Setting up a podcast from scratch
By: Jason Knight
Tags: Podcast, Product Management, How To

Setting up a podcast from scratch

Tips and tricks from a hobbyist learning on the job

Neck bones optional

I hate my voice. We all hate our voices, but I really hate my voice. I remember many years ago doing a Spanish degree via the Open University. Learning a language by distance learning is obviously tricky, given the strong benefits of face-to-face communication and immersion, but we used the technology as best we could. Oral assignments were recorded and sent in to be graded, which meant I had to hear myself talking a lot. I did not enjoy one single minute.

Which is why it feels weird, even to me, that I recently started a podcast focusing on Product Management & Tech. The idea came to me kind of out of nowhere, but in many ways seems a natural extension of my general desire to learn from, and teach, people with different experiences from me. So, in true Lean fashion, and to paraphrase my namesake Phil Knight, I just did it. Here are some of the things I’ve learned, in case you want to dip your toe in the water too!

First things first, choose a show format and write some spiel

There are lots of types of podcast out there. I enjoy many of them, but I tend to personally enjoy podcasts with a semblance of personality (but not too much… I don’t need pow! pow! enthusiasm.. too British for that). A couple of my favourite podcasts recently have been What You Will Learn and Talking Sopranos. These are both completely different experiences, but share a common theme of a couple of friends having an open, informal chat about stuff they’re interested in. I initially decided to go down this route but also wanted to focus on hearing a variety of stories, so decided to pivot slightly into having an open, informal chat with a variety of people — i.e. the interview format.

After that, pick a name that speaks to you and the values of what you’re trying to achieve, come up with a pithy description (just a paragraph will do). This description is your value proposition and reason to listen. Make it good, or at least not terrible.

People want to speak to you! But, try to get a queue

I put out a call to action on LinkedIn asking for people to interview. I have a reasonable list of followers on LinkedIn, but I was expecting maybe 1 or 2 people to be interested — after all, who the heck am I? Do I even have any listeners?

I was blown away by the response. A couple of dozen people expressed interest and even started booking slots. I had to set up a Calendly account. I’ve arrived!

I was keen to get a queue of people and start getting some recordings down — I didn’t want to have 2 episodes and be done. I started scheduling stuff and getting ready to speak to people.

Buy a good enough microphone and headphones, and learn how to use them

Say hello to my little friend

No one wants to listen to a podcast that sounds like it was recorded on two tin cans. I immediately repaired to Amazon to buy a condensing mic (with a pop shield!) and some balanced headphones. This is important — you ideally want a quality, directional mic and some Goldilocks headphones that aren’t too bassy or too light.

It’s important to get used to handling your equipment too. To start with, I was recording underneath my desk with a towel over the gap to try to reduce echo. A few cricked necks later I realised this was overkill — you’ll need to do a bit of practice with mic placement, tone of voice, rooms. You don’t want echoes! But also, you’re not recording vocals for a bestselling audio book, so don’t obsess over it. Just try to get some of the basics covered so that you’re broadly happy with how it sounds.

Get some music and some art to at least look half professional

I can’t draw particularly well. I can play a few musical instruments and know the fundamentals of how to put music together on a computer, but I’m not really the guy to write you a song. Luckily, places like Fiverr are full of people who are really good at this stuff! For a couple of bags of coppers, and a frankly a pathetically vague spec from me, I was furnished with art and some music that blew me away.

Work out how you’re going to record

In COVID times, we’re not sitting in a studio with other speakers, it’s all remote. Maybe I’ll have to worry about studios (and extra equipment) one day, but for now there are two simple choices: record everything manually or use a platform. Long story short, I’m too stupid to set it all up properly so I used Zencastr to record. The free tier is audio only (but that’s fine since I was originally stuck under a desk) but one thing I love about the platform is that it’s all browser-based, and also you get separate tracks. What this means is that if the other party has a slightly different sound set up, you can post-process separately. If everything is in one track, your options are rather more limited.

Record for longer than you need

I decided to aim for a 30-minute episode. I actually prefer podcasts to be longer than this personally (as I listen to them on long runs) but I didn’t want to overburden either my guest or my listeners. The first couple of recordings I did were pretty much 30 minutes’ worth of material on the nose. Success! Right?

Wrong — record more than you need. This means you can edit out any nonsense / false starts. Also, if anything just didn’t work (dud question or difficult response) you can just chop it out. You want it to be a natural conversation, but you can still edit it. Worst case scenario, you have a slightly longer episode of killer content.

Errs, Ums and ahs, pauses and stops

I will say that one of the biggest, most sobering parts of your first listen back of a recording is how many filler words you use (or certainly that I use). To some extent this is fine — again, this is a conversation not a pre-prepared speech. However, one thing that I have definitely learned is to try to separate your parts of speech as much as possible. And also, if you flub something, or your guest does, it’s totally fine to redo it — but redo it properly! Stop, reset, start again — like you see in bloopers from films.

This is really important because if you just try to recover on the fly and save it, this might work in a live conversation, but it makes it really, really hard to save it in the edit. If you find yourself going down a blind alley, if someone flubs a word, or if you just want to do it again, do it again. No one will know — your secret is safe via the edit. Make it easy for yourself.

Don’t listen back immediately

Good recording or bad recording, it doesn’t matter — give it time before you go back to it. Obviously, you’ve got a vested interest in this stuff, but try to approach it cold and be as analytical as possible.

Editing.. don’t go overboard

I’m actually pretty comfortable working with sound in programs like Audacity (there are others, but Audacity is freeeee). Others may be less comfortable, and there are more turnkey solutions out there (or even our friends at Fiverr might be able to help us out). However, for me it all boils down to doing the basics.

Have a listen through — make sure you’re happy with the content at all

Have a listen through again — start chopping out stuff that’s just rubbish — all the flubs we were talking about, but also any sections that you don’t think worked (you did record more than you needed, right?) … again, this is easier if you get used to getting good separation so that phrases and sections are easy to identify and prune if required.

Have a listen through… again! Make sure you’re happy with the flow, the content, and the storytelling thread from start to finish.

You’ll probably iterate through the second and third points several times. The most important thing is not to worry too much about the audio quality as such…. that comes later.

Processing — not too much, not too little

Do podcasts have cowbells?

I’m not a sound engineer, but again, I’ve got the basics. As mentioned before, I like to record separate tracks so I can process them separately. There are plenty of articles out there telling you how to do this stuff, and I’m quite likely doing it all wrong, but for me it boils down to the following:

Use compression (I aim for threshold of about -16dB) to basically even out the volume of the track so you don’t have too many massive shifts in volume

(I aim for threshold of about -16dB) to basically even out the volume of the track so you don’t have too many massive shifts in volume High-pass filter (I go around 80Hz) … there’s no human voice below this range, so you’re just removing unwanted noise

(I go around 80Hz) … there’s no human voice below this range, so you’re just removing unwanted noise Low-pass filter (I go around 5KHz) … there’s no human voice above this range, so… well, like I said above.

(I go around 5KHz) … there’s no human voice above this range, so… well, like I said above. EQ —this isn’t really one size fits all, it depends on the quality of the recording (your and theirs) but I normally try to boost between 100Hz-400Hz and 1.6KHz to 4KHz. This seems to work OK but if someone’s got a really bassy voice, or a really tinny microphone, you may need to tweak.

—this isn’t really one size fits all, it depends on the quality of the recording (your and theirs) but I normally try to boost between 100Hz-400Hz and 1.6KHz to 4KHz. This seems to work OK but if someone’s got a really bassy voice, or a really tinny microphone, you may need to tweak. Loudness Normalisation — I normally aim for -16 or -18 LUFS depending on the track. I don’t really want to see the overall track peak much above -6dB

Stick it all together, pick a platform and just release it

Stick your music on the front, if you have any, or just record a pithy intro and stick it on. Give it another listen for luck. Make sure you’re happy with it, but don’t obsess over every syllable.

Make sure you remember a release form! I thought this was a bit officious up front but there are tales online of people not doing this and either a guest takes off, or the podcast takes off, and it all gets messy. There are plenty of templates online, and free tiers at places like SignRequest that allow you to just get this unpleasantness out of the way.

Then just pick a platform. I use Podbean as it’s simple. It hosts your audio and handles sending to all the major platforms (iTunes, Google Podcasts, Spotify). There are plenty of other platforms too, or you can just stick the files and make your own XML file (please don’t do that). A word to the wise — it takes forever to get your podcast approved onto these platforms. OK, so not forever, but longer than I expected (and I’m looking at you, Google).

There’s no better feeling as a budding podcaster than seeing your stuff listed on these sites. You’re a podcaster now!

Stop refreshing your stats and just enjoy it

I’m still learning! But, so far, podcasting has been an amazingly enjoyable experience for me. I’ve spoken to some great people, had some great conversations, learned a bit about them and a bit about me. It’s raised my profile and opened up subsequent conversations and initiatives that I hadn’t thought of. I would recommend trying! I’d love to know how you get on.

If you want to come chat to me for my podcast, or you’re just interested in podcasting in general, or just fancy a chat about anything, please feel free to add me on LinkedIn or Twitter, or send me an email on jason@oneknightinproduct.com — it’s good to talk!