INSPIRING LIFE SCHOOL PODCAST
EPISODE 7
HOW TO LAUNCH A PODCAST FROM SCRATCH IN 10 DAYS
INSPIRING LIFE SCHOOL PODCAST
EPISODE 7 TRANSCRIPT:
HOW TO START A PODCAST FROM SCRATCH IN 10 DAYS
Welcome to this podcast episode where I will be detailing exactly how I started my own podcast DREAM BIG MY FRIEND in exactly 10 days, without any outside help at all.
Now I am creating this episode while the experience is still fresh in my mind.
I am feeling so buzzed and excited that I pulled off what I once thought was an impossible goal.
So let’s take you back to one week ago – it was Tuesday to be exactly when I thought “you know what? It is time to actually action this goal on my list.
Last year it crossed my mind that it would be fun to start a podcast but because I had no idea how to do it I ummed and ahhed and procrastinated and kept putting it off until a later date.
Which brings up to mid-May this year.
Once again STARTING A PODCAST was on my to-do list for 2020 but because I had no idea how to action it I let it lie there untouched while I focused on other tasks on my business such as writing four new books and doing whatever I can to avoid doing the thing that I really wanted to do – which was to start a podcast.
But on that day I decided enough was enough.
I decided that rather than thinking that a podcast was impossible to do I would make the decision to look at it as if it was an easy task to pull off.
I mean, look at how many podcasts are already freely available on the internet.
If those people could pull it off then so too could I.
Which brings us to Day 0, the day I suddenly just made the decision that this dream was possible.
My strategy was to take baby steps, lots of baby steps, one by one, before finally that podcast would be brought to life.
So here is an exact timeline of how that process looked to me.
DAY 0 – TUESDAY MAY 12.
This was just a thinking day.
I would allow myself to dream big and think that a creating a podcast was indeed possible for me.
Only problem was I started the day not entirely believing that was true.
I felt sick with overwhelm and had the biggest migraine just trying to wrap my head around the idea of bringing this goal to life.
My task for the day – while I still attended to all my other blogging and work tasks was to do some research on how to start a podcast.
It turns out the Internet has a wealth of information on this very subject.
I spent a few hours on Youtube watching videos and learning all the things I knew nothing about – like the need for the sound editing program Audacity and the need for a host.
When I say I started with zero knowledge on starting a podcast I am not kidding.
I knew nothing at all but by the end of that day I felt like I had enough faith to tackle this project.
That there was information out there that could help me and if I followed the steps slowly, one by one I could pull it off.
I just knew I had to have faith in myself and keep moving slowly to this goal.
This brings us to DAY 1 of really working on my podcast – WEDNESDAY MAY 13.
My task for the day was simple: I just needed to decide my podcast name and niche – that’s all.
Before today I actually had no idea what I wanted to specifically have a podcast on.
After all most people would guess that it would be solely parenting related as I have a successful parenting blog but deep down I knew I wanted it to be more than that.
I have three other blogs called dreambigmyfriend.com, mamalovesmoney and superhealthymama and I knew that the topic I was most excited to speak about was personal development.
As a trained life coach, I absolutely love the idea of helping other people achieve their dreams and in my gut, my intuition was telling me creating a podcast to help support my Dream Big My Friend was the right step for me to take.
And that is all that day one entailed: working out a name and niche for my podcast.
This brings us to Day 2: THURSDAY MAY 14.
I woke up today and set myself the next baby step for me to take, which was to create a podcast cover for my podcast.
I didn’t need for it to be perfect.
When it comes to anything in my business I don’t like to overthink things.
I just like to create work that is at least a B- and if there is any way I can improve it in the future to bring it closer to an A+ then sure I will go ahead and do it.
But I don’t aim for perfection because I know that pressure stumps me and keeps me stuck.
So I went into Canva and created the podcast cover that you currently see for this episode.
I tweaked it until I liked it enough to use and I didn’t spend more than one hour on working on this task.
I also started to give thought to the fact that I would also need to record a podcast intro/outro for my podcast because having these two things – a podcast cover and music to go with my episode would start to bring this goal to life.
So today my second baby step in addition to create the podcast cover was to research music ideas I could use for my intro/outro.
I discovered there are so many places where you can get free music that is unrestricted for use and I created a folder where I put my favorite 10 tracks.
Lots were terrible but some were okay and remember I was searching for perfection but just finding something I loved enough right now to use.
I always have this opinion that I can change anything in the future if it’s not right.
I don’t need to overthink this step but just pick what feels to be the best options for me right now.
This brings us to Day 3: FRIDAY MAY 15.
Remember at this point all I have done is some research that makes me feel as if starting a podcast is possible.
I also have a podcast cover now that I like and a short list of possible music ideas.
My baby step for today was to go onto Fiverr and just create a shortlist of 10 voiceovers that could possible record the intro/outro for me.
I also revisited my short list of 10 music tracks and made myself pick ONE – whatever was currently my favorite choice.
I forced myself to just make a decision and once again not overthink this process.
These tasks didn’t take me a long time to do.
Because I trusted my judgement I kept this a really simple and easy baby step for me to take.
This brings us to Day 4: SATURDAY MAY 16.
This is the day that I woke up and decided I needed to just decide on a voiceover.
I would listen to them, one by one side by side, and slowly got my list of 10 down to 5.
Then I asked my husband and kids to share with me their thoughts and very quickly I picked who I thought was the best of the best.
Now maybe they aren’t perfect but I was comfortable enough with my decision to say “yes that’s the best option for now and once again I can always change my mind later if I really want something different.”
There is nothing wrong with changing your mind later on.
So once I had my final pick, which didn’t take very long for me to decide, I decided to write an intro and outro script and send it out to her to record.
That was my bigger task to do but I probably spent no more than one hour working on this.
Once I was happy with it I sent out a job request on Fiverr and suddenly I was one step closer to bringing my goal to life.
I kept it all very simple and actually this was the one thing I outsourced for the podcast but I knew it needed to be done.
By Saturday night I had my intro/outro back and thankfully I loved it.
This brings us to Day 5: SUNDAY MAY 17.
So far everything I have done so far has been very simple.
They were little baby steps that didn’t overwhelm me and I felt comfortable enough to action.
So now I have a podcast cover, name and niche and intro/outro recorded.
But I actually don’t know what to do moving on from here.
I joined a few Facebook podcast groups and knew that once I recorded a podcast episode I could use Audacity to edit the episode so I spent some time watching some YouTube videos on Audacity until I felt comfortable with giving it a go.
Being a Sunday I still went out with my family, we went to my parents.
I didn’t give this baby step that much attention, maybe an hour or two in the evening but I just wanted to end the day at least feeling as if I had some idea how to use the program.
My second baby step task for the day was to write down 10 ideas I could record.
Just podcast ideas.
The expectation wasn’t that I would dig deep into these idea just yet.
All I needed to do was right down 10 ideas that all.
Because I was still stumped some friends suggested I brainstorm ideas using my most popular blogging content so I did that.
But I kept it simple and ended the day with 10 ideas jotted down in my business journal and a feeling that Audacity wouldn’t be that difficult to do.
So those were the first five days and I have to be honest.
They were relatively simple.
They didn’t overwhelm me at all and got me used to the idea that maybe, just maybe I could launch my podcast before the end of next week.
This brings us to DAY 6 MONDAY MAY 18.
So up until now I was taking everything easy but today I decided that I would pick five of my ideas and make some points on the topic.
That was my task for the day.
Start to flesh out the ideas I had and think about what I would want to share in the podcast.
Because I had already created content for these ideas that wasn’t too difficult to do.
I also pulled out my microphone – a Samson Meteor and just decided to see if I could get it to work with Audacity.
I found an old pair of headphones, attached it to the micro and voila, I discovered that yes it all worked.
Funnily enough I had bought that microphone over a year before and had never used it.
Maybe it isn’t the first pick for podcasters but the reviews are actually great on Amazon.
I’m glad that I didn’t let that trip me up or that I didn’t think “oh no I can’t start recording until I had a better microphone to use.”
I was happy to work with what I had right now and just see how it went.
This brings us to DAY 7: TUESDAY MAY 19.
I woke up today and decided that my baby step would be a bit bigger.
I wanted to record two episodes using the notes I had worked on the previous day.
Now I would be lying if I said this was easy. I am not a naturally gifted speaker.
My thing is writing.
I’m obsessed with writing and putting myself out there on this different platform is definitely taking me outside my comfort zone.
I remember briefly thinking “oh gosh what are people going to think?” before deciding I absolutely don’t care what anyone else thinks to be honest.
This is a goal of mine and I definitely didn’t want to be someone who sacrificed her goals and dreams out of the fear of other people’s opinions especially when those opinions don’t matter.
The people who love you will support you.
The ones who are judgy judgy will be judgy judgy no matter what, whether you do a podcast or not.
Their opinions truly don’t matter.
So this is where I share with you a story of what happened on this day.
I actually finally recorded my first episode that I was actually really pleased with.
It took forever to pull off and when I went to click stop I actually accidentally bumped the power off button on my computer and it turned my computer off.
When I restarted it the episode had disappeared or something was there but it couldn’t be retrieved.
To say I felt like crying is an understatement.
I spent way too much time trying to save that file before admitting defeat and accepting I would need to record it again.
At the time it was pretty heartbreaking but lesson learned – always always click SAVE.
So on this day I worked on this bigger step – just get two episodes recorded, even though my kids were home as schools are still closed due to the coronavirus situation.
Even though I have a dog that constantly wanted to go in and out of my office and the one time I let him stay he started snoring loudly in the background.
It took a lot of trial and error but I got there in the end.
This brings us to DAYS 8 and DAY 9: WEDNESDAY MAY 20 and THURSDAY MAY 21.
My only task for those days was to record two more episodes each days.
To take action and just do it.
Because I seriously still had no idea what I was doing, one episode took way longer than 30 minutes to record.
I would constantly restart because I still hadn’t found my groove yet.
But I discovered it took me much less time to record on my second day of recording than it did my best and even less to do on day 3.
I was like “okay I am actually getting better at this!”
I ended Thursday, day 9, with six episodes recorded and to be honest I still didn’t know what I was going to do after this.
I started playing around with editing that night and worked out a way to do it myself that seemed to be working.
Sure it wasn’t perfect but it was good enough for now.
This brings us to DAY 10 – FRIDAY MAY 22nd 2020.
At this point all I have is six recorded episodes that are still not edited to remove background noise etcetera.
In the morning I can’t even imagine that they will be live on Spotify or that I will have submitted to all the other networks because I am never looking too far ahead.
I just focus on one step at a time.
Today the goal was to edit the episodes which is something I did.
Then I discovered a program called Auphonic where you can run the audio through to clean it up some more and it will add the intro/outro music in there for you so I did it.
And suddenly I had six episodes completed and I was like “okay, yay but what do I do next?”
A friend who has a podcast recommended a host called Red Circle who will host your podcast for free so I signed up and it turned out that uploading episodes is easy.
I think I had all six episodes there with the descriptions in less than one hour.
And once that was done they gave me a RSS feed that I could use to submit my podcast to different networks and it turns out that was super easy to do.
Like seriously easy.
I have no idea why I thought it was this big scary task that I would never be able to do.
I just googled list of places to submit a podcast and it gave me a list that included Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Breaker etc and then I googled how to submit a podcast for each one and I just followed the steps.
I cannot even explain to you how simple this was.
I think I ended the night feeling slightly overwhelmed that this was happening.
In 10 days I had gone from zero idea of how to start a podcast to actually making it happen.
I share this story with you so that you understand how breaking up a big goal into little baby steps makes the process seem so much less overwhelming.
I never focused on any step except the baby step I was currently working on.
I worked on one baby step after the other and before I knew it I was there.
My little dream had come to life and here you are now listening to me!
So if you have ever dreamed of having your own podcast I encourage you to not feel overwhelmed and to just do it.
It’s not that difficult.
I did it without any outside help and now that I’m on the other side of that fence I can see it that the most important thing was to just take action, every day, step by step because when you keep moving in the right direction you will get there in the end my friend.
So hope this has been helpful to you and I can’t wait to catch up with you again in the next episode!
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Hey, I’m Frances Vidakovic! I help you live a richer, lighter life while pursuing dreamy goals – without sacrificing your soul, sanity or family life. 🫶🏻 Author. Coach. Course Creator. DON’T DIE UNHAPPY! → Wake up. Do what matters. Savour it all 🌷