Hello! Welcome to The Podcast Life. My name is Deanna Chapman and I figured I should tell you a little about myself before we dive in on how to start your podcast.

I first started podcasting in 2015 when Modern Vinyl asked me to start a music podcast for their website and that podcast was called Missaligned. From there, I realized how much I enjoyed making podcasts so I started Welcome to Geekdom, a show where I geeked out about whatever I wanted pretty much (not the best idea for a show to be honest). Then in 2018, I started a Stephen King podcast called Chat Sematary where I decided to read every book and watch most of the movies and TV shows that adapted his works. Those projects eventually allowed me to start editing podcasts for other people and I’ve since worked on a ton of shows. To name a handful: The Daily Beast’s The New Abnormal, Fast Politics with Molly Jong-Fast, The Punk Rock MBA, Kreatures of Habit, and Off Panel with David Harper.

I’ve edited well over a thousand podcast episodes and as I gained more and more experience, I realized that I wanted to help more people. The problem is, I can only edit so many podcasts. Hence, The Podcast Life. I’ll be sharing everything I’ve learned about podcasting. A lot of it will be what not to do so that others can learn from my silly mistakes. If you’re reading this, it’s because you’ve already subscribed to the newsletter, so let’s get you the information you need to publish your first episode.

What to do before you start your podcast

If you’re anything like me, you probably have a lot of ideas, but you either don’t know which one to start with or you feel like the ideas aren’t quite good enough. Of all of the podcast ideas I’ve had - good or bad - I’ve ended up moving forward with a few. A case could be made that none of them worked. It all just depends on what your definition of “worked” means.

That said, the idea is where you need to start before you even think about recording an episode of your podcast. Don’t worry about what microphone you’re going to use or what program you’re going to edit in. The idea is going to be the most important thing because if you start a show that doesn’t quite have a focus, you’re going to torture yourself in the long run trying to figure out why it just isn’t quite working. Or you’ll just quit - whichever comes first.

Once upon a time I thought I would do a sports podcast with my friend Murjani Rawls and we decided that any sport was fair game. Let me tell you, doing a sports podcast about ONE sport is hard enough. Doing one on multiple sports? Madness. We made about 30 episodes, which is still more than a lot of podcasts! It just wasn’t sustainable to do that on a regular schedule.

So what’s your show going to be about? Figure that out before anything else. Then, from there you’ll want to decide on the format of the show. Is it two co-hosts? Is it an interview show? Non-fiction? Narrative? Once you have the idea and the format, then you can start to think about recording an episode. However, I’d still wait. Outline your first episode. Get a Google doc together and make sure you and whoever will be joining you will be on the same page. If it’s narrative, script out the whole thing. You’ll be glad you did later.

For now, that should give you plenty to ponder before you start your show. Don’t worry, I’ll be covering what gear and software you’ll need next.

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And if you would like some more help with starting your podcast or figuring out the next steps for a show you’ve already started, get in touch.