How to Start a Podcast in 7 Steps

Starting a podcast is one of THE most effective networking tools I know…

And you DON’T need any fancy mikes or headphones 😉 (Source: Unsplash)

Think about it:

• You can meet people in ANY industry you’re curious about
• One-off meetings turn into a brand you can show off again and again
• You have an incentive (fame) to offer the other person
• And tools like Anchor.fm make it easier than ever to get started 😀

Step #1: Choose a Theme (1/5 Difficulty)

It can LITERALLY be ANY niche YOU find EXCITING.

Ex. #1: I was researching plastic pollution for a high school project. I needed to get a network with scientists and experts in the industry. Solution? The Plastic Shift Podcast — a podcast to discuss new solutions to the root causes of plastic pollution.

YES, a high school student CAN talk to CEOs… with the right podcast 😉(Source: Author)

Ex. #2: I was fed up with high school and wanted to just learn about cool stuff 😁 Solution? I started The Knowledge Archives — a podcast to explore ‘specialised areas of research’ (ie. whatever I find cool at the moment 😅).

I was curious about worms and dirt… so I ‘dug up a guy’ in the Forest Service 😄 (Source: Author)

Ex. #3: I got bored of talking to scientists and wanted to be a professional Elon Musk for a living 😜 But I didn’t really know how the whole ‘entrepreneurship’ thing worked. Solution? I started How I Fixed It — a podcast to ask entrepreneurs about mistakes they made (so I can avoid them ahead of time 😉).

My partner helped me make a design template that didn’t look like all the others 😂

No, you don’t need the next Joe Rogan Podcast on your first go. Just get out there and do what you like CONSISTENTLY.

P.S. I’ll explain how to design #fantabulous graphics like this in Step #5 😉

Step #2: Choose a Name (9000/5 Difficulty 😡 😭)

Don’t ask me how to do this… I have no clue. 😢 These resources on the Internet might help:

• The Art and Science of Naming your Podcast
• What to Call a Podcast
• Brand Name Generator 😁

Step #3: Find People (3/5 Difficulty)

You have to get creative and learn where to find ‘people’ in YOUR podcast niche!

For my podcasts interviewing scientists, I learned to get good at searching through Science Direct and Google Scholar. For example, I realised that I didn’t REALLY need to read any research papers behind paywalls 😕 I just need to read the abstract of the paper to understand the area that the scientist works on and then look at the scientist’s Google Scholar profile to see if they CONSISTENTLY publish enough in one area to teach me about it.

For my podcasts interviewing entrepreneurs, I learned that I could find dozens of companies (GROUPED by industries!) by just looking at business accelerator portfolios. Or startup pitch competitions.

But what if your podcast is about cooking, philosophy, computational modelling, or basket-weaving??? 😭 Well, you’ll have to figure out your own searching tips. 😉 And let me know when you do!

P.S. Yes, you do have to write lots of annoying cold-emails, Linkedin messages, social media DMs, etc. 😤 When you have example episodes, link to those in your cold-messages (you only need one example episode for them to know you’re not a robot 😉). Also, following up a second time makes a LOT of difference after you send 20+ emails.

Step #4: Record The Interview (2/5 Difficulty)

Part 4A: Schedule the Interview.

To do Checklist:

• Invite right person 😁
• Send Zoom link
• Send questions beforehand
• Set a notification reminder

Tiny Tips:

You can duplicate Google Calendar invites to not always have to search for Zoom details. Just don’t forget to change the person’s name and podcast topic in the title 😱

Don’t use automatic scheduling systems (ex. Calendly). People don’t feel special enough and don’t end up scheduling 😭

Part 4B: Before Recording, tell them

• The purpose / origin story of the podcast (ex: I was tired of ‘inspirational’ entrepreneurship podcasts, so I wanted to make a podcast to dive into PRACTICAL step-by-step lessons).
• About how long recording should take.
• That you won’t publish drafts online before showing them.
• Tips on what to talk about (ex: “Please share as many real-life examples as possible and go easy on abstract takeaways”). Guests don’t mind.

You can experiment with telling them that you’re just having a conversation so things don’t need to be perfect + you can cut out bloopers. Sometimes, it makes guests comfortable… and sometimes, toooo comfortable 😬

Part 4C: Hit the record button 🎉

My lonely example podcast with just meeeeee 😭

If you’re having wifi trouble very often, you might consider using alternative podcast recording platforms like Zencastr. They use fancy-schmancy algorithms to save recordings locally and not have wifi issues ✨But you might have to pay… 😕

If you’re having trouble keeping the conversation going, focus less on getting through the questions you’ve written up beforehand. Instead, focus on followups you can ask. Some useful followups in general are:

• “Could you give me a real-life example of [insert topic they mentioned]?”
• “Could you give me context about how you ended up in that situation?”
• “If you had to get a five-year-old to remember that, what would you say?”
• “So you just [repeat last few words they said]?” — this is called mirroring + gets them to expand on their ideas while you think.

After the meeting ends, wait for the recording to convert and save the audio (.m4a) file to Google Drive or something (it’s REALLY awkward if you lose the recording 😬).

This pops up automatically after the Zoom Meeting ends. It takes quite a while. 😕

Part 4D: Record an Introduction for the guest?

Usually, I find that this is easier AFTER you’ve edited the podcast. You know what to say in your introduction better. BUT, you should already have any standard intro clips saved to use across multiple podcasts. For example:

• Intro music (you can find lots for free on Youtube’s Audio Library)
• Intro sentences (ex: “You’re listening to [insert podcast name]!”)
• And an intro tagline (ex: “Welcome to the [insert name] podcast! We’re a group of students on a mission to explore as many specialised areas of research as possible!”)

P.S. It’s okay to write down scripts for these pre-recorded segments. But to avoid sounding monotonous, smile when you speak — even if it’s just an intro recording clip without a guest. It comes through on your voice 😄(Source: Eesha Ulhaq)

Step #5: Edit the Interview (3/5 Difficulty)

In terms of the structure + which parts to keep, I just mimic existing podcasts I like. For example, the structure might be:

• Intro music starts + Preview clip of a memorable segment of the podcast
• I put in the podcast tagline: Ex. “Welcome to the ________ podcast! We’re a team of students exploring as many specialised areas of research as possible!”
• I ask the guest to introduce themselves
• Questions and answers
• I thank the guest for joining and roll the outro music

In terms of the technical stuff, I recommend Audacity because it’s free 😅You can get started learning the basics on Youtube. But I’ll share some professional hacks you won’t learn elsewhere 😉

To make it not look ugly, go to Edit > Preferences (top left).

Then, click on the Interface tab and change the Theme to Dark 😍

Already nicer 😉

Also, you’ll be using the same tools over and over again under the Effect tab… they don’t have shortcuts by default, but you can set shortcuts for them like I have here. LITERALLY SAVES HOURS. 😮 🚀

To add shortcuts, go to Edit > Preferences (like before) and then the Keyboard tab. You can click on any tool and then write the shortcut you want in the textbox next to the set button (bottom left). Search for specific tools with the search bar (top right).

For the shortcuts I created, I just use Shift+[letter in shortcut name]

• Shift+N — Noise Reduction (to remove background noise)
• Shift+L — Loudness Normalisation (to scale noise level to normal)
• Shift+I — Fade In (for cutting out ‘ums’ and making it seem natural)
• Shift+O — Fade Out (for cutting rambling and making it seem natural)
• Shift+A — Amplify (to change noise level if loudness normalisation is being weird).
• Shift+C — Crossfade (for when you have to cut out a door slam in the middle of a sentence and make things fade together nicely).
• Shift+M — Mute track (for when you’re adding different clips in different tracks)
• Shift+S — Split stereo track to mono (for when you import music in .mp3 format but Zoom uses .m4a). Search for ‘mix stereo’.

Sidenote: Speaking of different audio formats, install the FFmpeg library for Audacity (the download looks kinda sketchy, but it’s fine 😅). Zoom exports in .m4a format, but Audacity needs the library to convert .m4a to .mp3 before you can edit your files.

Also, set these shortcuts. The built-in shortcuts for these settings are weird 😖

• Ctrl+minus sign for Zoom out
• Ctrl+0 for Zoom to default level
• Ctrl+plus sign for Zoom in
• Ctrl+N to add new stereo track (search ‘Stereo track’)
• Ctrl+right arrow to increase playback speed
• Ctrl+left arrow to decrease playback speed
• Ctrl+space to play at selected speed (search ‘Loop Play-at-speed’)

It saves a LOT of time to quickly skim through the podcast at 2x speed with the last three shortcuts.

Finally, useful shortcuts already built into Audacity:

• Ctrl+S — Save (get into a habit of pressing this every few minutes — Audacity crashes are NOT friendly 😬)
• R — Record new audio (to replace rambly questions on your part. 😁 This may happen to some of us a LOT… 😅)
• Ctrl+I — Insert (splits your audio so you can put new clips in the middle).
• Fn+1/2/3/4/5/6 — different editing modes. Fn+1 gets the job done for most things and Fn+5 is useful for dragging different clips around.
• Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V / Ctrl+X — copy, paste, cut.

I know it seems like I’m going overboard with the shortcuts, but I was editing podcasts for 1.5 YEARS before I realised how much time I could save with shortcuts!!!! And editing a podcast is DEFINITELY the longest and most monotonous part— so get efficient doing it 😂

Step #6: Add Some Visuals (1/5 Difficulty)

You’ll need a logo, podcast cover art (optional), and a Youtube video background (optional).

The easiest way to design a logo is to just use an icon or put some text on an artsy textured image 😁 For the just use an icon approach, download something from Icons8 or Freepik. For the artsy textured image approach, use Anchor.fm’s logo generator. Here are some logos I created in 5 minutes:

You can also just search for Unsplash photos yourself and find a font on Google Fonts… (Source: Author)

I added my ONE silly example for this article… be amused 😁 (Source: Author)

The cover art is optional. It’s an image to go along with each episode you publish.

Usually, you want to include your guest’s name and photo in there. I also add different colours to categorise podcasts into themes.

If you want to create cover art like this, I’d recommend Photopea or Figma.

The other optional part is publishing your podcast on Youtube. You can’t upload audio content to Youtube, so you have to turn the audio into a video. The simplest approach is just creating a background image to render with the audio. I recommend you look at existing podcasts and mimic their design with Photopea or Figma. For example, I really liked the design of the… Accenture Insurance Podcast!!! 😍🤓😍🤓😍🤓😁

Once you create the background image, you can use pretty much any video editor out there to render a video from the audio and image. Lots of free options here! If you don’t mind the complexity, Davinci Resolve is 100% free — no watermarks, no expiring trials, etc. Also, if you want to have an audio visualiser (the little spikes that move in time to the audio), you’ll have to use special tools like Musicvid.

Step #7: Distribute the Podcast (1/5 Difficulty)

There are lots of tools available for this, like SimpleCast and more. But Anchor.fm is 100% free and #fantabulous to use 😍 (Not sponsored, just amazed 😁). My favourite features:

• Automatically sets up accounts on all podcasting platforms except iTunes.
• ^ And releases episodes on all those platforms too
• Gives you a nice website if you’re not setting up a Youtube channel.
• Has simple analytics— how many listeners you have, how long people listen for, which platforms they listen on, etc.

You can TRY to actually record and edit with their website/mobile app. But their audio editor is really simplistic, so I just upload the final audio onto the platform and use it for distribution.

Start a new episode

Upload your audio file and save the episode.

Then, it’ll give you a form where you just fill in the episode title, any description notes, and any custom episode covers (optional). You can probably find tips online on how exactly to name your episodes, when exactly to publish (Tuesday and Friday 😉), and so on.

But the most important part?

👉JUST GET STARTED!!!!! 👈

Key Takeaways

• For the first podcast, JUST choose a theme you’re excited to learn about.
• Learn the unique hacks to find guests in your industry (ex. startup pitch competitions to find entrepreneurs).
• You don’t need fancy equipment to record. Just Zoom.
• You’re going to spend SO much time editing. Little improvements add up.
• But what about branding? Visuals??? Simpler = better. Perfect = more and more frustrating at every step.
• ‘Launching’/distributing is as easy as 3 clicks
• Nothing else matters if you don’t start.

If you have any questions, feel free to message. Maybe I can help :-)