"Veteran podcast creator and strategist Eric Nuzum distills a career’s worth of wisdom, advice, practical information, and big-picture thinking to help podcasters “make noise”—to stand out in this fastest of fastest-growing media universes."
A beneficial habit I've adopted is to read a book on any topic I get involved in. Because I started a podcast and want it to succeed, I figured reading a book on the subject is a good way to start.
You should be able to describe a unique show concept in 10 words or less
I took a stab at this for my podcast and asked 10 friends to help me generate ideas as well.
Here are some of my attempts:
Bottom line: it is difficult and important to concisely encapsulate your show concept in an easily communicable sentence.
Podcast creators should ask themselves "Why are my listeners listening?"
What effect do I want to have on my listeners?
What is my customer avatar?
Four-Pointed-Circle
I want to inspire 'ambitious' people to take the necessary actions to increase the probability of them reaching their ambition. I want each episode to leave people hungry and inspired. I want to uninstall the false belief that most success stories are written off to genius, talent, or luck. I want people to realize how much they are capable of by demystifying glorified success. I want to humanize founders and investors as just people with work ethics, thick skin, and ideas. I want listeners to be bold, take action, overcome analysis paralysis, learn from mistakes of interviewees, and get a sense of what is possible by hearing the stories of others. I want our show to foster development of productive beliefs and lead people to unlearn unproductive beliefs.
I want listeners to think of our show as a place to turn when feeling low on energy and motivation. Episodes should be reliable sources of inspiration to get back in the proper mindset and headspace.
So many people in society tell you what you want to hear. I want to be "tough love" and what you need to hear.
I want to truthfully depict lessons in entrepreneurship and success.
I want to encourage deep and thoughtful introspection about where are listeners are in life, why they are there and equip them with stories, books, lessons, and tools they can and should consider when thinking about how to get to where they want to be next.
"Your aspiration should not be to keep them from getting bored while folding laundry"
How long should my episodes be?
"A podcast should be as long as it needs to be, but no longer"
"Almost every podcast can be improved by editing to tighten and clarify what happens"
"Its worth the time it takes to pick up pacing where it needs it, take out the dead weight, and get rid of what doesn't really work"
TLDR: Don't fixate on writing perfect question, doing all the research, and building rapport. Just be genuinely curious about learning more about the subject/ person and let that natural curiosity be visible.
Interviews are a means to tell stories.
Only ask questions that you don't know the answer to (except to provide context/clarification).
Your goal as the interviewer is to do as little of the talking as possible.
In some instances, the awkward silences indicate to your guests that they should keep talking. Often nuggets of wisdom come from these moments.
A great way to do as little of the talking is just by interjecting short prompts such as "such as." The purpose of follow up questions like this is called "turning the jewel." Asking for examples and more details often leads to guests revealing new "angles" of themselves or their ideas.
Making the guest feel comfortable is more important than trying to build artificial rapport.
All effort spent editing is worthwhile--even if its very time consuming.
It should never be obvious that edited audio is edited.
How To Think Going Into Interviews
The rules of storytelling are time-tested (and lindy for the Taleb fans among us)--don't ignore them.
How to make sure that something is interesting (3 steps)