I have been a podcast listener for about 10 years now. I don’t even remember how I found out about it, all I know that I discovered, I bought an iPod nano and since then I have been wearing my iPod as an extension of my body.

2018 is my year of podcasting

Creating a podcast has been in the back of my mind for years, but I didn’t want to do it unless I was willing to put the time into it. This year, 2018, was the year where the circumstances in my life were such that I had the space to devote to podcasting.

Why podcasting?

Almost everyone I admire is a writer, a speaker, or a podcaster.

I am satisfying my writing itch by writing every week on my blog.

I am satisfying my speaking itch by speaking every week at my local club Toastmasters.

And now, I am satisfying my podcasting desire by podcasting every week.

I love communicating with people and now I have all these different mediums to communicate. My message is personal finance and entrepreneurship and how to improve people’s lives. I feel that every week, through my diligence, my message gets spread to more and more people.

At the moment of this writing, I have done 52 interviews, I publish one per week, so now I can say I have one year’s worth of podcasting experience and thus, here I am writing about what is it like to record 52 episodes.

Podcasting is improving my public speaking

It’s been four years since I have been a member of McGill Toastmasters, my public speaking club. I have done a lot of speeches and I have improved a lot since my first speech where my voice broke, my throat swelled up and my eyes were crying.

Now I speak with more confidence, but still, I can see that there is a long way to go before I can call myself a speaker.

Podcasting has given me that extra motivation and extra space to continue improving. Sometimes I record an introduction 10 times before I feel satisfied. This constant repetition, this effort to have the right voice intonation is what is taking my speaking to the next level.

I get to speak to interesting people outside of my narrow circle of friends

I have recorded 52 episodes so far, all of them have been with people who I found interesting and who have accomplished something remarkable. So far, everyone is an author, a leader in some sector of the economy, an expert in one domain or another.

For example, I spoke with:

• The CEO of Nest Wealth, Canada’s best robot adviser;
• A vegan bikini champion;
• An expert in body language,
• A British female bodyguard,
• A money manager who manages 20 billion dollars.

What are the chances that I will find people like that in my everyday life? Close to zero, but with podcasting, it’s a weekly occurrence.

It’s not expensive

If you are dead broke, you can start a podcast with as little as $5 per month for audio hosting. Your audio files have to be kept somewhere on the internet. That somewhere is your hosting company, I recommend Libsyn. Once your audio files are uploaded, they can be accessed by anyone in the whole world.

To record the audio, you can talk right into your computer’s microphone or your Android phone. Once the audio is recorded, you upload it and that’s all, your audio file is accessible to the whole world.

If you can afford to spend some more money, you can buy a microphone for about $100.

My set up is a Libsyn account, a $100 microphone, and free audio editing software called Audacity.

It can be as easy or as difficult as you want it to be

All you need is 15 minutes. Without counting the time spent talking to the microphone, you can upload and publish an episode in 15 minutes.

However, if a person wants their podcast to become popular and be shared by friends, family, and the general public, then they will have to put a lot more time into creating a good quality product.

Scripting the show could take a few hours, Finding guests and communicating with the guest could also take a few hours. Then the recording itself, the editing to ensure high quality, the publishing of the notes, and finally the promotion, all that could take many hours.

In my case, it can easily take 10-12 hours to research, record, edit, publish, and promote each episode. Besides, my mind is constantly occupied on how to do a better podcast.

I can talk for as long or as little as I want to

There are no rules about the length of a podcast. Some people do an inspirational podcast that is only 2 minutes long. There is a guy who speaks about history and his podcast episodes are as long as 4 hours each. My podcasts are generally one-hour long.

I chose the subject I want to talk about

My podcast is about personal finance and entrepreneurship, but the diversity of podcasts is immense. If you take a quick look into Apple Podcast, you will see podcast about any imaginable subject. Comedy, business, news, literature, history, so on and so forth.

It motivates me to read more

Since my podcast is based on interviews, and I interview many authors, some of them, out of generosity send me a free paper book on the mail. I also get many digital copies, sometimes weeks before their books are available in the stores.

When I am interviewing someone and I haven’t read their books,  I go to Amazon and read the free chapter of the book.

I find that to be a good interviewer I have to be well-read. Regardless of where my reading comes from, I make it a point to read one hour per day.

I will take this opportunity to thank some of the authors who have sent me their paper books.

• Elizabeth Fournier  author of “The Green Burial Guidebook”
• Cait Flanders author of “The Year of Less”
• Julian Haber author of “Gigonomics”
• Jonathan Clements author of “From Here to Financial Happiness”

ps. if you are an author and would like me to review your book, send me a message.

It has improved my social skills

One of the most valuable skills I have learned is the skill of listening. I have to be attentive to what the guest is saying and ask relevant follow-up questions.

The second best skill is how to ask questions. It’s normal that on an interview podcast, the host asks the questions and the guest answers them, but to ask relevant questions, in a way to make the flow of the conversation smooth and relevant to the audience, that requires some practice and skill.

Asking for interviews. Many of us are too shy to ask for things that others would be happy to say yes. How many times I didn’t ask a girl out because I was too shy to ask only to find out later that she would have been happy if I would have asked. Now, I am breaking out of my shyness shell and asking for things I wouldn’t normally ask for.

I am the boss

I don’t have to ask permission from anyone. I can do my podcast as I want to when I want to. I can talk about anything I want. All I have to do is pay the $15 US to Libsyn for hosting and that’s it.

If I want to grow my podcast, my listeners are the boss. I would have to post regularly, keep the content interesting, and keep the good audio quality. My listeners will tell me with the number of downloads per episode whether I am doing a good job or not.

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