So you're thinking of starting a podcast, but where do you actually start? 

I've got you covered! In this podcast episode, I am sharing with you what you'll need to think about before hitting record on that first podcast episode and how to design the podcast format you'll want to stay consistent with for years to come. 

Resources:

Get your free "How To Start a Podcast" Guide here

Get CastMagic to create content from your episode here

Get Descript for AI editing software here

Set up with Blubrry for hosting here

Tina Tower [00:00:00]:
Hi, friends, and welcome to episode 254 of her Empire Builder show. I am your host, Tina Tower, and today I'm talking all about podcasting. This episode is for you. If you are thinking of starting a podcast and you're wondering where to start and you're unsure of whether it's going to be worth it, so that makes it for you. It will also be helpful if you already have a podcast and you're wondering whether to pursue or not. So I have a good resource for you for this as well. In the show notes below this episode, I have a guide of how to start your own podcast. So you may be listening to this episode when you're driving your car or when you're out walking, or I hope you're doing something fabulous right now as you're listening, but so you don't have to write everything down.

Main Episode

Tina Tower [00:00:52]:
Grab that checklist down the bottom and it'll give you the whole guide in how to start your own podcast. But today we're gonna be talking about, like, why to start your own podcast, how to actually run it, how to make a good one, and all of the different choices that you'll need to make at the beginning so that you know you can have some clarity around getting started and get your voice out into the world. All right, let's get straight on into it. Hello and welcome to her Empire Builder show. I'm your business strategist and host, Tina Tower, and I am so happy you are here. My goal with this show is to bring you the inspirational and informative conversations with interesting humans, as well as the tools, tips, and resources to help you build your online business. Since starting my first business at 20, I have built and sold four times. And in 2018, while traveling around the world with my family for a year, I tripped and fell into this wonderful world of online courses, and I instantly fell in love.

Tina Tower [00:01:51]:
I'm a million dollar course creator, a world traveler, bestselling author, a mummer of two man children, and a lucky wife. There's no playing small here. It's your time to grow to run a highly profitable business that makes you wildly wealthy while you positively impact your clients and the world around you and have the life you've always dreamed of. Let's get it. First of all, I will say that I absolutely love podcasting. It's something that I have done for the past five years and it has opened the door to so many incredible opportunities, right? So if, say, I wanted to talk to somebody who is an absolute superstar in my mind, I could never just call them and say, hey, I'd like to sit down for an hour and ask you every question I've ever thought of. They'd go, no. However, because you have a podcast, you're able to pitch to your dream guests and ask them to come on your show, and because there's something in it for them as well, because they're getting that exposure, which everybody, as a personal brand or is selling something, needs exposure, they'll say yes most of the time.

Tina Tower [00:03:05]:
And so I love it for the amount of people that I have been able to meet and make friends with and network with and do business together, which all started with a podcast relationship. So that is one of my biggest arguments for, you know, whether you're having guests or whether to go solo episodes, I like to do a combination of both, because in solo episodes, I think that it elevates your thought leadership, it elevates your credibility. It allows people to get to know you as a person, whereas with guests, it gives you the opportunity to have other people come in for you to have really interesting conversations with some really interesting people that you really like. But also when you have those guests on, most of the time they're going to share it with their own audiences as well. So that means that you're opening yourself up to expanding your audience. When you have these other people on your show, occasionally you'll get someone on your show doesn't share anything. They're like the taker people, the people that want everything from you and don't want to give anything back. There is those people that they're like, give me all the exposure, give me all of this, but I'm not giving anything back to you.

Tina Tower [00:04:16]:
But they're rare. So I love being able to have experts so that you can have those conversations, so that you can open it up. So I do think that it's worthwhile having a podcast. When I look at her empire builder and the members that we've welcomed into our program, it's over 60% of people have listened to the podcast for around about a year. So it's a really high percentage and allows people to get to know me, to get to know what I talk about before they ever have to have a conversation with me. And podcasting is one of the last anonymous lands. So, so much like we can, we can see people, we can see who's on our email list, we can see people behaving on social media. Like, we can see who's engaging.

Tina Tower [00:05:00]:
But for you, right now, listening to this podcast episode, I don't know, you're listening. Nowhere do I get your name, your details. It's like a very last vestige of an anonymity. And so it's really nice for people that want to be able to check you out, to be able to go on and listen to a couple of episodes and see how you are before they actually engage in your work. And so for me, I think that it's such a waste not to have a podcast if you're trying to build an online business, because it is such a good way, like I said, to get to know you. It's also one of the most leveraged activities. So from your podcast, you know, you're gonna spend maybe an hour researching beforehand, then you're going to put some points together, and you're going to hit record, and then there's the editing process and then getting it out there. And so for something that might take you around about five or 6 hours for full production, I know people that spend a lot less.

Tina Tower [00:05:58]:
I know people that spend a lot more, but that's around about the average that I find that people will spend on it. So for that, and you can do it all yourself. Like, there's amazing technology that we can do it all yourself. You could have a va be able to help you. It's a really low cost, high return activity. When I first started my podcast, I had like the very simple tech. I had a rode lapel mic, so one that I would use to interview other people as well. Cause I did it all in person at the beginning, and that was like $45 for a mic.

Tina Tower [00:06:33]:
Audio now is a little bit higher quality. I have a rode podcaster mic, which still isn't a top of the range mic. It was only a few hundred dollars. And that's all the equipment that you need. And so for that, and your software cost like of $40 a month. It is such a low cost, high return activity. So I think it's well worth everyone in cost creation to get it going. I want to run through a couple of things that you'll be thinking about.

Tina Tower [00:07:00]:
So the actual mechanics of what to do and how to start your podcast, grab the download that I have in the show notes. Or if you're listening to this, you can go to her empirebuilder.com forward Slash Startpodcast, and that will give you a list of like, the technical stuff behind it. But the things that I wanted to talk about, things that you, you're going to need to decide on is how to edit, is the first one. So when you get them, you can, you can have a lightly edited show or a fully edited show. So my show is very lightly edited. If I was to pause in between, if I am to take a big swallow or laugh too loud or something like that, we don't actually edit that out. I leave it in there. We do equalize the sound a little bit.

Tina Tower [00:07:48]:
If I have a barking dog or I have something in the background, I will minimize that background sound. But most of the time it's very lightly edited. We just add on the front and add on the outro and then it is all good to go. So our editing process takes about five minutes. I have a friend who has a very successful podcast. He has a full time podcast editor, like highly paid full time podcast editor. Their podcast did 3 million downloads last month. So, you know, you get good as you get good.

Tina Tower [00:08:19]:
But to start, I wouldn't worry too much about it. So descript is probably the easiest software that I have seen in order to edit yourself or have your VA edit your episodes for you. And then the AI program that I am loving at the moment that we've only actually been using for the last month is called cast magic. I didn't see it before then. It is something that you can get your whole mp3 or mp4 file if you're videoing it as well, and drop it in and it will create everything that you need for content around that episode, like titles and show notes and transcriptions and highlights and social media posts. And everything that you need there is all there. So it's amazing software to be able to do. All right, let me go over a few tips for having a successful podcast.

Tina Tower [00:09:09]:
So one is niche down and make it hyper relevant. I will admit that the podcasting industry is more saturated than it was five years ago. I mean, that's just natural. So as you are putting out your show, what I'm seeing is more people are being successful like clients of ours. They're being a lot more successful when it's more niche. So not like a general, say, business women's show, but something that is hyper relevant to that audience when you start out is that you can always go broader later if you want to appeal to a wider audience. But I'm seeing a lot more success happen when people are starting more hyper niched at the beginning. Next is don't over complicate it so you could put off your podcast for a really long time because you're thinking of all these different things.

Tina Tower [00:09:58]:
My advice is hit record and start. You will probably like, I know every podcaster I know who's been going for a long time. If they listen to their early episodes, just cringe because you're going, oh, my gosh, did I really sound like that? Did I really do that? I sound so uncomfortable. Like all of the different things, you get more comfortable as you go through. So the easiest way to get good at something is to just start. Next is off the cuff and not a script. It takes a very special set of skills to read something and not sound like a newsreader. So for me, the way that I do my podcast and the way that most people I know do their podcast is to write down a whole heap of dot points.

Tina Tower [00:10:42]:
So for this episode, for example, I have ten points that are all written on a piece of paper, and then I will go over those points so that I stay focused and then I will riff on each of them. And that works much better for me. I did do a spell where I started with a script because I wanted to say everything so perfectly and it just sounded so unnatural. The thing I do have to be aware of, which, if you're a regular podcast listener, you may be aware of this, is that I don't go off on too many tangents. I can, you know, you get thought bubbles in your head and you go off on one direction, then one direction, you're like, hang on, where was I again? And so that is why I like the dot points, is I can feel myself going off on a tangent. I can bring it back and I can get refocused again. But I would recommend trusting yourself and going off off the cuff. Next is voice or video.

Tina Tower [00:11:37]:
Now what I mean by that is, are you going to do an audio only podcast or are you going to do video accompaniment? Now for a while I tried to do all video because it is so good to be able to get video content, to repurpose that content into different little clips on social media and also to have it on YouTube. I have stopped doing that for two different reasons. One is I am very different, whether I like it or not, if I'm on video than if I'm audio only. So right now I'm sitting in my chair, I'm nice and comfy, I'm laid back and I'm relaxed and I'm just, just chatting to you. Put a video in my face and I can see that camera in front of me and I automatically like, sit up straighter and project my voice a bit more and almost like go into a bit of like speaking mode, like more of a performance. So I don't feel that it is as natural to listen to as what I can do in the podcast. I wish I could do it the same in the video, but I don't know, it's just something that I, that I seem to do and couldn't train myself out of. So that is one reason why I do audio only now.

Tina Tower [00:12:47]:
The other reason is that I think if it's going to be on YouTube, it needs to be produced really well. The people that get the traction have do a really good job at it. It's not half assed and so it requires more team input or more time input. And for me, I have two team members and they are at capacity at the moment and I myself am at capacity. So it's like, well, do you hire a different person to do that? And is that worth it? And it may be if that is your growth goal and you want to build a YouTube channel, but building a YouTube channel was never on my bingo card. But if you're wanting to, you should definitely be filming your podcast because it's an amazing opportunity to be able to get all of that content as well as, you know, all of the little bite sized pieces as well. So that is a couple of considerations to take in there next is to be yourself. I know that this is so like over said, right? Authenticity.

Tina Tower [00:13:48]:
Like, you've just got to be authentic. We've heard it a gazillion times, but it really is very true. I've mentioned it a few times on the podcast, but when I first started, I had two people, like in the first month email through and say that I shouldn't giggle so much in the podcast because it took away the profession ability. They knew that it was a new podcast, so they were trying to get me to give me tears as I was getting started. Gosh, I hope I never stop giggling like, that's just stupid to think that it makes you any less professional because you're a happy person. But one thing that I have got a lot more comfortable with as I have gone is that I'm much more myself. I don't want, you know, I don't really care if I appeal to everyone. I want to, you know, appeal to the people that I am right for and the people that aren't like, can turn it off, you know? And so when you're starting your podcast, I don't want you to think, how do I be all things to all people? Like how do I make it so vanilla that it is never going to offend anyone, never going to turn anyone off, because when you make it that vanilla it will also not attract your tribe.

Tina Tower [00:15:01]:
And so I would go, like, how can you be yourself? How can you let your personality shine? And then you'll attract and polarize and you'll find that the people that you know become loyal listeners often will become clients, too. And then what you experience is the people that become clients because they know your vibe so well through the podcast. They're your type of people. So they're coming in and they're going, they already know you. They already know that they're going to enjoy that kind of environment. And it makes such a beautiful client experience. Like now when we have people join her empire builder, they come in and I'm like, you're my people. Like, you're such a nice person and so smart and you've got this experience and you're doing all of this and it's no, it's like no accident because they've already, they've already come into my world in that way as well.

Tina Tower [00:15:53]:
Next is topics. So one thing I hear from people quite often is, I don't know what I'm going to talk about. I don't know what all the topics are. So there's two different things that I would recommend for this. The first is one that I have always recommended, which is pay attention to what your clients are asking. So I have a notes file on my phone, really, really super simple. And when I get asked a question that I go, ah, good question. I will jot that down and I will build a podcast episode around it.

Tina Tower [00:16:25]:
The reason I'm doing this one today is because in the last month I've had three people ask me, hey, I want to start a podcast, but these are the things that I'm thinking about. And so all of the different points that I have written down today to address are the exact questions that clients have been asking me. And so it makes it really easy to go, well, don't guess what people are wondering, just elaborate on the questions that people are asking you already. So that is one. The second piece of advice that I would give in terms of topics is use AI. We couldn't do that before, but recently, like, as I go into chat, GPT and I put in my client avatar, we've started building out some AI agents as well. So they're getting really clued in to our audience and our language and all of that sort of thing. Their recommendations are fantastic.

Tina Tower [00:17:17]:
So it's taking a lot of that research time that used to be like an hour and breaking it down into ten minutes. It is phenomenal. So really use the tools that we have available to us. And then the final one is ads or no ads. Now, I would recommend, unless you're a superstar, like, unless you start with a really big audience, I don't recommend doing paid ads, like letting other people do paid ads on your podcast at the start, because, you know, you want to build relationships. That's really what we're doing a podcast for, is to be able to share value with people, connect and build relationships. The one thing we are looking to do, so we host currently on Libsyn. We are moving that to a software called Blueberry, which I've also linked in the show notes for you, because it has dynamic, adaptive ads.

Tina Tower [00:18:06]:
So what that means is because we have people that listen to the podcast, and you may be listening to this on release week, or you may have gone on to Apple Podcasts or on Spotify and searched course creator starter podcast, and you have somehow found this episode, and maybe it's in a year's time, if I was to put an ad on there now saying, say we're launching and I'm going, doors are open for our program, and it's a year, like, doors are no longer open. It makes that irrelevant. And so someone could be trying to find the information, and then they're going, oh, I can't find it. It's. It's no longer relevant. So what Blubrry has the capability of doing is you can do your ad. So say you've got your, you're promoting a webinar, or you're promoting a challenge series, or you're promoting doors open or a launch or whatever you're doing there. You can do that ad, and you can insert it in between, like the intro or wherever you want to place it in the podcast, and it'll go out across all of your podcast episodes at that time.

Tina Tower [00:19:08]:
And then you can turn it off when that promotion is over, or you can switch the promotion out as you change. So that's something that we haven't done on the podcast that we. That is on my to do list. So that is coming very, very soon. So there is many, many things to think about when you're starting a podcast. But I will go back to my third point, which was, don't over complicate it. Choose something that you're going to talk about that you could talk about all day long and commit to being consistent. If you look at the number of people that start a podcast, it's pretty high.

Tina Tower [00:19:41]:
If you look at the number of people that keep going with a podcast a year or more. It's very low. So the people that do really well show up for their audience time and time again and stay consistent. And that way you're able to create really great relationships with people. You're able to refine your thought leadership, you're able to get your message out there to expand your audience and to be able to do business with your dream clients and more of it and make a bigger impact. And that's what we're all here for, right? So I hope that that helps grab our start your podcast guide in the show notes below. And let's get podcasting have so much fun. This episode was brought to you by my signature group coaching program, her empire builder.

Tina Tower [00:20:25]:
The best online education for female course creators in the world. Check it out @tinatower.com. along with so many free resources to help you get building your empire and seeing those results that you deserve. If you loved this episode, please don't keep it a secret. Share it with a friend on social media and tag @tina_tower and give it a review. It really does help us to be able to bring you bigger and better content as we grow. Have the most beautiful day. I'm Tina Tower, and I'm cheering you on all the way.