What you need to know before you start a podcast

September 1, 2023

Have you been thinking of starting a podcast? Then this episode is for you! I've been podcasting for 5.5 years and I've also helped to launch hundreds of new shows through my A-Z Podcast Launch Plan. In this episode, I'm sharing the things you need to know before you start your own show.

– Why having a podcast won't automatically make you stand out and the question you need to ask yourself first.
– How allowing your podcast to evolve organically over time means you don't have to have it all figured out before you start.
– The importance of understanding why you're doing a podcast, who it's for and why they should listen to you over someone else.
– Why defining your success and success metrics will help you to be patient, even when the novelty wears off (and it will!).
– What *actually* matters when starting your podcast—think mic, name, cover art, description etc.

<div id="erdyt-674870cfed403" data-id="MWHeIwrvobw" class="erd-youtube-responsive" style="display:block;position:relative;clear:both;width:100%;max-width:100%;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;"><div style="padding-bottom:56.25%;"><div class="erd-ytplay" id="erdytp-MWHeIwrvobw-674870cfed403" data-vid="MWHeIwrvobw" data-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MWHeIwrvobw?loop=1&autoplay=1&rel=0" data-allowfullscreen="true"><img decoding="async" src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/MWHeIwrvobw/sddefault.jpg" alt="YouTube video" /></div></div></div> If you are thinking of starting a podcast, today's episode is for you. I've been doing this whole podcasting thing for a little while now, coming up on five and a half years and I also accidentally helped to launch hundreds of new shows when I created my A to Z podcast launch plan. I've watched all of these other new podcasters come out. I've been through all of the ups and downs of podcasting, and I've realised there are a couple of key things that you need to know before you jump in and start your own podcast. I've come up with nine key things.   <h3>#1: There aren't already too many podcasts out there.</h3> This is something that people have been saying for the last four years, five years, and yet that number of podcasts has still kept on growing and there have still been so many new shows that have been incredibly successful. Now depending on where you look and who you ask, there are anywhere between 2 million and over four million podcasts out there now, not episode shows, right? Not individual episodes from each podcast, but actual podcasts between 2 million and over 4 million. But here's the thing, most of those shows have not released more than 10 episodes. Most of them fizzle out in the first couple of episodes. I don't have the exact stats with me but I was recently at a podcast movement in Denver and Rob Walsh was talking about it. Rob Walsh works for Libsyn, which is one of the big podcast hosts and he was talking about how. In reality, you're not competing against 4 million other shows, you're competing against like 300, 000 because those are the only ones that are actually active. Now, here's the thing though, you're not going to stand out just because you have a podcast. It's not like, Oh, I've started a podcast and now because I have a podcast, people should come and listen to it. Instead, you need to still be asking, Should this be a podcast, right? Is this topic that I'm going to talk about, should this be a podcast? And I'll get to that in a second.   <h3>#2: You don't need to have figured out every single topic.</h3> The second thing you need to know before you start a podcast is you don't need to have figured out every single topic that you are going to talk about before you start your show. It's really easy to think like, Oh, how am I going to keep new ideas coming up? How am I going to come up with more ideas beyond the first 10 that I have right now? And here's the thing, your show, your content, and your topics are going to evolve organically over time. Just like how this show has. What I spoke about in the first 100 episodes is so completely different from what I talk about right now at nearly 700 episodes. I used to talk about Instagram and social media tips and all of those little things and now I speak on a much deeper level about business, strategy, and mindset, because I've learned a lot and as I learn new things and have new ideas, I come up with new ideas for episodes. I have more knowledge that I can teach. So you will not know all of the things that you can possibly talk about in the future right now, and that's okay. You will have new ideas that pop up. You don't need to have every single one figured out.   <h3>#3: Articulate why someone should listen to your show instead of somebody else's show.</h3> Now, this one relates to what I talked about earlier, right? Should this be a podcast? You do need to be able to articulate why someone should listen to your show instead of somebody else's show. Yes, a podcast is free to listen to, but you still have to sell somebody on it because they have a finite amount of time that they can spend and they can choose to listen to your show on their commute in the morning, or they can choose to listen to somebody else's. So why should they care about yours? <a href="https://stephtaylor.co/5-things-not-to-do-when-youre-starting-a-podcast/">A huge mistake that I see happening all the time</a> is not being able to articulate exactly who your show is for and why they should choose to tune into yours. And another big mistake is somebody will go and start a podcast and they'll be like, Oh, I've been listening to this show for years. So if I emulate that format and bring on some similar guests, then my show will be successful as well but if you are emulating that similar show, then why should somebody choose to tune into yours when they could tune into the one that they are already familiar with, with the hosts that they already like? So make sure you know exactly what is making yours different. Also, please don't start a podcast just for the sake of starting a podcast. <a href="https://stephtaylor.co/how-i-leverage-this-podcast-to-create-more-than-130-pieces-of-content-each-month/">You need to have a really clear idea of why you are doing it, who it's for and why they should listen.</a> Otherwise, you're not going to stick with it if you don't know why you're doing it if you can't connect back to that why. You're not going to stick with it because guess what? Just like every other fun, shiny thing that you do, at some stage, it's going to get boring. It's going to become just another task on your to-do list. And if you can't remember why you're doing it in the first place, then you're not going to keep with it.   <h3>#4: You probably won't see massive growth really quickly. </h3> And that is very normal. You need to be willing to commit to it for three to six months without seeing much traction. Just like anything new in your business, it's going to be at least three months minimum investment before you start to see. You also need to know what success means to you. You need to define what your success metrics are because, for example, if you are podcasting to get new clients, then the number of downloads that your show gets doesn't matter as much as the number of client inquiries that you get from the show. So you need to define that success and you need to define what those success metrics are for you so that you can track the metrics that actually matter rather than the ones that you think should matter, the vanity metrics like download numbers. And then you can see if am I getting a true return on my investment, a true return on the time that I'm putting into this from doing this podcast because if you only have 100 downloads but you're getting 5 client inquiries, then who cares that your download numbers are really low because your client inquiries are really high and that's the number that really defines success to you. So you need to know what that is and I can't tell you what those success metrics are going to be. It's going to be unique to you. It's going to be unique to your business goals, to why you are starting this podcast in the first place.   <h3>#5: You need to make it as easy as possible for yourself.</h3> Otherwise, it's going to be really hard to stay consistent. Now, I see a lot of people jumping in and from day one, they're like, cool, this is going to be a podcast. I'm also going to do the video. It's going to go to YouTube. I'm going to slice it up. It's going to become short form, which is going to go to YouTube shorts, TikTok and Instagram reels. And then it becomes this huge mammoth process that's really difficult and really time-consuming. So rather than trying to do video from day one, if that's really difficult for you and you don't have a team to support you as I do, then maybe just keep it simple and start with audio only until you have that process figured out and then you can add a little bit more. You can plug in all the different pieces rather than trying repurposing so can you turn each podcast episode into a blog post or can you take little snippets from your podcast episodes and turn those into Instagram captions? You need to make it really easy to come up with content ideas. So maybe you need to sit down once a month and brainstorm all of those topics. Maybe you sit down once a month and you record all of those episodes for the month. Whatever works for you to make it easy for you to be consistent is going to be the right way to do it rather than looking at what everyone else is doing and if somebody's telling you to batch but your brain just does not work in batches. The only time I will do it is if I'm going away. If I'm going to be offline for a while or if I'm traveling for a while, then I will batch-record a bunch of episodes before I go. But otherwise, I actually find it really challenging to sit down and record more than one episode in a day or more than two episodes in one go. So you need to find what works for you.   <h3>#6: The novelty will wear off and that is not a sign that you should stop doing it.</h3> If you're feeling a little bit bored, if you're not enjoying it as much as you were at the start, that's not a sign that you need to stop doing it. Just like anything, it is going to be fun. It's going to be shiny at first, but after a while, it is going to start to feel like just anything. Any other task on your to-do list there are going to be times when you are like, Oh, I really just don't feel like doing this. It's okay, there's going to be those ebbs, there's going to be those flows, but when you commit to it, then you do it consistently. I'm committed to showing up three times a week with these episodes. So I force myself to do it even when I don't feel like it and I know that those times when I'm not feeling inspired, those are going to pass. It's not a sign that I need to stop the podcast. It's not a sign that I should skip some episodes. It's a normal creative energy thing. You can't always feel inspired. You can't always feel excited.   <h3>#7: Your microphone doesn't matter as much as you think it does.</h3> And that goes for any of your equipment, your mixer, any of the bits and pieces. I have a really great microphone now, but for the first hundred or so episodes, I used a really cheap, terrible microphone and it was only when I was at a Podfest conference in Orlando back in 2019 that I won a spot prize. I won my wonderful RODECaster Pro and RODE PodMic simply by being seeded in the audience at the right session and answering a question that somebody asked. I won this microphone which is a pretty expensive microphone and mixer but until then I was just using a really cheap microphone because the content of your show matters so much more. I think, yes, once you get to a certain point and you've got a certain number of episodes there and you're really starting to grow, then sure, production quality becomes a bit more important. I know so many podcasting experts are going to be like, no, Steph, you're wrong but I think at the start, the content matters so much more. And I proved that with my own show. The sound quality was pretty average at the start. Average to terrible, actually. It wasn't great, but because the content I was consistently putting out was consistently good, that is how the show started to grow. So don't go and buy the best microphone until you know that you actually enjoy podcasting and that it's something you are going to stick with in the long term. Okay, try getting started, try putting content out there, try and figure out what works, what you like, what you don't like, and then once you know this is something you want to do longer term, then go and invest in something a little bit more expensive.   <h3>#8: Don't get too caught up in the things that can be changed.</h3> Things like your cover art, your show name, your description, all of those things can be changed pretty easily. Right at the end of 2022, we've rebranded this show. It used to be called Socialette. If you scroll back far enough, you'll notice that for all of the episodes when I'm introducing them, I'm welcoming you back to Socialette podcast. But after four years of podcasting, I decided actually, you know what? The name doesn't suit the content of this show anymore. I want a new name. I want a new cover art. So we rebranded it and it was actually relatively pretty easy. So don't get too hung up on the things that can be changed. Don't let them stop you from getting your show out there, because the thing that's going to help you to succeed with it faster is getting content out there, seeing what lands, seeing what sticks, seeing what you enjoy, and then tweaking based on the feedback that you get from that.   <h3>#9: It's probably going to feel a little uncomfortable, and that is really normal.</h3> When I first started out, I wasn't a confident speaker. I hated my voice. I didn't think there was any way I could be a successful podcaster, but I just did it. And podcasting taught me to like my voice. It taught me to become more confident in speaking. It has taken 700 episodes of practice to get to this particular episode and I know when you're starting out with something, it's really easy to compare your episode one to somebody else's episode 100 or 500 or 1000 forgetting that you are a beginner and they have been doing this for a long time and it takes practice. It takes those repetitions to build that mastery and the sooner that you start, the sooner you can get practicing, the sooner you can start to put those reps in, and it's going to have that great ripple effect onto your confidence, onto your speaking, onto your business. It's going to make you feel a lot more comfortable showing up because now you feel a little bit more comfortable expressing yourself and articulating yourself.   <h2>Pin it?</h2> <img fetchpriority="high" decoding="async" class="wp-image-2827 aligncenter" src="https://stephtaylor.co/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/PINTEREST-Steph-Taylor-79.jpg" alt="" width="402" height="603" srcset="https://stephtaylor.co/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/PINTEREST-Steph-Taylor-79.jpg 1000w, https://stephtaylor.co/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/PINTEREST-Steph-Taylor-79-200x300.jpg 200w, https://stephtaylor.co/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/PINTEREST-Steph-Taylor-79-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://stephtaylor.co/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/PINTEREST-Steph-Taylor-79-768x1152.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 402px) 100vw, 402px" />

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What you need to know before you start a podcast

September 1, 2023

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Launch Magic alumni share their experience inside the program

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Hey, I'm Steph - your online business strategist

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Imperfect action podcast

free launch profit boosters

contact

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about

home

menu

Podcast Launch Plan

tunein

Get my Daily Biz Boosters: Bite-sized tips for growing a business that's profitable and brings you so much joy.

Imperfect Action Podcast

Free Download

Hi, I'm Steph

What you need to know before you start a podcast

September 1, 2023

next

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Launch Magic alumni share their experience inside the program

Q&A: Launching an offer before you’ve created it, strategy for a mid-ticket offer, and more…

How to launch your offers again (and again!) to make more sales

Hot and fresh out the kitchen

read more

Launch Magic alumni share their experience inside the program

read more

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5 must-knows to sell your online course, program or membership

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Hot and fresh out the kitchen

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instagram

Hey, I'm Steph - your online business strategist

menu

tune
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