Sunny Lenarduzzi: Today, I'm teaching you how to start a podcast,
and I'm bringing in a podcast pro who's racked up over 50 million downloads of his mega popular
show.
Stay tuned for that and my own major announcement.
Sunny Lenarduzzi: Welcome to The Sunny Show, for the bright
side of being your own boss and building your own life.
Sunny Lenarduzzi: Hey boss.
I'm Sunny Lenarduzzi and, before we dive into how to start your podcast, you may have guessed
that this is my sneaky way of announcing that The Sunny Show podcast is live.
Yay!
We're all very excited.
It is up and live, and we would love your support, if you could go subscribe, rate,
and review it.
The link to do so is below and I would really appreciate the support of my fellow amazing
bosses.
Now let’s get into the details of how to start your podcast.
Now, I turned to an expert on the topic, an absolute podcast pro, a friend, and a mentor
who taught me everything that I needed to know to get The Sunny Show podcast up and
running.
Mr. Pat Flynn.
Pat Flynn is a father, husband, and entrepreneur who owns several successful online businesses.
He's a Wall Street Journal bestselling author, and host of the Smart Passive Income, and
Ask Pat podcasts, which have earned a combined total of over 50 million downloads, multiple
awards, and features in publications such as The New York Times and Forbes.
And a fun side note, it's kind of like Pat and I have switched places.
Pat actually just launched his own YouTube channel and it's got lots of great tips for
bosses like you.
Head over there, tell him that Sunny sent you, and stay tuned until the end of this
video because Pat is generously offering free access to his free mini course, How to Start
a Podcast in 3 Days.
So, I'll give you the link and all the info for that at the end of the video.
Now without further ado, the master of podcasting himself, Mr. Pat Flynn.
Pat Flynn: Hey.
Thank you, Sunny, for that amazing introduction.
I'm super stoked to be here.
And hello to the fellow bosses out there.
Really excited to be talking about podcasting.
It's become a passion of mine over the years.
I've been podcasting since 2010.
So, let's just dive right into the content, and make sure you stick around because I've
got a lot of great stuff for you in this.
Now before I get into the how to, let's talk about why you should even get involved with
podcasts in the first place.
Three quick things.
Number one, it's growth.
There's a lot of opportunity for growth, and exposure, and listens in the podcasting space.
When you consider the numbers, there may be 500 million YouTube channels, just roughly.
When you consider podcasts, there are less than one million.
At least ... at the time of this recording, less than one million active podcasts out
there.
That's such a significantly less number, which, means there's a lot more room to get involved
in this space.
Now, the thing that holds true, no matter what platform you're on is that, the cream will
always rise to the top.
You gotta create great content, so make sure you consider that when you are creating a
podcast or when you're going to become a guest on another person's show.
You want to make sure you deliver because, no matter what, even though there's not as
many podcasts as there are YouTube channels and also blogs, you still need to do well,
and create great content, and provide value in order to be found and shared.
Number two, with podcasting, unlike any other medium, you are able to build a significantly
deeper audience.
Now, a lot of you may argue with me against that because with video obviously, you're
seeing a person's face, you're getting to understand their personality a little bit.
But the big reason why I say this and why I feel podcasting is, in my opinion, one of
the top platforms out there that you can be on, is because of the amount of time that
people are listening to you.
When you consider how much time a person may spend watching a video, it's just maybe ten,
fifteen minutes-
But with a podcast, people are listening sometimes for an hour or even two hours.
They're binge listening to shows.
Why are they doing that?
It's because you can passively consume this content.
I might be doing the dishes, or walking the dog, or doing a workout while I'm listening
to podcasts.
That's not stuff you can really do while watching a video.
Now, perhaps you could, but what about driving?
135 million commuters every single day travel alone in their car, which is just crazy in
terms of pollution.
But also, crazy in terms of the amount of time that they have to themselves where they
could be listening to your show.
With that amount of time and literally your voice in their ears, and it becomes a routine
for them, they're going to develop an amazing relationship for you.
They're going to trust you.
They're going to be feeling like you're their friend, and really, that's how it is.
I remember I was listening to a podcast once that stopped producing their podcasts, and
I felt like a part of my life was missing because they were literally a part of my life
at that point, and then they had to stop their show.
So, you can get the same kind of feeling when you create your podcast too.
And then number three, and finally, the big reason why you might want to start a podcast
is because of the level of authority that you can have.
Now, for a few reasons.
One, now you have a show where you can invite the on.
So that's one thing.
Number two, because they're hearing your voice, because you're coaching them through your
voice, because they are getting to know you, and your vibe, and your personality, if you
were to actually offer any coaching or an online course, or some sort of product, they're
going to trust you a little bit more because of that relationship and just how much you
are now a part of their lives.
So many benefits to podcasting.
I've had 50 million downloads, and I've done over a thousand episodes of all my shows so,
I'm stoked to be able to share this information to you.
So let's just get into the step by step.
What do y'all need?
How do you get started with a podcast?
Number one, first let's talk about equipment.
Equipment is obviously very important, and since it's an audio show, the most important
piece of equipment that you need to have is a great microphone.
Now, there's probably a thousand different kinds of microphones that you can use that
range between five bucks to thousands of dollars.
There's one mic in particular that I would recommend, and it's called the ATR 2100 by
Audio Technica.
It's great because it plugs in via USB.
Part of how I teach podcasting is trying to make it as simple as possible.
Yes, you could go broadcasting style with all these different boxes, and devices, and
limiters, and amplifiers, and blah blah blah blah.
You don't need all that stuff.
Make it simple for yourself.
Just start with that.
You can add on those other things later, which, to the naked ear, don't really matter at all.
Now, there's some other things here that you can see, like this little foam ball, or if
I pull this across, you can see this little, what's called a windscreen.
This reduces the plosives that you have.
Plosives are words like P words, and B words that, when you say those words, air kind of
jets out of your mouth.
That is not good for your audio and your microphone.
It might make the audio not very enjoyable to consume.
So that's why we have the foam ball or the windscreen.
Personally, I prefer the windscreen because it allows for that voice to stay more natural.
The foam ball may muffle a little bit, but most people ... Again, it doesn't really make
a difference.
Now, the thing you see here is called a shock mount, and this is really important because
this is what allows the vibrations from your table to be absorbed by these little rubber
bands and not absorbed into your microphone, and then get on your podcast.
So, there might be stuff that you can't even hear that would get picked up on the microphone
like the vibrations of your computer, your laptop, or other things.
It all gets picked up and absorbed in the rubber hands here that ... Literally, to spin
this microphone in mid air.
That's why you see this in a lot of professional broadcasting studios.
Number two, let's talk about your show details.
Maybe you've gotten that equipment ordered, you're waiting for it to come in, now's a
great time to think about your show details.
That is, what is the title of your show going to be?
What's it going to be about, obviously.
Also, the show description is really important.
Before anybody listens to your show, they see a few things.
They see the title, they read the description.
But guess what?
Even more important than that is the cover art or the podcast artwork because, people
see that before they even get into anything else.
Now, technically you need a piece of art that is 3000 by 3000 pixels.
Have it square, but also make sure that when you shrink it down, that it's also readable
because most people are flipping through their devices and, something that looks great at
a big size may not translate so well at a smaller size.
So, make sure it looks great when it's small as well.
Now that we've nailed our show details, let's talk about your episode details.
How are they going to be run?
What kind of episodes are they going to be?
Let's plan ahead a little bit to make sure that we're not just jumping into this and
then by the time we're creating content, we're kind of stuck.
So, it's always great to plan ahead.
What I would recommend is actually, list out your first 10 episodes.
Now, it's important to plan ahead because that gives you an idea of, okay, who should
I start reaching out to now, to ask for an interview?
How might I start doing research for some of these things that may require a little
bit more research?
Those kinds of things.
So, plan out your first 10 episodes.
That's going to help you quite a bit right at the start.
Now, it's also important to realize that iTunes is also a search engine.
A lot of people are going to be searching for information using the iTunes search engine.
And also, Sticher and Google Play.
Those are search engines as well, in addition to directories for these podcasts.
So, make sure that when you are creating these episodes, you're also considering for search
engine optimization.
What are the titles?
What keywords people might be typing in to find similar kinds of content.
That's going to help you get search.
And, that's not anything that you're going to see immediate results from.
But over the long term, that's something that's going to help out quite a bit.
All right, number four, let me give you a few tips for recording your show.
How do you actually capture your voice and mess around with the audio to create your
podcast episodes?
Well, you use a software tool like GarageBand or Audacity.
Those are free tools you can use to begin to capture your audio on your microphone,
to drag and drop music in, to drag and drop your interviews in, so on and so forth.
So, you can craft these episodes any which you want.
And that's the beauty of podcasting.
It's your show.
Be creative.
Do it any which way you want.
Do some test recordings and then export it, and listen to it, and see what it sounds like.
You might need to tweak your levels a little bit.
A recommendation for tweaking your levels ... That means, how loud or soft is your microphone?
And, if you want to ere on the side of safety, record a little bit softer than higher because,
when you go higher, if you clip, which means you go beyond what that mic and your computer
can handle, you're going to get distortion in your voice and in the sound.
That's just not a pleasant listening experience.
And final tip for you when you are recording is, to not try and record everything all in
one take, especially if you're doing a sole show.
It's very tempting to speak for a couple minutes and then mess up, and then want to start over.
No.
Do not do that.
Now, maybe I'm preaching to the choir here because you all know how to edit YouTube videos,
or most of you do.
It's very much the same process.
Typically, my episodes have dozens, and dozens, and dozens of cuts, slices, and tips, and
inserts, and drags, and drops, and all those kinds of things.
So, it's going to look really messy on the outside, but when it's exported as a MP3 file,
it's going to sound wonderful.
All right.
Number five, you need to tag it, which means you include metadata in it.
So, when a person plays it, it actually shows the correct show title, episode title, the
artwork is there, all that stuff.
It's embedded inside the file itself.
There are a lot of external tools that you can use to take that MP3 file and then embed
this stuff into it, but the way that I actually recommend is to drag and drop that MP3 file
into your iTunes.
Just create a little playlist, go into your library, drag and drop it in, right click
it and click on "get info."
And then, change it to a podcast.
That allows you to fill in all the forms.
That just puts all that content in there so that, when you take that MP3 file out of iTunes,
just drag and drop it to your desktop.
That's the final file that you're going to use to upload to your post, which is the next
step.
All right.
Step six, your media or audio hosting company.
You need to set yourself up with an account with a company like Libsyn or Buzzsprout ... and
there's several different others ... to host your audio files.
It can be very tempting to put your audio files on your website server, but that's very,
very dangerous because when a person plays that audio file, it eats up some bandwidth.
And so, you want to go and use these companies out there that are meant to play these things.
This is what happens, guys.
This is actually the big realization for me when I started out.
I thought that podcasting was, you create this MP3 file and then you upload it individually
into iTunes.
And then, you upload that into Stitcher, and then you upload it into Google Play, and that's
how it works.
That's actually not how it works.
The way it works is, you upload it to your host and that's where you put in the information.
And then Stitcher, iTunes, Google Play, Alexa, wherever.
They take the feed that media hosts create.
That feed is what these directories look at and check in to see if there's anything new.
If there's anything new, it just serves them up to anybody that subscribes.
So, a subscriber will subscribe to you via iTunes, for example, or the podcast app, and
that app will check your feed every day, or multiple times a day, to see if there are
any new episodes.
If there are, it's going to serve it up to you automatically.
That's the cool thing about podcasting.
When you create an episode, it gets pushed to that person, so when they open that app
the next time, they'll see a new episode in there and they're going to be listening to
you on the road and enjoying it, and having a great time.
So, you need to get set up with a host.
You can go through Libsyn.com, or Buzzsprout, or whichever one Sunny might recommend, and
go through there.
You'll need to set up your show and upload an episode there.
Once you upload an episode, you'll see that you'll be able to get your feed.
Your feed is this longer-ish URL.
That's the magic feed, you want to tattoo that on your arm because that's what you're
going to send out to those directories when you get up on iTunes, Stitcher, and Google
Play.
The final step here at number 7 is to submit your RSS feed to the directories you want
to be on, most likely iTunes, Stitcher, and Google Play.
Those are easy ones.
I'm sure they will be linked somewhere where you can get more information about actually
how and where to set this up.
But for iTunes specifically, because that's the big one, all you have to do is go to podcastsconnect.apple.com.
Once again, that's podcastsconnect.apple.com.
Just sign in with your Apple username.
Once you're there, it's going to ask you for the RSS feed.
You plug that in there, just that feed that you grabbed from your host.
It's a link.
You put it in there, and you hit "check," and it's going to check to see if it's actually
legit.
You check again.
Yes, it's good to go.
You hit submit and then the party starts.
It's there, you can play it, you can listen to it, and that's awesome because then you
can share it with the world and people are going to discover it too.
So, that's podcasting, how to start it in a jest.
It can really make a big difference in your business, and it has truly made a big difference
in my life.
It opened up so many new opportunities that I never thought would exist.
From book publishers now wanting to work with me, because they know I have an audience,
they know I have a voice, people who want me on stage because they know I have a voice
and can present myself in an engaging way on a podcast.
I had somebody from Hollywood want to work with me as a result of my show.
There's so many cool things that can happen.
The number one thing you need to do, actually two things.
Number one, you just need to get started.
Number two is, you need to commit.
It's very easy with something like this that does take a little bit of technical work to
just get started and then be like, "I don't know if I want to do this," or "I'm just going
to go back to that thing I was good at."
You will get better.
And if you go back to my first episodes, they were trash.
I keep them up there just to remind myself how far I've come but also, remind all of
you how far you can go.
And finally, bosses, I just want to thank you so much for the time you spent with me
today.
I'm looking forward to hearing more about you and your show and how it goes for you.
Hopefully I can see you on my YouTube channel as well.
And again Sunny, I appreciate you.
Thank you so much.
Crush it!
Sunny Lenarduzzi: Whoa.
Pat knows podcasting, right?
See, I told you, he is the absolute master at this.
If you're starting your own podcast, I want you to comment below this video and tell us
what it's called so we can all support our fellow bosses.
Plus, as mentioned, I'm going to give you access to Pat's free three day mini course
on how to start your own podcast.
But before I do, as mentioned, The Sunny Show podcast is live and we did an incredibly informative
extra bonus interview with Pat on my podcast.
He talks about what motivates him, what daily practices keep him focused, and how he had
a record breaking, multi million dollar year last year in his business.
I had so many aha moments, and I know you will too.
You'll get a lot out of it.
Make sure you go download it and listen to it at Sunnylenarduzzi.com.
And as promised, the link to access Pat's mini course on how to start your podcast is
below.
All you have to do is go click it and get access for free.
Thank you so much for watching.
Thank you so much to Pat Flynn for such an informative video, and for being a guest on
The Sunny Show.
Make sure that you go listen to the podcast interview, and let me know what you think
of the brand new Sunny Show Podcast.
Again, if you like this video, hit the like button below, share it with your friends,
and be sure to subscribe.
Thank you so much for watching, and I will see you in the next video.