Questions About Starting A Podcast

Foreign. Welcome to the Meaningful Revolution podcast. I am your host and certified high performance coach, Sean Butner. And this podcast is all about designing and creating and implementing a fulfilling and meaningful life that's worth living. That's what this podcast is about. It's what the coaching's about. That's what I'm about. And so I'm really excited to have you here again today, if you're coming back or if you're new. Hi. So today's episode is a little bit different because part of my journey of creating that life that is fulfilling and meaningful has been figuring out how to run my business in a podcast, happened to be part of that journey. And I've been getting a lot of questions lately on, you know, how is it like running a podcast? What's the time, effort and money and resources that go into it each week? How do you feel about it? And all these types of, how did you do it? All those types of things. So today I have those. Some of those questions written down. I have a couple of things that I think about when I think of podcasting and some resources for y' all to consider as you start your podcasting journey or if you're looking to, you know, figure out what somebody else is doing and borrow their good ideas. So hopefully I have a few of those for you. But it is an evolving process. I'm still learning a whole bunch, but that's part of the fun, isn't it? So another way to listen to this podcast is if you're like, hey, I'm not in the podcasting space. Why do I care about this? And what I'd say to that is, this is also a conversation of starting something new, something where maybe you're not the strongest in, or quite frankly, you suck at, and, you know, figuring your way through, bumbling your way through and finding your footing. Right. Because that's how I feel about the state of the podcast right now. And there's been mistakes, mistakes have been made. There have been no regrets. It's been a very, very fun endeavor, and I'm really excited to be sharing that with you today. And then just heads up, logistics wise, for this podcast, we will be going back to interviews. I, you know, had a bunch of family stuff that I had to take care of that kept me from, you know, my normal schedule of everything. But we're back. We're getting back into it. So here we go. So, yeah, so there's a bunch of different questions that I have about podcasting. What I'll start with is my Theory on why I decided to go into this medium. Right. And part of it is I've been a coach since 2014, 2015. I had been doing weekly videos on YouTube and not getting a lot of traction. I had done the whole social media thing on Facebook and Instagram. Wasn't really catching and it was kind of wearing on my soul, you know. You know, as someone that's a bit more introverted, which means, just means that I get my energy from like reading books and playing music and, you know, journaling and those types of quieter activities versus talking to a microphone, talking to a camera, getting up in front of large groups of people and interacting. That the public speaking aspect of being on camera for the first three to four years was just me getting comfortable talking, right. And getting comfortable looking goofy on camera and all the insecurities and kind of working through that. So work through that. That puts us at about like 2018. Still doing the weekly things. Still wondering why I'm not getting any attention on YouTube or Instagram or Facebook. And there's a lot of different ways we could talk about it. Just part of that learning journey, right. Sometimes, you know, you take things real quick and sometimes it takes you quite a bit of time to figure it out. So I was frustrated thinking about, like, what am I going to do in 2019? I leave my tech job, it's really cushy. And was paying the bills to go into coaching full time because I absolutely love that and was getting some word of mouth clients and that was awesome. Social media presence still wasn't working and I just couldn't make it work. Right. So frustration's building up and then, you know, Covid hits and then, you know, that whole thing threw everything a wrench and everything in my plan for my business. And so as part of this marketing mastermind group and I remember meeting all these amazing people that I wanted to work with and if I don't have a project to bring them in on and to interact with them, be like, hey, we should do something together. And then, you know, nothing would really happen. And so I was thinking like, I'm a coach and, and a podcast is really very similar to a high performance coaching call, except instead of trying to help people find their performance edge, help them talk through relationship stuff and help them, you know, advance and level up in their life. A podcast is really just that same type of conversation at trying to illuminate a topic or trying to get a little bit of insight and learn about somebody. And I'm like, oh, if I just shift the focus a little bit. I could take my coaching skills. And I absolutely love the one on one coaching. Like, that's my sweet spot, you know, as an introvert. Like, that fires me up. What if I could do that as an interview show? And so that was the question I had in 2021. And I was, you know, thinking about it. Took me about a year to like, think about it, research it, and then in 2022, in August, I believe I should have written that down before, but last year I decided to pull a trigger. And that was a little bit of mentorship from some of the people I was following. It was from some of the input I had from that marketing mastermind. And then it just seemed fun, right? I thought, you know, this talking to a camera by myself, kind of what I'm doing right now for this podcast episode is really weird. I always felt weird about it. But if I had a show where I'm talking about something in particular and I'm talking with people, that might go better. So that was how I kind of got into podcasting from there. Then all the research on how do you start a podcast. I started with 10 episodes on launch day and then had another week of episodes to launch after that. So basically, like I call it the first two seasons of the Meaningful Revolution podcast, which you could still listen and see how terrible those are right now. Great for someone that didn't know what they were doing. But, you know, looking back, you can always see all the little mistakes and all the things you could do better. But that's how I launched it, and it's been an amazing experience, right? I've been able to be very fortunate to talk with a lot of my friends or a lot of people that I've met along the way and just get to know them in a way that's a little bit better, in a way that elevates them, right? And part of the thinking of the podcast, of this podcast in particular, was I wanted to highlight people and I wanted to highlight what made them great. I wanted to highlight what lighted them up. I wanted to highlight what they nerded out about and have that energy help inspire others to follow, right? To take suit and figure out what their thing is, what they nerd out about and go after it. And that's where the meaningful revolution comes from. It's finding those meaningful things, getting after it and making it happen so that you live a better life. And so that was the. The initial idea of it. And then really like from there, it was just being tenacious in the rhythm, you know, all that stuff that I did in social media and YouTube, you know, I was consistent and I was consistently not getting results there, but I'd show up every week and feel bad about not getting any listens or views. And so I just applied that after the initial launch of the podcast, and things have been going pretty great. Like, we've hit over a thousand downloads. It's. The podcast is growing consistently, even though if it's just a little bit by a little bit each month. And I'm very proud of the work. I'm very proud of the network and the people that have been on to help and then to be able to do these solo shows and feel a little bit less weird about it being just me talking to a camera, translating that into an audio. So, yeah, things have been really cool in that respect. And I've been able to, like, you know, talk longer and stuff, but that's a whole other conversation on why that's important. But that's important to me just to be able to. To do this and to do this at a higher quality and higher quantity also if you're. You're cotton minutes. So that's. That's a little bit of the pretext here. So all that said, would I start a podcast again at this point in my life? Absolutely. If there is one huge regret. And what's happened so far is that I didn't start a podcast sooner to figure it out. You know, you don't know what you don't know, and sometimes you just gotta dive in and get dirty and figure it out. So I think that's really served me here. Also. There have been some really awesome resources within the last year that have come out. So there. There's this show from a. There's a software called eCamm Live, which is what I'm using to record this episode right now. It helps facilitate the interviews that I do. And you can switch to do, like, cool, different dual camera stuff. And it's kind of like a production software, I guess, like TV production software. But there's a group there that started a podcast called the Flow, which talks about doing a video podcast and posting it on YouTube and then pulling the audio for your podcasting apps and all that stuff. And they've been really helpful in just giving ideas. You know, that's how I initially learned about descript. And then in that marketing mastermind, someone's like, descript's awesome. I love this. And we'll talk about technology here in a bit, but it's the flow With Doc and Katie is amazing. Definitely check it out if you're thinking about starting a podcast. They have a lot of episodes and they talk about all things video podcasting. And so shout out to again, Katie and Doc, you guys rock. And that whole, whole community. It's been very supportive and very informative. So just want to put some love on them. I'll have that in the show notes too. Anything I talk about today, I'll have in the show notes. So there's that. All right, so yeah, check out the flow again. Hosted I think by ECAMM Live, but people affiliated with them that they rock. Okay, so we'll go into some questions here. Other than, you know, that as a resource. Let me, let me backtrack. So other than the flow as a resource, you know, Brendan Richard has a couple of thoughts on podcasting. So I took what he did. I took a look at some of my favorite podcasts. Like, I really love listening to the Tim Ferriss podcast. I really love listening to Kara Swisher's various podcasts. So pivot, it's on Sway, when that was a thing before that went the way of the dodo. And so it's some type of like journalistic type shows which don't necessarily fit this style, but just people that I enjoyed. It was cool to see how they structure things and helped inform like, oh, like I have to have like a show intro and maybe that's just for the audio side and not the YouTube side and all that kind of stuff. Stuff. So yeah, so yeah, checking out the podcasts that I loved, you know, doing some of the research got me here. So first question is, you know, what is your workflow for podcasting? Right. So ideally initially it was just book a guest, schedule the interview, have the interview, do some video editing, create some short clips and create all the social media from the clips and for the show, schedule it all. And you're good. Right? That's kind of like my high level workflow for podcasting. I have done some tweaks where now if it's a solo episode, there's a little bit more research and note gathering before. Like you can't see right now, but I have a whole like page of notes to help me remember things so that I don't stumble on my words while we're doing this, you know, basic presentation stuff, basic, you know, show stuff, but helpful. And it's also, yeah, like I said, so there. It's different for when I have an interview, which I just outline versus the solo stuff. Like I actually Have a template I've created where, you know, I have questions that I'll ask guests all the time. There's questions that I try to think through each time I do a podcast episode. Just for a little bit of consistency. And if I ever felt lost, I have a roadmap of like, oh, yeah, I could always ask this question, or I need to hit this point before I hit off on the camera. And I found that to be really helpful in my experience. So that's a little bit of my workflow. Hopefully that answers that, you know, also on top of that I like to think of it, it's also kind of tie into the next question, which is how much time does it take to podcast? If you break your show or your potential show into three different parts, there's before the show and. And there's also during the show and then post after the show. Right. So before you do the show, you're finding guests and you're sending out those invites. If this is your, like, first ever podcast, you're kind of setting up your initial structure. I recommend having some type of outline that you follow again so you know where you are so you don't kind of get lost stammering out in the woods. If you have a feedback process, you know, you update your processes based on your last bit of feedback. And we'll talk about that here in a second. And for an episode like this, you do some brainstorming, you do some researching, and that depends really on you and how quick you work. For me, it'll take a couple hours, give or take if it's just me. And it tends to be quicker. And it's a guess because it's more of a discussion discovery and more of a highlighting of their story. So I have like, for, for guests, I have a little survey that they fill out, so I get a little bit of information, what they want to talk about, and I can start doing research on them on what are things, questions to ask, what are their messages, what are their themes, what are the phrases that they'd like to say to try to sparkle that or sparkle that, sprinkle that into the podcast. Make sense? Cool. So during the podcast or during the event, it's usually about 90 minutes for the guest. I like to do have a half hour for a little bit of chit chat, mostly to do a tech check, make sure everything sounds good, everything looks good, and to, to just kind of help them feel at ease before going in. And I learned this from Tim Ferriss, and I know he talked about it on his podcast, but I think it's also in his, like, Tool of Titans book. I need to double check that. But, yeah, he had some advice or he talked with guests about his process about podcasting, and that was something that really stuck with me. It's really great to have that point of connection before you get talking and helping make sure that people feel comfortable and safe talking. Right. And that's something that. That's really important to me. So when people come on as guests, I'll usually say that since we're not recording it live, that if there's anything that they want to say or omit or try again, essentially, or the lawnmower goes off, that all they should do is let me know and we can edit it out, we can stop, we can do whatever we need to do. So it's supposed to be a fun, casual conversation. That's my goal. That's what I'm aiming for. And so I hope that puts people at ease. It seems to work. I think people feel pretty comfortable when I talk with them. I don't. I very rarely get people that seem super nervous, and that's always something I'm kind of keyed into as a coach. So I think that works. So stuff like that. But so that's kind of like the day of. Right? So you do the little chitchat, you do the little. Helping them feel at ease and kind of setting the rules for the show. You do the show, there's usually a couple minutes of like, how did I do? Was I a good guest? And you know, everyone that's been on so far, if you're listening, shout out to you all because you've been amazing. So that's pretty good. I'm not sure if that's everyone's experience, but, you know, I've done 45 episodes. Probably about 30 of those. Ish are interviews. 30 people. Super awesome. Not bad at all. So, yeah, so that. That's kind of the day of the show. Some things you might need to do when you're getting started out is if you're using like an eCamm. If you're watching this on the YouTube. On my YouTube channel, which I'll post below in the show notes, I have like a little meaningful revolution, like graphic and my name and stuff like that. So you have some initial art you might need to do. But I didn't. When I started, it was just me without anything. So you can get as fancy or as generic as you want. But I think if you have that compelling conversation, if you're Adding value and you're doing something that you're passionate about, that that will translate into the bones of the podcast and people will respond to that. So, so far so good. And you're here listening to it, so it must at least have worked on you. I'm teasing, of course, but it's also probably true. Right. Okay. I'm cracking myself up here. Okay. After some. So post event, I spend about an hour to three hours on editing and I'm getting that cut down. I do like transcripts and all the type of copy that goes out to the show description, YouTube description, all of that stuff. It'll probably take me up to an hour for scheduling, depending on how painful Facebook's being or how painful it is to get things uploaded and all that stuff. But it hours probably pretty conservative. I could probably do that in 30 minutes if everything goes right. But scheduled about an hour. So that's kind of how I think through each show and how much time it takes. So it's probably like I have done shows now that I've gotten more comfortable with it where I can do it in half a day. Right. So if I have a 1 o' clock call, 1 to 2, we're doing the interview and then, you know, 2:30, 3 o' clock to 6 o', clock, everything's ready, everything's scheduled, everything's good for that episode. So there's that. So that's how I would think through each podcast episode and about how much time it takes. How much does it cost for you to run your podcast? So this is a tricky question. Hey, it's not super tricky, but like, it's an interesting question because again, like, for a lot of the time requirements, right, it could just be you or could just be you and a friend. You don't really need a super crazy setup initially. You can always upgrade as you go. For me, like, I have a yeti microphone that I've had for quite a while and I have some lights that I had from when I was doing like, you know, YouTube content. So yeah, that's like screen flow lights. I don't think that company exists anymore. But so yeah, it's just a microphone, some lighting. If you're doing video, if you're doing an audio body cast, you don't even have to worry about like any of the video software there and then. So yeah, for production I do that. I use ECAMM Live again to record because you can do some fun like production type things like titles and stuff, which is a little bit more important with guests at this point where I'm at right now, but it's also kind of fun. And then, okay, so there's a huge list of software you don't have to use hardly anything. Like basic setup would be microphone, computer, something to program to record your podcast and something to edit it. And if you have like a Mac, you could do GarageBand. If you have a PC, there's software like Audacity that's free, that you can use to edit things and off you go. Right, you also do. So the first bit of software you might need would be something to host your. Your episode and vend it to all the different platforms. So I'm a Kajabi user. I absolutely love Kajabi. I use it in my coaching business. I use it for my website, I use it for all my marketing, all my marketing funnels and forms and all that kind of stuff. It's. As a software engineer, I really love it because it consolidates everything so you don't have like 50 different systems and they're always adding stuff on. So if you're interested in like a free trial of Kajabi or I think they have a new promotion for their AI creator studio, I'll have that in the show notes. I am an affiliate, so I will say that. So if you click that link and you end up buying it, it helps me. You can always just go to the Kajabi website and be like, I don't like Sean. I'll just do it my own and you know, doesn't help me out. Kind of a jerk if you do that. But I can. I love Kajabi. However you got to do it, you got to do it. But yeah, use the link that I provide again, if you sign up, it helps me out. So, yeah, so Kajabi is really good with podcasts because I upload it to the podcast product that I have and it'll vend it to Apple podcasts, podcast, Google Play Store and Spotify. And so. And it's super easy. So I have one place where I upload the episode, I upload the show notes, I upload the marketing assets or the thumbnail for the podcast and I can schedule it and then it's seamless. It all goes out. So I like Kajabi. You could also use something like there's a whole bunch of different ones. There's. What is it called? It's like. Podcast FM or something. I'll need to double check that. A lot of people like 5 years ago were using something called Libsyn, which again, you would upload it to that site and it would shoot it out everywhere. Kajabi has it all with all the other amazing features it has. So again, I'll encourage you to check that out. But you could use like a Libsyn. Yeah, there's. If you looked up like podcasting, like platform uploader software, it would come up. You could Google it. It's super easy. And so I. That could cost you a couple hundred bucks a month. So although I do think there are some free options out there. So do your Google search. You'll probably get all the cool ones that are way better than any of the ones I just said. But that is something that is helpful. It'll help you manage all the weird things that like, can be really tough to format in a way that Apple will take it and then do the same for the Google Play Store and Spotify. So outside of editing, outside of having software to post all the different platforms, I also use Canva to do all the thumbnails because it's super easy. Super for my level, you could hire a graphic design person. There is a free version of Canva. So I. You could just use that or you can get a couple of extra features for. I think it's like 120 bucks a year for their pro plan. And I. You really can't tell. There's not a huge difference between the free version and the pro version in my experience, other than you get a couple of different like things you can download for free versus having to pay like a buck every time. So Canva is really good for any type of graphic design stuff, especially if you're doing it yourself. So that's worth checking it out. But you could also do like Adobe Illustrator, although those, you know, those types of programs, there's a, again, a bajillion of them. But I use Canva. It's pretty good. I also have a link down below. Check it out. Let's see what else is important. Oh, one of the cooler bits of software that you can get is descript. Now descript is really cool because you can take an audio or video file and you upload it and within like three minutes it'll give you a transcription of what you said, which is super helpful for know, either adding that to the show notes as a little extra for your podcast, but it'll also do things like get rid of all your filler words. So if you are constantly going, you know, if you've heard this podcast and it sounds a little jumpy, it's just descript went through and got rid of me going like in the software. Hopefully you heard me go, because that was intentional. If it's choppy, it's cutting out the filler words because it's getting flagged. But that's super, super helpful. And they can also do that, that cool thing where as they're talking, it has the captions below the video. If you're going to post video to social or do waveforms, like, there's so many cool things that Descript does. They can also edit your videos. So if you're like, if I don't know what to do to edit my videos and I don't want to pay for a final cut and I don't know if there's like a video or audio software that's really good. The script is really great for podcasts. I have another affiliate link below here that you can go and check it out. And I. I'll get a little bit of a percentage if you sign up for a subscription. But again, use descript. It's amazing whether you use that link or you think about it later like, I don't care. It's. It's so good. It's so helpful. You'll thank me if you do any type of videos or podcasting or audio stuff. It's amazing. So, so far, other than the platform to push to all the different podcast platforms, everything else is free, pretty much. There's a free option for descript and you get more transcription hours if you and a couple extra features if you pay for a plan. And I'm paying, I think like 5, 600 bucks a year to do some have a team member actually go through and create it. I think that's the most of it. I think it's cheaper if you don't do the that. But regardless, other bits of software you might need. I use Dropbox to post my episodes, so I have it all in a spot. And when I interview people, I also will send them a folder with the marketing assets, the transcript, the episode, all the clips that I've created for them to use. And I give them instructions on like, hey, if you want to help this grow, post this to your social and all that stuff. And that's been really successful and just making it easy for guests to let everyone that they know know that they've been on a cool podcast. So I highly suggest using that strategy if that's something that you're with. What other. Okay, I do post these to YouTube again. I'll have a link below here if you're interested in seeing the show and seeing what I look like. If you're just a normal listener, YouTube's free. A cool thing about doing a transcription. You can also do something now with everyone's talking about AI. You can use chat GPT, give it parts of your transcription and tell it to summarize it and really create descriptions or summaries or social media posts pretty quick from your words. So it'll sound more like you if you are feeding AI something versus like, hey, write me an article about how to start a podcast, right? It's going to be very generic and sound probably not like you sound or how you write. So that's super helpful to have some stuff to feed AI to then bring it back in your voice. So that's it with technology. So really it's, there's production technology, there's like the platform, you know, getting it out there technology, there's editing that and some. And you can consider assets and you know, pictures as part of that. So that's kind of like the breakdown for cost. Like I said, you could probably. It's not all that much if you're going super free on all those different options, but we'll leave it at that. Okay, so how much energy does it take to do a podcast? Well, as a card holding introvert and someone that would again, rather do quiet activities to get energy, I have found that interacting with people that are passionate, especially for this particular podcast, fires me up to go do the work and to continue. Right. So I love coaching for this, this reason where you go deep on something and somebody's life in that particular case, help them find some insights, help them reach that next level. That's really exhilarating. I live for those types of calls. Second to that is podcasting. When I'm with someone, we're talking, we're exploring a topic, getting to know them a little bit more like that feels really awesome to me. And so I get energized by it. And that's not gonna be everyone. Like, that's be honest. And there are gonna be some people that will hate podcasting as a medium, would rather do TikToks or would rather not do any of it. Maybe they're an email marketer or, you know, there's so many different ways to communicate. You just gotta find the one that sits with you. And so my suggestion would be if you're like, I don't know about podcasting, but I want to try it out, I would say make it a goal to do six to 10 episodes and give it A whirl, right? Just. Just say, okay, if I can get through six episodes, then I'll evaluate. Do I like it? Do I not like it? What would I change about it? You know, a lot of times it's making adjustments to what you're doing that'll make it more enjoyable. So there's that. And because I get that energy burst from podcasting, it makes some of the more mundane things, like scheduling or like doing some of the copy or the things that I don't enjoy about the process, like talking to a camera by myself a little bit more enjoyable or a little bit more manageable is probably more accurate where I don't mind doing it because I love this show. I love what we're doing together. I love this community. I love being able to share ideas that help you live a more fulfilling and meaningful life that's worth living. So with all that in line, like, it's all good. So that's my two cents on that. See. What other questions do we have? What's the process for podcasting? I think that's it for the questions. Like, we already covered the process. I'm trying to think right now outside of the notes, if there's anything I didn't talk about, Really, like, big lessons from this are. Sometimes trying something new is hard, and we should always expect trying new things to be hard, but it doesn't need to be overwhelming, and you gotta find what makes it fun for you. You gotta really lean into what attracted you to it in the first place and to continue to do it and show up. I think consistency has really helped the podcast grow. It's really helped me grow as a podcaster. It's helped me figure out how to say things a little bit clearer. It's something I'm always working on, but ultimately, at the end of the day, that, you know, it's provided a vehicle to work with people that I wouldn't normally get to work with and really highlight some amazing folks, you know, and help people along the way. Like, that's the whole idea behind this. And, you know, when we hear your reviews, when you guys write reviews for us or send us notes, it's really touching and I live for those. So if you haven't, you know, leave a comment on Apple Podcasts, that's, you know, that really helps the podcast out. But you guys are great. I hope this was helpful for you. Again, if you're thinking about starting a podcast, give it a whirl, Give it six episodes and see what's. What you can do. It on the cheat. It doesn't really take a lot of time and you'll get better at it. It'll take more time when you start out, but it'll. You'll dial it in, I really believe. If there's any other questions that you have for me about podcasting, please feel free to go to the YouTube channel and leave a comment there and I will answer them. I'd love to hear your questions. And then next week on the Meaningful Revolution, I'll have one of my really good friends growing up. We're talking about health. I know you guys will really love it, so stay tuned for that. If you're looking on how to improve your nutrition or workouts and stuff, that's what we should be talking about. No guarantees on that, but that's what we're talking about. We've been in discussion about for that episode. So with that, guys, go out there live with more joy, more personal growth, more impact in the communities. This is Sean Butner signing off. We'll see you guys next week on the Meaningful Revolution podcast. Sa.