093: How I simplified podcasting

I don't have time for complicated. And neither do you. Learn how I've radically simplified my podcasting process so that I can record episodes away from my desk without sacrificing the quality or overcomplicating my life.

MENTIONED:

• On the go microphone: Wireless Microphone (affiliate link)
• Podcast editing: Descript (affiliate link) 
• Podcast hosting: Buzzsprout (affiliate link that gets you $20 credits)
• Create a content and visibility strategy: Get Visible (save 50%)

Transcript

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Hey, welcome back to the podcast. In this episode, I'm going to be sharing with you a couple of things that I do intentionally to keep podcasting a super simple process for me. I love podcasting for so many reasons. And one of them is that I think it is the most sustainable way to create content because you can do it in a lot of different circumstances, situations, seasons of life. And overall, it's just a simpler process than trying to do something like YouTube, which. I love YouTube. I think it's incredible. But again, depending on the season of life and business, you're at your zone of genius, your industry. I really love podcasting. Now, when it comes to podcasting, you could of course have a very elaborate setup and you can have what I'm recording on right now, which is a very fancy microphone that is plugged into a, I forget even all the words, but like. It's plugged into like a preamp that then is plugged into an interface. That's then plugged into the computer and I'm recording it into a thing, you know, like there are people with very elaborate setups. Like I don't have noise canceling. I'm not in a studio. I'm not recording video. Right. So even what I'm doing is still on the more complex side of things because the beauty of podcasting is it can be. So, so, so simple. And while I am recording this episode at my desk with my nice microphone, several of the episodes you've actually been listening to lately have been recorded from my bed from a wireless Bluetooth microphone. And I have recorded podcast episodes before on vacation with a travel mic with my face near a pillow. I have recorded. on the go. I've recorded in the car. I've recorded straight into the voice memo app. And again, I think that's just my favorite thing about podcasting is that if it is a main way you choose to communicate and serve your community and your clients, it can be super, super simple. So I want to share with you on a regular basis, some of the things I'm doing that helps simplify podcasting for me in this season of life in particular, because I am a mom. As I'm recording this, I am days away from having our third baby. When you are listening to this, I will be in maternity leave. I will have a third baby. I, um, don't know exactly when this will be going live. I may be potentially coming back to business by now. I don't know. But, um, time is of the essence. Simplicity is, is critical. I don't have a team member. I don't have an editor. I don't have a virtual assistant. The entire podcast process is me right now. And so when you have a couple of hours to work every week and all of these other constraints and things going on, it's, it's gotta be simple. So let's dig into some of the things I do to simplify the process. The very first thing is actually the planning process and how I plan out what I'm going to podcast about what I do before sitting down to record and how I keep This extremely simple right now I am using air table. I've been using air table for over a year at this point to manage my content. Um, but I've been in business. I've been podcasting. I think I launched my podcast maybe in 2019. I'd have to go back and double check. Um, but I've been podcasting a while and I've been creating content since 2014 or earlier. And so I've definitely tried a lot of different platforms and Content creation and specifically for podcasting. I really have found my groove by using air table to store my ideas for content, as well as outlining my podcast episodes. Before I sit down to record, I do use air table as well to manage the. Like editing and publishing process to stay organized on the backend. Um, that becomes way more important. To just, well, A, stay organized, but B, if you do have a team, I think that piece of the puzzle is like even more critical and I think Airtable does an amazing job at making that be really, really easy. But beyond the like platform I'm using Airtable, I want to share what I'm doing within Airtable because you could apply this to any platform that is making the prep side of podcasting super easy. So like I mentioned, I have Airtable, I feel like I'm going to mess up all the Airtable jargon. Cause of pregnancy brain. Um, but I have one base in Airtable that's like marketing and sales. And one of the tables is my like, Essentially my podcast, because my podcast is like my pillar content. It's the weekly thing. It's, it's the more consistent piece. It's the part I build everything else around. Um, that doesn't mean I don't have other content. I do one off like random emails or promotions or social posts. But when I'm thinking about the podcast and the newsletter that goes with the podcast and the blog post that goes with the podcast, that whole process has one table. And that is also, like I said, where I sh put ideas. Now I am. Very rarely at my desk in this season of life, I am often away from my desk when I have ideas. And so what I did on Airtable is you can create forms on Airtable that feed the answers directly into your database. And so I actually saved the link to a form to my iPhone home screen. So it kind of like looks like an app and it is just an Airtable form where I can drop in ideas. So what's really cool is when I'm on the go and I have an idea, I can just click this button on my home screen, type in my idea really quickly, and it's going to get added to Airtable. So that piece of the puzzle is really helpful just to know that I'm capturing these ideas all in one single place. Now when it comes to deciding what I'm actually going to like record and outlining, I feel like I have finally mastered. the like actual outlining process to make it super simple. In fact, I'm doing a little bit of a batch right now of podcast episodes before maternity leave. And I outlined nine, maybe it was nine episodes in 17 minutes. And that was absolutely the fastest I've ever done this. And the largest amount I've probably ever outlined all at once. And it was 100 percent because the setup works with my brain. And I know I'm talking through something like Airtable and something technical verbally, so we're just going to do our best to, uh, make it make sense for, you know, through audio. Uh, but I can always do maybe a YouTube video when I'm back from maternity leave, if this is something you'd be interested in actually like visually seeing. But in Airtable, you can of course view your information like a table or like how you're used to seeing it within Airtable. Airtable also has this feature called Interfaces, um, which is a way I really like to view, uh, information when I'm going to be writing something because you can really see a lot more information. It almost makes it feel like more of a form and I have really enjoyed it. So I have an interface that shows everything in my pipeline for the podcast and I, uh, Have it organized really beautifully. Um, I will try to include screenshots if I remember in the blog post that comes with this podcast episode. So maybe that will help. Um, but the cool thing that ultimately matters, like whether it's an interface and how it's structured doesn't necessarily matter. The part that matters is that there's one section for each piece of content that's just outline and it is plain text. And like, so Simple. And it really allows me to pop in and loosely outline a podcast episode without getting caught up in the like formatting. So when I'm going to record some podcast episodes or plan, I'm not having to like go into Google drive and find a document and duplicate a document and name the document and put it in a folder and then open it up and then go into there and go to the outline and then mess with like bullet points and all this kind of stuff, which for me. Just adds steps, adds time, and adds opportunity to overthink. Whereas in Airtable, like, the idea was already dropped in here, so all I had to do was assign it a date and a status, pop in here, there's already a section that says outline, and because there's like very little formatting options permitted, I can just pop in here and like, type up, the actual thoughts in my head without feeling this pressure for it to be like perfectly formatted or like fully written out. My favorite way to prep for podcasting is to have a very, very high level structure. So like this episode I'm recording, for example, one, two, three, four, five. I have five little lines where it's like, Why I like podcasting, how I keep the planning simple, and then like the next three things I'll talk about. And it's like, that's it. It's just like the point. It's not my entire thought process. It's not a script. And so I think that partnership of how I plan is super helpful for me to prevent perfectionism and to prevent overthinking and over planning. Um, so I'm able to just pop in, come in here quickly, brain dump some thoughts and move on to the next thing. It also means when I sit down to record that I'm not like overthinking a script, but I can still stay on track. Topic and it's this really nice sweet spot. So if you find yourself spending a lot of time scripting out your podcast episodes or overthinking the content within your podcast or maybe potentially having no outline, wherever you fall in that spectrum, this has been a really nice sweet spot for me where it's like A handful of bullet points. I'm not worried about formatting. No one else is ever going to see it. And it allows me to pop in and do the prep work that's necessary before I hit record. So when I'm looking at this interface right now, like literally I have it pulled up as I record every episode, I can see the topic. I'm not worried about the title. Not worried about that yet, but I can see the topic. I can see the status. I can see when I think it's going to go live. That could change, especially when I'm batching. I may like move things around, but like. loosely when it might go live, I can also see if it's related to an offer. So like if there's a on demand training I have or an offer that's relevant, like I have an opportunity to identify that up front and then I get into more granular details and 99 percent of it is blank as I sit here to record. So like the Google drive folder, URL, the episode number, the final title, the description, the blog post meta description, the email subject line, like None of that is filled out because it doesn't need to be filled out until I get to that point in the process. And it actually doesn't serve me to do all of that before I sit down to record. So all that is here as I sit down to record is like the topic, the status, the date, the relevant offer, and my very simple like five bullet point. And that way of planning, this has been the key for me for podcasting in the season of life. And in particular, as I like prepare for episodes to go out during maternity leave, this flow has been such a godsend. So 100 percent love it. Airtable works for me. You could, of course, replicate this through any system, whether it's ClickUp or Notion or something else. So. The main thing for me is capturing ideas on the go and then having a way to loosely outline something where it doesn't trigger some perfectionism. So that's been huge. The next thing that I do to keep my podcasting process simple is the way I record. So overall, I do not edit my podcast. I will make an exception if I'm recording and my kid walks in or something, right? Like, I get a phone call, like there will be circumstances I truly cannot control that would require me to do some very high level editing, but I made a very conscious choice when I came back to podcasting and I came back to my business in the middle of 2023 that I wasn't going to waste time editing. I allow it to be a one take as much as possible. And sometimes it's really hard. to do that. Sometimes it's really easy to like want to restart. Um, I had a podcast episode go live at the beginning or like mid 2023. We actually did end up doing a couple of takes at the beginning and I forgot to edit them out. So I just got to love when that happens. Um, but I do my best to have the intention of like, what if I was just basically doing a live stream? This is just like, I'm on a call, I'm doing a live stream, we're recording and we're just like roll with the punches. And if I need to like re say something, or deal with something that's going on around me. I do my best to just roll with it. Um, you may, for example, hear my one year old crying in the background, but he is with his nanny. I know he's okay. So we're going to keep going and just hope it's not too loud in the background. Um, I may like get up and shut my door. And so there would be like, maybe potentially some minor editing to go and do that. So I'll go and do that right now. So this is like a rare exception where there is going to be like a 10 second pause I have to edit. You know what I mean? Hopefully I remember to actually edit that out because I'm recording this before my maternity leave. And there's a chance I will forget. Um, okay, so. Anyways, that's a great example of like the extent in which I allow for editing in this season of life. So from a recording standpoint and mentality, I try to do one take and just like roll with it. I try not to pause or restart or do like takes, because that's when I really found the process took ages for me is if I would do a lot of takes and like starting and stopping, because then I'd have to listen to the podcast in such detail when I'm editing that the editing process began to take forever. So when I'm recording, that's my mentality. And then also when I'm recording, I feel like I have really refined how I record to keep it as simple as possible. So if I'm at my desk, which I happen to be right now, I have a mic set up. That's just always set up on my desk. So like I have a microphone attached to a boom arm attached to a thing that can plug into my computer. It doesn't really matter in my mind, like what the actual tech is, but I have it set up. So if I'm going to record boom, it's there. I just plug it in. We're live. So I don't have to do any setup to physically record at my desk and I will record when I'm at my desk. I will record into a software called Descript. I Really enjoy Descript. It's not a perfect software. Nothing is But my main reason for liking it is that you can edit based on the transcript So when I do have pauses or I do something, it's really easy for me to like skim and find where I want to go to edit without necessarily having to like listen to the whole episode. But, I also really like this feature they have called, um, Studio Sound. Which actually, I should probably talk about this more in the editing piece, but whatever. I record into an app called Descript, which is great. It's straight on my computer and it allows the editing process, which I'll talk about more in a minute, to be, uh, super, super easy. It also really simplifies the publishing process. So when I'm at my desk and I'm recording, all I have to do is plug in my mic, open up Descript, and go. So that's super nice and simple. If I am recording on my phone, which I have been doing more and more lately, um, and probably will be doing more in the future as my life, um, As a mom of three with a newborn, it's probably going to be very little desk time in the coming months. Um, I actually got this incredible wireless microphone. So like you plug it into your, excuse me, you plug it into your phone and then the mic itself is like Bluetooth to what you plug into your phone. But, um, I will record just straight into the voice memo app on my iPhone. And is this microphone like, The highest level studio quality? No. But is it better than my headset? Yes. Is it better than a lavalier mic I've tried? Yes. Is it better than all the other like on the go easy options I've tried? Absolutely. So I'm obsessed with it. So I will, when I am not at my desk, whether I'm in my bed or on a walk or in the car or just like wherever, I do have this like wireless microphone. That I will just record straight into the voice memo app on my phone. And when I am done, I have a folder in my voice memo app, by the way, that's labeled for podcasts. So it's staying organized. I get I put the topic as the title and then I will air drop it to my laptop whenever I'm with my laptop again. And then when it's on my laptop, I can just put it in Descript. And there we go. So the editing publishing piece of the podcast, It just stays the same because it's all happening in Descript, but if I'm at my desk, I'll just record straight into Descript. If I'm not at my desk, I will record straight into my phone and I use this external mic that's been great. So I have really, really valued having two options in the past. I've really only had the option to record at my desk and struggled to find good on the go options that weren't like miserable to listen to. And I feel like I finally found a setup that works on the go that is so good for this season of life. Um, and I forgot to mention this, but I will put links beneath the, I'll put links in the show notes and the blog posts to any like tech or software that I'm mentioning, including that microphone, just so you can see my whole setup if you're curious. Okay, so we've talked about planning, we've talked about prepping to record, we've talked about recording. Now let's talk about editing and publishing. Like I mentioned, it's just me right now. I don't have an editor, I don't have a VA. It's me. So this part's super, super simple as well. And I use Descript for the editing. Like I started to talk about a few minutes ago, Descript has a feature called Studio Sound that is honestly the single best background removing. Tool that I have ever encountered in a video editor. I have tried premiere pro. I have tried basically every video editor and I've always found the background removing process more complicated or not as effective. I am shocked at how good studio sound is. Like there have been episodes where I was recording and like the, the like yard guys were blowing up. Literally mowing the lawn right outside my window or a dog was barking right next to my desk and it was able to, if not entirely, almost entirely, remove that without making my voice sound funny. Now, is it always that flawless? No. I have found when I'm using my external microphone and recording to my phone, um, you do have to be a little bit more careful with how much studio sound you apply. Like if you apply a hundred percent. Sometimes like when you laugh, it can sound a little, a little quirky. So I do kind of play with like, do how much do I want to apply studio sound? Is it like a hundred percent, 70%, something like that. But because I record with a no editing needed approach when I'm actually there editing, usually all I'm doing is applying studio sound and then like chopping off the blank. Space. What are words like dead air at the beginning and the end of the episode, nine times out of 10, that's all I have to do. Come in studio sound, chop off the beginning and the end done. Occasionally, like in this episode, I'll have to go in and like remove 10 seconds where I had to talk to the nanny or shut a door or do whatever. But because of the way I record the editing process is so, so, so simple. And because I'm using Descript to edit, when I do need the More complex editing, for whatever reason, it's super easy to do. I also really like that on certain episodes where I want to do timestamps, I can skim the transcript that Descript has automatically created to find timestamps. And I can search, right? So if I knew I wanted to do timestamps for this episode to highlight, like, how I simplify the editing process, When this episode is done and it's in Descript, I will be able to search for editing and see all the times where it knows I said the word editing and I can find that timestamp way faster than again trying to like listen to the episode. So I think by the way I record it and the software I'm using, I usually don't have to listen back to a full episode unless I want to. And if I do, I can listen back to it on like 2x, um, even 3x. So, I like that I have that option. Okay, last piece of the puzzle here of how I simplify it. Let's talk about publishing the podcast. Okay, so when it comes to publishing, Descript is great because it connects directly with a lot of popular platforms. In fact, let me look. It connects with YouTube, uh, some of these I don't even know what they are, so I'm not going to list them all, but the ones I know of, it connects to YouTube, Buzzsprout, Captivate, Google Drive, Hello Audio, Podbean, Podcast, Wistia, so many others. And so if you're using any of those to host your podcast, you can actually just publish straight from Descript to wherever you're putting this content. And so I use Buzzsprout to host my public podcast. I happen to use, um, I've been using hello audio for private podcasts. I'm actually in the process of switching my private podcast to Kajabi podcast, but that's neither here nor there. Since I use buzzsprout for my public podcast, which is what we're focused on here, I can actually just publish it straight from Descript to buzzsprout and it's already connected. It'll automatically add it and start processing. Then I can export a file to Google drive as well for like file management, like having Source file, but it's so easy. And so honestly, like once I've done my loose editing in Descript, I published it to Buzzsprout and I published it to Google drive. And then I'm basically done. And all I have to do is go into Buzzsprout and plug in, you know, any timestamps or show notes or the topic. but I keep it super, super simple. Um, right now, most of my podcast episodes do not have fully flushed out blog posts, keeping it very light and lean and just geared towards listening to the episode. But as my resources expand or based on the piece of content, sometimes I do like to have a fully flushed out blog post or like in this one, it might be good to have some screenshots or like extra links. So that might be kind of like a one off thing I add to this episode, but right now in this season of life, it's just kind of tricky for me to have fully flushed out blog posts for each podcast episode, but I still like to just have a blog post for each podcast episode. I've definitely gone through seasons where I. Didn't like right now every block every episode of this podcast does not have a blog post Because I went through a period of time where I just removed that from my process and like guess what it's fine We all we all survived those episodes still get listened to uh, but I do like the idea of them having a blog post and kind of giving People an opportunity to go to my website to see everything but because I use buzzsprout to host my podcast Technically my podcast has a website through buzzsprout already You So there is already that there. It's just not giving my website like extra views and stuff, but I kind of don't care about that. And this season we're doing things real simple, very intentional, very purposeful right now. So those are the things I do to keep podcasting simple. It's really about learning how your brain works, learning where you get stuck in the process and trying to come up with a flow that. removes the resistance points and maximizes the parts that work really well for you. So again, for me, I need to capture ideas on the go and I need to not overthink things before recording. I need the pre recording process to be like as crazy simple as possible. I need to then record, edit, and publish in a way that is not about perfectionism. That is allowing me to just show up authentically, stay on track while also allowing my intuition to guide the conversation and to flush the details out. And then of course, just like the systems and tech to make the logistics easy while I am a solopreneur in particular. So I hope this was helpful, whether you're starting a podcast or have a product, have a podcast and just want to find ways to simplify it. Like I said earlier, links to everything will be below. And if you are looking to start a podcast or grow your podcast or use a podcast to connect with your dreamy high ticket, private coaching clients, or just high ticket clients in general, then you would love my program. Get visible. It's an on demand training where you get instant access to a lot of Uh, a five part training series that's going to guide you through not only the mindset of being comfortable getting visible, but also my exact content strategy for how to speak to your dream clients in a way that actually attracts to them and helps you stand out, how to make sure the content you are creating is really resonating with your dream clients and building that critical know, like, and trust for them to trust you to invest thousands of dollars in working with you privately or in a high ticket capacity. And my exact content strategy for how to like actually come up with not only what platforms to focus on, but, and one of them that we talk about is for sure podcasting, but what, what platforms to focus on for you as well as the actual like content, like, what do I talk about and how do I know what to talk about and what goals do my pieces of content need to have, things like that. So you should check out, get visible. If any of this is resonating with you, the link to that will be. In the show notes of this podcast or in the blog post, this program is something I absolutely love, love, love, whether you do private coaching or you have maybe more scaled group coaching offers or just high ticket offers in general, get visible will be so helpful for you because it is a content strategy. It is a visibility strategy specifically geared towards those who are doing higher ticket offers. We're not talking necessarily about like, um, I mean, it would work for lower ticket offers, but I think it's really special because it is addressing, attracting high ticket, dreamy clients specifically. So again, you can find the link to that in the show notes. And if you enjoyed this episode, I would love to hear from you. Send me a DM on Instagram at simplify with Megan, or share this episode on Instagram stories and tag me. Mention me on threads or send me an email or even better leave a rating and a review so that everyone else can know. I hope that you love this podcast and that this is helpful and I just so appreciate you for listening and I will see you in the next episode. Bye.