Lessons from starting a Podcast
12 min readMar 29, 2021
I started a Mandarin podcast in Taiwan 12/2020, about 3 months ago. It’s been a huge learning curve but super rewarding and fun journey! I’ve recorded more than 23 episodes and have 12 published so far with a modest 140K listens, I have many things to learn but I really enjoyed the process/struggles, and am proud of the impact it has had so far :)
This writing will detail my motivation, the process and my learnings. I’m hoping this can be encouraging and helpful for those who want to start one and connect and learn from those already doing amazing things in the podcasting community!
Why I started a podcast (Motivation)
- Depth — I was meeting a lot of amazing people in Taiwan from all over the world coming back to as COVID refugees like myself. I found the conversations at normal social settings rather surface level and unfulfilling. I was craving in-depth conversations to really get to know and learn from people I found fascinating and inspiring.
- Scale — I wanted to find ways to give back to communities in Taiwan and people who were curious about my career learnings from the states. I did a few career talks and joined a mentorship program that were awesome but I quickly realized that it didn’t scale. I could only reach 1–60 people at a time, Podcasting was a better way to scale any impact I’d hope to have.
- Overcoming — I disliked my monotone voice, my unclear annunciations and wasn’t confident in any of my speaking skills. I did weekly toastmasters for 4years in New York to practice public speaking, but stage time is limited for consistent and high volume practice needed to improve drastically. Podcasting was a way for me to practice and confront my insecurity on speaking skills and my voice.
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How I started a Podcast (Technical)
- Think of your core value first — What do you want your podcast to do? What do you want your listeners to feel and learn? The name & art work can follow after. I named mine ‘Left Side Escalator” because I wanted something that linked to personal growth (In Taiwan’s MRT, people stand on the right side; the left side is reserved for those who want to walk/run ahead of the crowd), a symbolism to self improvement or getting ahead faster that can be easily linked to Taipei’s daily life. (Though I later learned which side of the escalator to stand on is actually a controversial topic! and I many mean comments because of it! Oops sorry! 😅)
- Focus only on shipping the MVP, your first episode — So many things go into making that first episode from scratch. Show flow, guest to invite, list of questions, finding the location and equipment, and learning how to use the equipment properly. Don’t let it overwhelm you, focus on figuring the first domino (episode) out and the rest will naturally follow in place. When I found a studio and interviewed my first guest Yvon, I didn’t even have a cover photo. Luckily she snapped a quick photo of herself taking the left side of the escalator and sent it to me on her way to the recording jokingly — which eventually became my cover art!
- Post production is so hard — The style and skeleton of your podcast isn’t quite established when just starting, you can spend a lot of time just trying to figure out what content to keep and how to order topics. Another thing that was hard for me was deciding how much of the filler words you want to remove for the balance of sounding clean and natural. You also need to find music for the intro and ending, I found mine here. Editing my first took at least 30 hours. Learning different softwares (garage band & Descript) and listening to it again and again and moving things around and what not. Out of all the editing software I tried, I like Descript the most!
- Marketing — After setting up your basic social media accounts (FB page, IG page, FB fan group). The best marketing tool for podcasts is word of mouth and finding your TA and reaching out to them directly. My first guest Yvon was a well known designer in Taiwan’s designer circles. She generated a lot of traffic on her own when she shared it, and me posting in related FB groups for designers in Taiwan helped a lot too. We were able to break into the top 100 first week of launching which surprised me (novelty plays a factor here, the hard part is maintaining a ranking in the top list, we always fall in and out, any tips appreciated here :)
- Picking a Hosting Platform: You need a hosting platform to take your audio and metadata and automatically publish to all major listening platforms such as Apple, Spotify and Google. There are so many mature hosting products to choose from. If you are building a podcast locally say for Taiwan, it’s beneficial to plug into the local community of hosting services for more integrated features, tighter collaborations…etc. I used Anchor because that’s what was recommended from friends and the only one I knew. If starting over, I probably would’ve chosen Firstory for their richer set of features and responsive customer service. Switching platforms can be costly if not done correctly so pick wisely! After your episode airs, you can see listeners data on the backend such as location, demographic, listening platforms, gender, age that can help you inform future decisions. Submitting an episode is as easy as uploading your audio and click save, everything else is done for you behind the scenes — pretty straight forward!
- Manually listing your podcast — There are lots of other podcast listening platforms that aren’t integrated and require manual listing such as KKBOX or SoundOn. You simply copy the RSS url from your hosting platform and submit it on each of their websites. MixerBox is an interesting one where someone from their staff has to list your podcast. It’s a powerful listening platform with a ton of listeners (in Taiwan), we were featured once on Spotify and it gave us a 5k boost, we were featured on MixerBox and got a 100K boost, crazy stuff!
Learnings
- The first episode is always the hardest. Get it over with, and the second episode will be 10x easier, third episode 100x easier and so on and so forth.
- Being resourceful — I learned a lot of things but mostly I asked for a ton of help. I first reached out to people who are already doing great things in the industry to get their advice. I learned a ton from Emily co-founder of “Ghost Island Media”, Nana from “童話裡都是騙人的”, Tian Chen from “不爽你來當PM”, and Jeremy from “中年維基”. I realized once you ask, 90% of the people will generously help, thank you! Listeners from the internet even volunteered to help me with social media posts because they liked my content. I got design help from Duffy from “設計大排檔” with the album art image and recording studio/equipment. Below is from left to right my original terrible design, better design thanks to Duffy, and the recording studio I go to Sound Moon Apartment
- Genuineness — What I’ve learned over time is my speaking skills might never get to that point where I hope it to be, but as long as I’m speaking from the heart and willing to be genuine and vulnerable, it’s more likely to resonate — sometimes perhaps even more than if I were to become very polished.
- Best way to be a better interviewer is to be a better listener — asking better questions is more about listening than speaking. By listening intent-fully, your guest will feel respected, heard and more comfortable sharing their life openly with you. Preparation is also important so you can be fully present without needing to think what next question to ask. If you are distracted, your guest will subconsciously sense it and less likely to invest in the conversation. Don’t dictate the conversation, if your guest wants to go deep into a topic, encourage it, shut up and listen. You can always edit parts out later. Allowing your guest to speak freely will help unlock the most precious treasure hidden in the depth of each topic, rather than breadth of many topics.
- Vulnerability — The feedback I’ve gotten from listeners is often they really like the parts where the guest or I am able to show vulnerability — it helps the listener really connect and relate with the speaker on a deeper human level. When Yvon, mom of 2 twins talked about how her trouble with pregnancy affected her career and mental health; when Sean talked about how his first breakup crushed him but taught him to be more independent and responsible for his own happiness; When the DoDoMen Eric and Ian shared how scary it was to quit their lucrative jobs to become full time YouTubers; When successful founder & CEO James talked about him getting laid off and his failed start up story in China; And more recently, when Cloe shared the heartfelt pain of losing her closest family member and finding the courage and source of love after. These are the parts that really connect the audience with your guest and brings out the strongest and best side of them to shine and inspire ✨
- Feedback is a gift — The most valuable thing you can get from listeners is feedback, keep asking for it. After my first episode aired, I noticed a lot of listeners asked about the books we talked about when I asked what they liked about the podcast — this later informed my marketing strategy to do book giveaways on social media using books the guest mentioned in each episode. Not only is this the best RIO of marketing budget, it also feels great gifting listeners books they can learn from and are super happy to receive! Spending money where your values and core strength of the show are. The books strategy also landed me sponsors from book publishers seeing my platform as a credible source for book recommendations.
- Be patient — it’ll take a while to find your style, you might sound terrible in the beginning like me. But you have to just keep doing it to find out what works and what doesn’t. I’ve been kindly told my interviewing skills improved quite a bit compared to from the beginning, and I personally felt the difference too! If you don’t have a lot of listeners in the beginning, its okay! Keep iterating, find your style and stick to it! The word of mouth network effects compounds quickly— you’ll never know what day you’ll get your big break.
- Outsource — It takes a team to produce and promote a good show. It might take a bit of investment, but it’s worth it over the long run to delegate the day to day and focus on improving the show. I started off doing everything myself, recording, editing, social media...etc because I wanted to learn how things were done. I know I needed help and couldn’t do this alone, so I found people who were way more skilled and experienced at these things than I was, so I can focus on the bigger picture.
- Fuck Perfection — Nothing you do will ever be perfect, nor should it be. If you needed perceived perfection to do anything, you’ll waste too much time and might not even be doing the right thing, or you will never get it done. Get that scrappy first episode done, muster the courage to put it out there, shamelessly promote it, gather as much feedback as you can and improve. I rather be perfectly imperfect than imperfectly perfect, I rather fail courageously and look like a fool than never trying at all. Much easier to figure it out as you go, and understand done is better than perfect! Listening to my first episode gives me goose bumps because of all the imperfections I now see glaringly — but none of the learnings would’ve came hadn’t I put it out there first. Just do it.
Conclusion
My original goal was to just connect with people I liked on a deeper level regardless of having an audience. What I didn’t realize is podcasting is also a platform to allow me to reach out to people I might not personally know well yet and have a chance to dive right into a meaningful and epic dialogue.
Making a podcast takes quite a bit of work but can be super rewarding! There are so many layers (preparation, execution, post production, promotion) to master. Even if no one listens to it, just the process of creating a podcast is enriching enough for me to keep it going. After 3 months, recording 23 episodes, publishing 12 of them with 140K listens. I learned how to be a better listener, the value of genuineness and vulnerability, and how to ask for help and gather feedback. Most importantly I can embrace my imperfection, confront my insecurities and enjoy the process. I cannot wait to continue on this journey to learn more from the guests and listeners. I want to make the best show I can and also grow to be the best version of myself.
I have a lot to learn and am very early on this journey. Writing this is a good way for me to consolidate and organize my learnings and short comings. I hope to find inspiration and ideas, learn from the community in order to improve. Any feedback on this writing or my podcast is welcomed and appreciated 🙂
If you’re curious about my podcast (its in Mandarin), you can find it here
IG: https://www.instagram.com/leftsideescalator.jacky/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/LeftSideEscalator.Jacky/
Apple: https://tinyurl.com/nkzxjy7s
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0F5GELsYPlFggJQKkF7Lja
KKBOX: https://tinyurl.com/yx9wfy8n
Google: https://tinyurl.com/9d6947hx
Medium: https://leftsideescalator-jacky.medium.com/
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