and you would want to, because YouTube has its own SEO way of doing show notes and everything, and you would want it to be specific for YouTube. It’s a lot, right? As I’m saying this, I’m like, oh my God, each step is a lot.

number seven, you have chosen a place for your podcast to live now, number seven is sharing and marketing. What are you going to do to let people know this show exists? You have to have some vulnerability to create a thing and then get out there and say, I created this thing and I want you to listen to it, and I think you should listen to it.

I think it’s worthy of your time. I know a lot of people are starting to question their relationship with social media, [00:29:00] which I totally support and think that’s a great idea. I myself am still on it way too much, but, just know that not everybody that you might wanna reach is on social media, so what are other ways you’re going to reach them?

You need to talk about your show in your real life. You might have it on the signature of your email address, let’s say, to introduce people to this idea that, oh, you have this show. Again, this is where your title is so important. What’s your show about? Not gonna have a whole paragraph at the bottom of every email. If your title would be self-explanatory, that’s something to really consider.

we’re just got two more. Remember I said we have nine? Number eight is setting expectations of who is going to listen to this show. That is what I mean about setting expectations. cannot urge you strongly enough, and I’m the right person to say it as a friendship, writer, researcher, podcaster. Your friends may start out as your audience.

That might be the people you first come in contact with about the show, but they can not be your long-term audience because you will wear your friends out. You cannot expect your friends to be the people that you are making your show for. Just to [00:30:00] protect your friendships I urge you to think beyond your friends and family. one other thing about setting expectations is that guests will not always share. So if you think you’re gonna have this big guest and they’re gonna share their, show you to remember that the guest is really for your audience. It’s not for their audience.

I had to really mature on this. I used to be really, really upset when a guest didn’t share. I still think it’s rude to not share at least one time somewhere. It may be in their newsletter, at least one time. But to expect the guest to share as much as you are going to share as the host, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment.

If I’ve had a, a big name author on which I had, they have their own show or they’ve been on many shows, especially if they have a book coming out. That person has been on tons of shows. Their audience has already heard them talk about this topic a thousand times. Me having that guest is to serve my audience something new and interesting.

So if you can keep that in mind that the guest is for your listeners, not for the guest’s listeners, you will be less disappointed with how a guest shares or doesn’t share. And finally, number nine, [00:31:00] at a certain point, can you expand your team to take some things off your plate? I have hired Rebekah Jacobs, who was a listener, who became a friend, who is now my assistant producer.

She doesn’t do anything technological, though. She is not even on social media. She has no social media accounts. What I have her help me with is we sift through all the pitches together. We talk before interviews to help get me ready. She’s really on the idea side and she keeps some, you know, things organized about certain guests and things like that. she does not do any editing. She doesn’t do any graphic stuff. And I’ve had her be a guest now a few times, which is fun because sometimes we’re just talking and I realize like, really she’s the perfect guest for it because we have such an easy conversation.

That is a lot to tell you about starting a podcast. It’s really in some ways the tip of the iceberg. the point of this episode is just to let you know you can do it. I believe you can do it. I want you to try if it’s something you’ve been thinking about and you will change your process as you go.

I have changed my process many times. You’ll learn, you test you trial and [00:32:00] error. I am no technological wizard.

If anything is stopping you, I hope that this episode, even though it’s kind of overwhelming, actually does encourage you. That is my point. I’m going to say goodbye now. Come back next week where I will have regular friendship content. Check out the show notes for all of the equipment I use and a way to work with me if you would like to.

Nina: Thanks so much everybody. Good luck to you.