When you're forcing yourself to go live,
it forces you to prepare a lot more beforehand.
And so when you get it done,
it's really quickly to then
flip it around and just
release it super quickly.
Welcome to about podcasting,
a show for podcasters.
We talk about podcasting practices, tools, successes, and failures
mixed with interviews and music.
Hosted on Podhome dotfm,
the most modern podcast hosting platform.
Welcome to another episode of About Podcasting.
This week, I'm speaking with Kyron Down from Mere Mortals Podcast and others.
We talk about his motivations
for podcasting,
his workflow,
why he does live podcasts,
and we talk about the YouTube game and more.
Enjoy.
How did you get into podcasting?
Why did you start it?
Yeah. So when I was, like, the the the full long story, I guess, is, I was traveling Latin America in 2018,
2019.
And
I was doing a lot of kinda Zoom calls and and WhatsApp messages with my my friend, Juan, and, my other friend, Joey, back home in Australia.
And also, just some kind of, like, calls with my family as well.
And
especially the ones with my friends were like, man, that was so fun. We we should have recorded that because we're just joking around. We were, you know, just just talking about things that were going on, stuff that I was saying, stuff that they were doing.
And when we got when I got back in 2019,
I kind of had a,
not not like a midlife crisis or in a quarter life crisis or anything like that, but I've I've been doing engineering for a while and I just didn't really enjoy it. So I was just looking
for other things to do. And,
one
was like, let's do the podcast, man. Let's let's actually do this. So we started up
tiny, crappy kit. This is the actual,
one of the first microphones that we first bought, like the cheapest microphones,
the using an old GoPro camera, which we didn't we didn't need to record video, but we did anyway just just, just because we could
perched on top of paint can my parents' spare bedroom as I was just kind of living there for the temporarily.
And
that was that was why we started. We just really enjoyed having chats with each other and,
did it super cheap because we didn't know if we would stick with it. And then, you know, here we are four and a half years later.
I think over a 1000 episodes, if you combine all the book reviews, all the,
conversations, all the main model stuff, all the value for value, all the,
other podcasts I did, but there's any sense Banglish, which was like, Spanish book reviews.
So, obviously, it stuck around and, yeah, really enjoy
Nice. Yeah. And like you said, you already did, loads of episodes across multiple shows here. Yeah. How did you learn how to do it? Like you said, you already you just bought a a cheaper kit
And and then
what? Yeah. We just recorded,
you know, we did all of the wrong things that
happened at the start. You know, we're
experimenting with different,
laptops and ways of recording. So I know we used
the inbuilt,
I think it's, GarageBand
on,
on an Imac or, just on a Mac laptop for a bit. Then I tried using Audacity, and that was really hard. We ended up using Adobe, and we've been using, like, the kind of Adobe Suite
for a fair while for recording
and editing and things like that. So,
you know, trying out different tools, I guess, was was part of that
learning to
speak better and and not, you know,
go away from the microphone. Just
the the general
mic technique.
Probably the best way of learning how to podcast is just by relistening to your own stuff. If you don't do that,
I'd highly recommend at least 1 one episode out of every 10.
Try let try listening to it from start to finish, and and you'll recognize all of the weird things you're saying the arms, the likes, the earth,
the
accidental noise that you're putting into it, the reverb,
the even just listening to
what you're saying and realizing, you know, I'm not actually really saying anything right now. I'm just just talking for talking sake. So yeah, that that was probably
it wasn't a
I've always been a self learner, so I just kind of look at
free
resources on YouTube.
I listen to a lot of podcasts or trying to emulate what I think the people do well and what would work well with me.
And
there's there's no real crash course on how to how to be a podcaster or anything like that. Everyone has their own different ways, but there's there's good technique
for which you can use.
Yeah. Yeah. You learn by doing
and, by looking around. Definitely.
I do, I I have this in my head to create,
a course around the basics,
like, what is an RSS feed? How does that work? How does it get into the podcast apps? What do you actually need? What type of gear?
Things like that. So I'm thinking about
doing that if I find the time. Yeah. That might be fun. The problem with the RSS feed
is
I I don't know if you need to be kind of techie for it or not. For example, I'm
I'm I'm an engineer by background.
I I guess you'd say I'm I'm kind of nerdy and techie, even though I I have a love hate relationship with with technology.
When it doesn't work for me, I I
I'm not a fan of, like, debugging and,
really
diving into the weeds. I just want it to work.
Yet,
I think it was probably a solid year and a half until I actually learned out what an RSS feed was. I was just podcasting. I didn't even really think about it. Upload it to here, it goes out. And I didn't really know about the mechanism for it or the underlying
technology.
And I didn't care about that until
I felt all limitations of,
of
my podcast, at least, which was,
I want to make these better, but I felt like I kind of reached the point of, you know, at least the mic technique of
not arming and erring too much not doing too many bad things. And then I and then I realized, okay, well,
I found podcasting 2.0, and I went, oh, okay. I can actually make my podcast better by incorporating
for me, it was really chapter images. I love putting chapter images into my podcast. It's, I find that really, really
valuable for myself when I'm listening to others. And so I hope when people are tuning into mine, they they get that kind of experience as well. If they open their, their phone and look at the chapter images and see, oh, you know, here's a photo that Karen was talking about. He's a graph that he was he was mentioning as well.
And
that was the the thing that pushed me over. Oh, I can start going live on the podcast app so I can put links in or I can
get support from my audience
and
have them contribute to the show in a in a more meaningful way rather than
the talking into the void, which I was experiencing pretty, pretty full on for after about a year, year and a half of of doing the shows.
Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. So
you only learned about the technical stuff because you found that,
you wanted to add more things, like chapters and things. And so you started to learn about that type of stuff. And normally, why would you? Right? Why would you learn about it in RSS feeds? Who cares as long as it works? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I guess for me, it was I I hit
the the problem of how do you grow your show? Or how do you how do you get more?
And when people say, how do you grow your show? I assume most of them
aren't kind of money hung,
yeah, money hungry,
just looking to
get a quick buck or something. I assume most people who are wanting to grow their show is they actually just want more audience participation. They wanna feel like they're not talking to the void.
And,
for me, the all the answers that that kept coming up,
I saw were
start recording better create clips, put it on to
social
media, have a more presence there, create a community on social media or saying things like this. And I've just always, I'm I'm not a big social media fan. I didn't have any from
2013 till 2019 until I started the podcast. So and I I mean nothing. WhatsApp,
if you consider that a social media, was probably the the closest thing I had to it.
And
I I didn't I'm not a fan. I'm I'm
I I don't think everyone should be forced into that if they if they wanna create a community.
And,
the the problem with, I guess, the the audience and and growing your podcast just through through audio is it is kind of a slow grow. It it takes time for people to incorporate into their routines and to
to,
have
that that kind of connection and and reaching out that that was probably the other problem
was
the the social media is good for those social connections, obviously. So the
it felt weird telling people, hey,
reach out to the show, tell us what you like or didn't like.
And
then recommending they do it through Instagram or through
Facebook or or something like that.
And, you know, I I tried this myself because I would listen to a whole lot of other podcasts. That was actually one of the other ways I I improved mine was just by listening to lots of random shows.
And I'd usually reach out to them afterwards. And what I would do was I would
write them a review on Apple. I didn't even listen on Apple. I just had iTunes on my desktop
specifically just to open it up and and write,
a, a rating and review for them.
I would find their Instagram page. I would leave them a voice note saying, hey. I really enjoyed your show. I left you, a rating and review. Hope hope you enjoyed. Hope it helps that sort of thing.
And
I felt the pain, the barrier every single time I did that. And,
one amusing story was
I would do this for for a bunch of shows. Probably about half of them would would respond back in some form.
And half, you know, half of that group would even do kind of do the same for me. Just just just kind of like a common courtesy thing. And I think it was probably 2 years after
I sent these people a
voice message through Instagram.
They reached back and were like,
Oh, my God, I'm so sorry. This went to the, you know, other inbox and Instagram. I didn't check it.
Thank you so much. And it was it was 2 years later, you know, so the even
doing that is not foolproof even sending people messages
outside of the podcast apps.
Is,
it
it it it doesn't necessarily make their way to them. So when I realized, oh, you can actually send a message directly within the the podcast app that you're listening on and that it will,
I I can set it up so that it'll reach me directly and support me at the same time. It was just light bulbs going off going. Oh, yeah. This is this is the way forward.
Yeah. We can do a lot more with that. I think there's still a huge opportunity to connect all of the apps together so that all all the the comments and all the stuff just shows up everywhere, including in your host's dashboards, wherever it is. Yeah. YouTube is is such a powerful place, I think, for the comments. That's every time I open a YouTube video, I will I will usually scan the comments just just because there's something funny in there or someone's got
a
a highlighted point saying, you know, check out this. I I enjoyed this moment, and I'll skip to there.
YouTube also has that that great little, graph showing,
like a peak of of where people enjoy in the video. So clicking to there immediately.
I think there's a lot of those sort of things, which
I I really love the the ability to use any app that you want and that they they can somewhat sort of connect or at least
like we're talking with the the technology bits of RSS.
They can use different aspects, show different things, highlight different stuff. And I I personally use different podcast apps for different reasons.
But that ability to connect
through multiple different apps and, you know, if you left a rating and review on fountain, it's showing up on true fence, that that would be amazing.
Yeah. We're getting there. I
I have hoped that this will, definitely happen. And One day.
One day. Yeah. But, it actually it's going pretty fast if you think about it, you know. This all this stuff did not even exist a couple of years ago.
And now, maybe be within a year or something, at least, the most modern of those apps will be connected in in this way, I believe.
So it's going pretty fast.
Yeah. Running with scissors, definitely. Definitely.
And, so
when we spin back, you alluded to, you wanted to do something else than the engineering. Right? And then you went fully into the podcasting.
Did you set out some goals there, like,
for money, for instance? And did you achieve them?
Yes.
Juan and I is,
who is my cohost on the our main show, the mere mortals, the the show the show that we put the most effort and attention into.
We we actually do monthly goals every month. That's kind of part of our show. It's hard to describe because we we kinda do fitness, also do philosophy, and it's also a little bit self development.
And
people have told us varying different things of of what they think our show is about.
So
if you go back into them and and listen to all of them, you know, back to back,
the 30, 40 of those that we've we've published,
you you can actually see a lot of the times of I'll have a a goal related to what I wanna do with the show in there.
Now for me personally,
this is always
it it actually hasn't been a full time job. I haven't I haven't tried to make it a full time job. I haven't tried to make it a full time income.
I would love to get it to that stage at some day, but it's
that that's just not the way how I work. I I don't I don't need to go super fast. And like I said, I I think it's a slow grow,
so I I don't wanna try and force it to
to go far to grow faster than than I actually kind of want them to do. And
I also don't want to become resentful of podcasting if it's if I'm having to do a lot of the things that I don't enjoy,
meetings, for example.
That's
almost one of the reasons why I I have refused advertising is I just don't wanna have meetings. I I don't want to deal with,
people commenting about this or that or or just, you know, the the the kind of unproductive
things that happened in in meetings. So,
some of the goals that we set out for, you know, we used to track metrics in terms of
engagement, in terms of downloads.
We stopped doing that when we realized
a lot of them were were kind of pointless and
didn't didn't really
capture what we wanted from a show,
from from our show. So
that there's now more related to, you know, boostograms, how many people are interacting.
We do keep track of money, but that's more just for tax purposes than than anything else, but also a show of of of support. So if you go on to meremodelspodcast.com/support,
on that page, we've got, you know, how much we've we've earned over time. So you can kinda see how we've been going
and also a list of everyone who's supported and the amount that they've supported.
And we we also use that because,
once once they reach a certain level of support, we we send them a a a mere model's kinda t shirt as a as a thank you.
So
the the goals wise, you know, I
I wouldn't
I I would love for it to be bigger,
our our shows, and and I I've got multiple shows as well, so
dividing time between them.
I'm
but for the amount of effort that I've put in, I I think it's, it's probably about right.
I've probably put
in
15 to 25 hours of, a week over the last couple of years. You know, it's by no by no means a full time job. And,
I think I've kind of like earned
and
gotten value from that, about the equivalent amount of,
in terms of money, in terms of,
creating connections with people, in terms of
being able to create stuff that I'm proud of in terms of,
yeah, even just
getting
getting some of the my thoughts out and
and not needing to, like, journal, for example, I don't really journal anymore because I've got the podcast. So
it it serves multiple different roles for me.
Okay. Well, that is that is a success,
by your definition, I guess, by by many many people's definition.
That's just very well done.
So you have multiple shows and lots of episodes,
which I know because they are for Mere Mortals, for instance, they're now hosted on Pothome, which is great.
What are you planning to do in the future? Are you going to continue with all the shows that you have now? Are you going to consolidate maybe? Are you creating more shows,
more episodes? What's your plan?
Yeah, so I I really enjoy talking about lots of different things. That's also probably why,
I'll I'll never be
really great at,
at
creating that one niche specific show, which you can grow super fast or you can get a lot of interest in because
I'm all over this place. Like I like I mentioned, people get different things from from our main show.
So,
what I've really enjoyed diving into is the the live aspects,
doing things live,
getting interaction from the audience.
I actually find it in terms of workflow
so much easier. I've
I, the, the aspect of when you, when you're forcing yourself to go live,
it forces you to prepare a lot more beforehand.
And so when you get it done,
it's really quickly to then
flip it around and just
release it super quickly.
For example,
Juan and I had a a a decent go at, being YouTubers at the same time. So like I mentioned, we were we're recording video and so we've got these decent 2 decent video cameras we're shooting in
4 ks.
We do it outdoors
and in a in a really nice setting out out and in
Southbank in Brisbane. So
I think we created some really nice quality videos.
And that they're still up on YouTube if anyone ever wanted to go see them.
The
aspect of that, though, was I would record and then I would, I'd I'd
you would just have to, you know, edit that over the week, and usually I'd release it a week later. So,
we're always lagging behind,
in terms of
the
actual actually putting out our audio and and and video because, because I didn't want to work
12 hours
the next day just just to be able to get it out. It probably wouldn't have been a full 12 hour stretch, maybe 6:6 hours.
And,
so so then,
as I moved closer to doing
focusing more on audio and and live, I realized,
okay, I actually
can
make this turn around a lot quicker.
And the audience engagement
was was better because I could turn it around so quickly. So when someone was boosting into the show or something like that,
they weren't waiting a week or two later to hear their message. They were getting it in a couple of days time. So
it eliminated this this lag of the I'm I'm a big proponent of the value for value model. That's one of the shows value for value that I have.
And
I I think the the the feedback loop is super critical with that. And if you're
leaving it too long, it it hurts.
It it doesn't,
contribute to that. So,
moving to the live and
in the future, I think I'd I'd still love to have,
honestly, that I probably shouldn't create more shows, but there's a there's a chance I will.
And,
especially with a place like Pod Home where I can create multiple different shows and and,
go live on all of them. That was the other thing. I I wasn't going live on on podcast apps just because my my hosts at the time, which
was, wish car, and then we moved to sounder, and then we moved to buzzsprout.
Neat. None of those had the ability to go live.
And then when I finally started switching some shows on to blueberry, and then and then the main mere models on to Pod home, that was when I could start going live on the apps. And so
that's dramatically altered how I do the podcasts and why I do them.
Okay. Yeah.
And so you go live, now still also on YouTube. Right? Are you going to continue that?
Yeah. It's it's just for convenience, just because we already have a couple of people who enjoy
us going live on on YouTube.
It's it's it's it's just for those those people there.
I think I'll still do it because I found a way of
making it so that it's only an extra like 5, 10 minutes of of setup. And so
it's only because of that if it if it grows out and look, this is
pretty basic video. Usually, it's just a single shot of me and
being able to incorporate other elements into the workflow. So
the chapters,
the images that I put in the chapters, if I can prepare them beforehand, which I I can do for some shows,
I can then create that so that I can at least have some sort of visual image on the YouTube as well. So
it's
it's certainly been growing less of importance to me. We used to probably be more of a
video first,
less focus on the audio.
So it'd be, you know, 75%
focus on the video, 25% on the audio, and I'd say that's reversed now. So
75% of my effort goes towards creating better audio
and
25%
is okay, if I can do something YouTube, that that's nice, but it's not not essential.
Right.
And so it seems to me that maybe that the life,
aspect
is more important for you for your workflow just to make it easier for you, then for actually
having
a large amount of live listeners. Is that right? At the moment, I would like to change that our and one of the problems I've had is just kind kinda consistency in terms of creating a schedule.
Because over the last,
jeez, what, 6, 7 months,
my mom's been having some health problems, so that's had to relate,
change things a lot, for myself personally. I'm now traveling. And so as for recording, I'm in Brazil at this moment
that also the time zones required some changing up. And I think with the live, it's better to be able to
have a consistent thing. People know you're going to show up and they can bring that into their own
routines. And you know, if they're eating dinner,
and you're alive, every time that they're eating dinner, you know, that's perfect.
I'm also thinking that
with the with the live,
I always felt
I needed to produce
a decent show that I would have engaging things. I was talking about a topic. I was prepared
and and things like this. But the more I I look at,
where where people really go live on Twitch and things like that, a lot of it's just gamers just showing the the the screen and they're they're just playing games. They're not even doing commentary.
They're they're just just doing stuff,
and with maybe some
music in the background.
And one of the thoughts I've been playing with is
going live, doing a proper show, and then just showing
my workflow afterwards and answering questions,
if if people tune in,
and and making it so that it's
okay,
or,
both visually and in in an audio sense. So if I'm not talking, just playing some some music, and then this is where I can do really cool things like,
use the door falls, for example,
get their whole back catalog.
This is what I actually do for
with them, when I was doing the value for value show was I I would use them for the the pre stream and the post stream audio when I wasn't talking. And I would just have a a playlist that was just set to to play their music.
And I put them in as a as a split. So anytime someone boosted in, they would they would, I think I was 10 or 15%
was was going to the door full. So
that way, I could feel good about playing music as well and, you know, contributing to
a band that I I really enjoy.
Yeah. That's a great idea to use satellite then.
Okay.
So you
already,
spoke a bit about your workflow. Right? How you do things, live, for instance.
Can you maybe talk about, what you actually use? Like, what type of software do you use? How do you record?
I heard,
last show that you were recording in 5 places at once. For instance, 5 parties at once. And then what? Do you edit the audio, for instance, a little bit? Or what what's your workflow, in general?
Yeah. So it it depends on the show. If it's a
highly
if it's a single show, like my, with myself or just myself, so that'll be if I'm doing a book review, or if I'm doing the value for value show,
That is where I'll have an extensive set of notes.
I'll know exactly what I'm gonna talk about. Beforehand, I will already have in my mind chapters created for for each of these notes, and that's how I set the notes out. So I'll have the the images already set up and and know what I'm gonna
do. For those ones, the the things that I use for for going live will be the,
but broadcast using the stream,
sorry, broadcast using this tool.
And that just allows me to to go live onto the,
onto the actual podcasting apps through through, a place like Pod Home, or I was using Blueberry before this as well.
With that, I'm also able to record
the audio and
this will let me record
any music that I put in any,
sound clips
effects.
I was using some voice acting,
Cole McCormick, who you had on recently.
He was doing some voice acting for me, so he would be reading out some,
clips or some some,
sections from a book that I would,
create and that I thought was interesting, and he'd do that for me.
So I would have all of these kinda like different separate elements.
I'd go live. So the the live aspect,
that was pretty easy.
I prefer to edit in Adobe Audition. That's what I've used for
almost since the beginning, so I'm really comfortable with that.
I've got my presets there. I've got
chapter markers and and, you know,
places where I can just drag and drop things really quickly. So get that done quickly.
Once I've finished editing,
I
I always recommend this favor on keep multiple backups record in different places. So
if something goes wrong, it's it's not fully lost. That's also why YouTube is handy as well. If you record onto YouTube and last resort, you can grab the audio from there.
And
then I will,
yeah, use the Adobe Suite for basically all all the stuff that I do. So, Photoshop for
thumbnails,
Illustrator
for creating images,
and,
Premiere Pro. I used to use that for transcripts. I don't need to anymore because,
of of what Pod Home does.
And those are the main the main tools that I use at the moment, and then it's just uploading things to all of the places and,
and doing some social posts. Even though I said I don't like doing them, I I still do them.
Yeah. Okay. So this is a pretty, quick turnaround, basically.
Yeah. Yeah. But I'm
I'm optimizing for
doing a lot of
planning beforehand, so I know exactly what I'm gonna say and and prepping.
For the mere mortals, for example,
that is a bit of a different workflow.
I'm I'm still I'm at the process of changing it at the moment, which is,
when I go live with, my friend Juan,
we used to have these episodes
called musings, which where we would
both research, but it's conversation. So it's it's meant to go back and forth. So
I can't plan it out. You know, if if we go down a different trail, we go down a different trail.
So we we we both have notes for that, but the the loose notes, they're they're a rough guide. And so those ones
is a bit of
a the turnaround time takes a little bit more because
I need
to kind of reconstruct
it and and put in chat. And look, I don't have to put chapters in. I like doing it. I think it helps,
people. And
once they're in there, you know, they're in there for good. I don't need to go back in the future and,
yeah, in the future and and and add them. So it's kind of
a it's kind of a a drawing point as well. I I think, personally, I think we we create some of the best chapters out there because I put funny things in there. I I edit stuff.
I have funny titles and stuff like that. So,
it's something
to to emphasize and talk about.
And,
we used to use
Riverside for recording live onto to YouTube.
Now I've I've just got
a pretty basic setup where I'm I'm just going live myself. And if I can get one in, it'll be great. But if if not, yeah, we're we're still in the process of, of figuring that out, especially because whilst we're traveling not in the same place, it's much harder. If we're in the same place, then we'll,
just be using a,
a mixer. He's got a a road caster of some sort sort. I've got a old stereo mixer,
for
for in terms of actual hardware and then
laptops and,
and then a camera and and things like that. So just just the basic things. We we don't have anything super special, headphones.
Yeah.
Okay.
That's always good to hear, you know, that,
people that
create lots of episodes and and do very well in podcasting
don't need to have a Neumann,
microphones and all the top notch super expensive stuff. You can just do this with with decent,
affordable stuff. I like Tim Ferris. I I think he's, you know, one of the best
in terms of success and in terms of
actually really decent episodes.
And he's an advocate for using the XLR.
What what's this? The ATR
21 100s my microphones. He's he's still got really basic ones.
But he's he's been an advocate for
for
lean and mean for for a long time. And, I take some inspiration from him as well. And even he's been recently saying he doesn't want to play the YouTube game of video and things like that, because
it's crowded, it's hard, it's it's not
and you become YouTubers. You don't you you're not a podcaster. You there's one of the things that I found was
when you are emphasizing for video, you make a lot of different strategic decisions. You,
so for example,
if you want to, you know, be a YouTuber and if you want to,
earn advertising money from YouTube, there's certain things that you're not gonna say. You're not gonna say the word suicide, for example. The anyone who does that gets demonetized instantly.
I'm pretty sure if you said,
rape, or you know, any any
hanging,
any any words which are controversial,
they tend to avoid and it's really funny when you watch YouTube videos, and they'll,
they'll
hint at it, or they'll,
they'll put it on the screen
and like a briefly flashing text or something.
And, you know, that's, that's just kind of
censoring of self censoring of speech, which I find,
not not good. Like, I don't think that's gonna end
great for the for the long run for that that person. And it's also, you know, suicide is an important topic needs to be talked about. And
if you can't say the word on YouTube, you're not going to be able to talk about it coherently. So,
if you follow the YouTube train,
you will make a lot of different choices. And, I think you will ultimately not
get it. You know, one of the great things about podcasting is you can talk about anything. No. And and that that was why people would flock to it. And it became so popular and
is one of the most popular mediums. It's because it's people just talking
uncensored, unfiltered about things, and a lot of it's trash, and a lot of it's really good.
Yeah. And we should be able to, not just talk trash, but to talk about anything really.
And and I think another aspect about,
YouTubing
or being a YouTuber
is that you need to optimize for video engagement. Right? So,
you don't just want 2 talking heads just doing an audio thing because that's not engaging if you're actually watching YouTube. So you have to, you know, have explosions and, change the scene every 2 2 seconds. And you can only do that if you're
a a well funded,
TV maker because you're basically making a TV show and not really an audio podcast, which is very different beast. Yeah. If you listen to the biggest YouTubers,
they will tell you that they spend most of their time on
the title and the thumbnail, and the first 30 seconds.
So
if you're doing that, you know, those are the 3 things that I do last basically,
the
the the title is just whatever it was that we talked about in the episode.
And I try and make it
broad enough so that it'll capture some interest perhaps, but
that it's not it's not my starting point. It's my endpoint. The the the starting point is creating the best audio content that I can. And yeah, so if you if you play the YouTube game,
it's it's you it's it's fine. Just know that you're playing that game and that your content will be dramatically altered in comparison to if you're doing a a podcast and and an audio podcast at that. You know, you can do video podcasts as well.
But video podcasts, you
you you're probably not gonna be playing the the YouTube game if you're
actually distributing that via via an RSS feed.
No. I totally agree. Yeah. Okay.
So you also
do interviews, right? You've done lots of them.
Maybe you can give me some tips, as in what makes you an interview?
Personally,
I like to research a lot.
I've I find that if I can
basically
find blogs that they've appeared on other podcasts,
the
YouTube videos,
things I've written
LinkedIn, you know, Facebook pages.
I I really like to go deep and and just try and learn
within reason as much as I can,
about the person.
And in particular,
ask ask questions that I think
that,
haven't been asked before. So
if you listen to
let's just take someone,
I've had on Adam Curry,
the pod father.
He's he's been on so many different podcasts.
And if you listen to them,
they'll
a lot of them will ask about the same things. You know, what was it like being an MTV? What was it?
Tell me about the origin stories of podcasting or something like that.
And
I personally, I think
will will
I don't know if this is the the best thing or not, but I personally like to kind of go down the unhidden roads.
One of the first thing that I asked him when I had on was,
you know,
what what are the choices that go into building, and to buying a castle?
When you're buying a castle, what do you looking? Are you looking for the most turret? So you're looking for, like, the
the highest ones to look out at the peasants on, that are on your lands? You know, this,
it's it's just a small simple thing, but it's it was kind of memorable for him as well.
And and I know he I know that because he talked about it later.
So I research I think is really good and
knowing,
at least having like some backup questions so that
perhaps you have a guest on who's not
super engaging, not leaving leaving other avenues open.
Just having some questions written down so that if you need to quickly
glance to the side and be like, oh, yep. That's a that's another question.
Dive into that.
Other than that,
I found actually
not over preparing.
So
I used to send,
for the first couple of ones I did, probably the first twenty.
I wanted I wanted people to feel comfortable and know what they were getting into. So I sent them like
a 1 page, 2 page document about like, you know, there's the sort of things we do like, well, I'll ask these sort of questions or these sort of topics and I'll create these clips and, you know, put this out and do this.
I I think it was over preparing people who started coming on the the, like, a bit tense and things like that. So, I actually prefer to just
kind of already
know the person beforehand.
So that that's probably the other one,
Have some sort of connection with them,
whether it just be in real life, whether it be through
writing emails
back and forth, perhaps a couple of times or or interacting on
one of the social media platforms or something like that.
Just having at least the bare minimum of of interactions. And
those are typically the ones that that go better and
and have a a decent flow of conversation, whereas some of the others,
it can be a bit grindy, like a little bit stop stars a bit like, oh,
you know,
ask a question and they they might take it the wrong way because they don't know that you're you're actually genuinely
interested rather than,
you know, trying to do a gotcha moment or something like that.
Yeah. I've had that a couple of times. I
definitely.
Okay.
So we,
we already, talked about a lot of things. And you already,
also,
like,
uncovered a bunch of podcasting tips,
whilst you were describing your workflow and your goals and your why.
Maybe we can round it out by summarizing some of those tips. So
what would you say to,
podcasters or aspiring podcasters?
What would be a couple of things
that they should do to
reach their goals, whatever they are in podcasting?
Yeah. I mean, that's probably the first one. Have a real think about what your goals are, what what you wanna achieve.
Do
you wanna go down to it for the vanity metrics of being able to say, I I got 10,000 downloads this last day or this last week or this last month?
You know, if if that's what you're focusing on,
there's there's tons of ways you can go about doing that, whether it be through organic or you can just, you know, buy a whole bunch of listeners if if that's if that's what your goal is. So I think it's really crucial just to think about what exactly it is that you want. And
typically, it's it's not the thing that'll
be come first in mind. So you might think,
you know, I I wanna make money, but it's like, oh, no. I'd rather make money,
in an ethical way that I that I really want to
that I feel comfortable with.
It might be, you know, I wanna get engaged with supporters. I I want people to,
reach out to the show or things like that. And then but, you know, you can have that by being super controversial
and saying
really awful things, which will get, you know, lots of hate mail coming
in. Or you could do it by,
you know, crazily
improving someone's life by giving them
a detailed
tip
on whatever it is that you know best and
absolutely changing one person's life. You know, you you just gotta think about what it is that you,
are really trying to to optimize for. And it's okay if you don't know what that is either. I think it's,
testing it. Another recommendation is just to test things out and
you'll, you'll find what you gravitate towards.
I personally gravitated towards
not using advertising,
going the value for value
method as my
main source of of income, my, like, really only source of income for the for the podcast
of moving away from social media and getting more into the techie elements,
but other people might have
different ways of doing that. They might really enjoy
creating a Facebook page and
the, the podcast is
adjacent to the Facebook page, for example, or something like that. So,
yeah, I I think testing things out and
you'll you'll find, oh, I really enjoyed doing this. It's it's when you
are spending time on something when you go, I probably shouldn't be spending time on this. That that's the thing you should probably do more of. So, yep, doing that out, consistency. This one's everyone talks about, but
just just showing up
as as often as you can at the same time as you can.
It doesn't
it's okay if you take breaks. You know, I've I've had to take a couple of breaks recently, like I've mentioned.
And
the, you know, my audience has been,
understanding of that. And, you know, I've received lots of kind messages for things, especially when it's related to to health issues and and,
you know, personal stuff in life.
There probably will be a slight drop off, but it's it's also,
you know, that the people dropping off the ones who don't really care either or a kind of casual
casual listener.
So it's the the core audience usually stays if you're,
if if you need to take some time off or things like that. So, yeah, just just focusing on, you know, testing things out, being consistent, and really knowing what it is that you're actually trying to optimize for.
Okay. Excellent. Those are great tips.
And then finally, where can people find you in your shows?
Yeah. So if you type in mere mortals,
that into a podcasting app or mere mortals podcast into any of the social medias, if you if you wanna engage in that way,
that that will
we should show up.
And,
that's
probably the,
best way to to find us.
As I mentioned, there's a there's a whole bunch of different shows. So,
meremodelspodcast.com
is is our kinda like landing page. So if you wanna know about the various different shows,
we've we've got different tabs there. And,
the support section, I think, is the
one of the ones that I highlight the most because it it really emphasizes
what we do, why we try and do it, and and the type of support and engagement that that we really enjoy,
on our different shows.
K. Excellent. Thank you very much. I'll put all of that stuff in the show notes so that people can easily find
all of your shows
and to go and listen to them. Thank you. Brilliant. Thank you, Barry.
Thanks for tuning into the show. For more episodes, go to about podcasting dot show, and remember to host your podcast on podhome.fm,
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