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This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Having insurance isn't the same as having State Farm. It's like thinking your crush messaged you back, but it's just your roommate asking for rent. You wouldn't settle for a disappointing dm, so don't settle for just any insurance. When it comes to getting the help you need, State Farm is a real deal. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. You're listening to the Travis Makes Money podcast presented by gohighlevel.com for a free 30 day trial of the best all in one digital marketing software tool tool on the planet. Just go to gohighlevel.com travis what's going on everybody? Welcome back to the show where it's just me, you and the mic. Today we are talking about how to start a podcast. Do's and don'ts. What you should be doing, what you should be focusing on, what you shouldn't be focusing on. And so let's jump into it without further ado. When I started my show, I was spending too much time getting bogged down with some of the technical aspects of starting a show. And that is probably the thing that prevents more people from starting a podcast than almost any other thing. And it's ridiculous because of how easy it is to do all of those things, especially now. Even compared to when I started my Show Back in 2017, there were no AI tools. Descript wasn't around, A phonic wasn't around. There weren't things that could auto balance your sound levels. Like, you had to learn how to do all those things technically or you had to pay somebody like decent money to be able to do those things. Now it's so much easier, like if you can just do a one take of the show. You don't have a ton of editing to do. You throw that sucker into descript. Descript allows you to transcribe the full episode and then you can edit from the transcription. So you don't have to go searching through this, this audio timeline to see, like, when did I say that one thing? How did I say where was that long, you know, pause that I had? And you got to search the timeline and listen and cut it up and then shorten and edit and know how to work audio editing software. Something like descript, you don't have to do any of that. You just go like search for ums and then it highlights all the ums and you go delete and then it deletes them all, shortens the timeline and exports a file without any of it there and you throw it in Alphonic I'll phonic will automatically balance all the sound levels of the show so that if you have a guest who had a mic that was really hot and your mic was really low, it'll bring those levels up to be the same so it won't be jarring for the listener experience. Then you have an AI tool that you can just throw the entire MP3 file in and that AI tool will scan the MP3 file, write show notes for you, give you time stamps, give you quotable or tweetable quotes, and give you. And then you just copy, paste it into your media host, upload it and you're good to go. Now you have a podcast. I've just taught you how to technically start a podcast. That's all you have to know. And frankly, you don't even have to do any of that stuff yourself if you really don't want to. You can hire a VA in the Philippines or in South America, a highly qualified va. By the way, before I brought this in house, I had somebody that I hired full time, a full time employee based out of Columbia, I believe. And he was great. He worked with us for a long time time. He just graduated with a bachelor's degree in audio engineering. And his monthly salary was $800 a month. And that's when we were doing three plus episodes a week. And I actually had him editing shows for clients of mine that I was charging more than that to and then having, and then outsourcing a lot of the work to him. And then I filled in the gaps on like the strategy piece. So don't let the technical aspects bog you down. Even like this microphone setup, like this is a more, I guess, quote unquote advanced microphone set setup. Like I have this Shure SM7B SM7DB now is there. SM7Bs are sort of the standard, the ones that you see all the time, the SM7DB. The only difference is that there's no, there's no phantom power. So basically the other mics, the SM7BS, when you plug them into this audio box that I have here, which is a Rodecaster Pro, when you plug them in there, you had to have a external power to increase the gain on the mic. And so it was like a little cloud lifter. It's like a little blue metal device that you had to plug one x XLR cable in and then you had to plug XLR cable on the other and the other side of it and then plug that into the audio interface and then plug the audio interface into the computer or, or record the audio onto an SD card in the actual audio interface itself. But that even, even all of that. So the SM7DB a little bit easier because you don't have to have the phantom power and you don't have to have two XLR cables. You have one XLR cable and it plugs directly into the audio. Audio interface now. And then there's a built in amplifier on the inside of the actual microphone itself that I can turn on or turn off at any point. But even that is sort of a little bit more technical setup. When I started, all I had was a USB mic. Basically it's just a microphone that you set on a stand and then you plug it directly into your computer and then you press record. That's it. You should have an external mic. Okay. It's a listener experience. Your. Your iPhone can record the best video imaginable, you know, better than any digital camera did five, ten years ago. But the audio piece is really the only piece that you really need to have. Like, you. You just want to make sure, like you're gonna feel like you're podcasting. Just get. And like you don't have to get again, this intense setup. Like this is like a four or $500 mic. And then this Rodecaster, the Rodecaster Pro or the Rodecaster Pro 2, you know, they're five to $800 or something like that. And if you want to get more than one mic, you were talking about a couple thousand dollars setup. But my first microphone was a USB microphone plugged directly into my computer and I bought it for $60 on Amazon. So you can go like, get a Samsung Q2U or a Audio Technica ATR2102 I think is the new one now that has a USB C that plugs directly into you. Look, my point is, with a quick search on ChatGPT or Google, you can figure out all the technical aspects of running a show in 30 minutes. It is not complicated. Or you can hire somebody for super cheap to edit the show for you. Okay? So don't get bogged down in that stuff and don't focus on spending too much time or attention on that stuff either, because that's what prevents people from being able to get started. The part that you should focus on is the strategy. This episode of the show is brought to you by Factor. Look, everybody who's listening to the show is busy. I get it. There's kids, there's distractions, there's businesses, there's side hustles. There's podcasts, there's everything to prevent you from eating good quality food all the time. So for me, eating healthy isn't necessarily a willpower problem, it's just more of a setup problem. It's just easier to pick the processed food because I know I can just grab it and eat it really quick. Well, enter Factor with factor. 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So join the millions who are already banking fee free today. My younger self would have benefited from this, and I know you will too. It just takes a few minutes to sign up. Head to chime.com travis that is chime.com travis. The strategy matters far more than all the technical aspects of running a show. Okay, there's been several shows that started with almost nothing that blew up without even having a technical team or a technical expertise, and a lot of them still run that way. This dude, Dry Creek Dwayne, has like a couple million subscribers on his YouTube channel. He's just some old rancher that gives out like, grandpa advice. And his setup is terrible. It's horrible. It still is to this day. It doesn't matter. The content is good and the strategy was good, and it was helpful stuff that he was saying. So people subscribe and listen to it. Okay? That's the beautiful thing about doing this stuff is we're not. You don't have to have a, you know, quarter million dollar studio set up like you're producing a show for espn. That's. You don't need any of that. So stop focusing on all the dumb stuff. I had somebody tell me one time they were looking at buying my podcast course back when I was selling courses. And at the time, it was a thousand bucks for, like, everything I'd ever learned about podcasts. It was like 90 videos that I put into this, into this training, from setting up, to launching, to monetizing, to interviewing, to marketing the show, to increasing, like, all the. Everything that I learned about podcasting packaged together was a thousand bucks. And this person was basically saying, oh, I can't afford that. And then in the same sentence of telling me that they can't afford the course, they were telling me that they were going, that they needed to go Buy a new computer for their podcast. And I was like, you have one now, right? And they're like, yeah, but it's, you know, kind of old or whatever. So like, you know, I gotta go. I'm, I'm, I'm buying another computer which is going to send me back, you know, $2,300 or whatever. And I was like, what? So, so the, my thousand dollar course, that's actually going to teach you the real meat of what you need to know in order to be able to grow a podcast that's going to work, that's too expensive, but you're going to go buy a new computer that you don't need to make the podcast. And then what? What are you talking about? The priorities are totally screwed up. So focus on the things that actually matter, which would be the actual strategy behind the show. What's the purpose of doing the show? What's the why behind it? Do you want to talk about your favorite sports team more so that you can get free tickets or get a press pass to the media day and ask questions to your favorite athlete? Because that's a little bit of a different strategy. Do you want to go full time with an online. Because that's a little bit different strategy. Do you want to turn it into a YouTube show? Do you want to, like, you have to figure out what's the why, what's the purpose, what's the strategy, and then build from there. So first thing that you should do is pick your niche. Write your avatar essay, right? Write out an actual story about the person who you want to speak to the most. Who is it that you're trying to help? Whether it's through value from a business perspective or it's through entertainment from a comedy or sports perspective. What is the ideal avatar of the person that I want to talk to the most? And the more you understand this person and you, you figure out who this person is, then you can start running through all the other questions of setting up the show. But you can run them through the filter of the avatar, the avatar filter to say, like, what would my avatar want to see from me? And I use and I give them a name. My avatar, I think when I first started was Mike. And literally the only thing that made it Mike was that I picked an age because I think it's important to get as granular and as specific as possible. I picked an age for Mike and then I went to most popular baby names of whatever year it was that would have made him that age. When I wrote this essay and Michael was one of top baby name. So I said, okay, my avatar's name is Mike because that's a likely name for the person that I'm actually trying to talk to here. Then you can start asking yourselves the questions. One of what comes to like, well, how do I grow the show? It's like, well, where does Mike hang out? What's Mike doing on a daily basis? Is he going, you know, if you're starting a sports podcast and Mike is your avatar, it's like, well, is Mar. Is Mike watching the game at sports bar that's doing a big raffle during game day? Is he hanging out there? Because maybe that's where you should go hang out. Is Mike. You know, if you're starting a business podcast, is Mike going to these eight conferences this year to learn about CS or to learn about sales or to learn about marketing? Where is this person gonna hang out? Now I can go hang around with that person. Now I can get to know what that person wants to see from me. Now I can get to know the obstacles and the struggles and the problems that person is gonna be in contact with. So I can create content that's built to actually help solve those problems. So pick a niche, write out your avatar and get as granular as possible with that avatar as you can. Now, next thing is build the actual show structure. So this is the act, the technical details of running the show. Like, what's the name of the show? I always tell people, if you're going to, like, when you're picking a name, there's there you can get really, really clear and you can get really, really clever. The best names, in my opinion, are ones that overlap in the middle like you imagine, like a Venn diagram. It's the. It's the part of the two circles that are overlapping in the middle where it's. Where it's very clear. But it's also kind of clever, those types of names. But if you're going to err to one side or the other, always err to the clarity side because that's gonna probably bring in more search volume. If people are searching in Apple Podcasts or Spotify for a particular topic, it's probably better just to call your show the digital marketing show or the meta Ads show or whatever, rather than coming up with some crazy creative, clever name that you have to explain to everybody because nobody understands what it means. Okay, so naming the show. And again, name the show based on what your avatar wants, right? So if you imagine Mike scrolling through the pod, is Mike searching for and how can you make sure that the title of your show will resonate with Mike? Then you write a description for the show and it's just a paragraph, couple paragraphs of what can somebody expect when they come to my show? Then you pick your show categories and all of this is done in your media host, which is like Megaphone or Anchor. This is the place where your show gets distributed to all of the audio platforms. It is not like YouTube. Like, you don't have to go individually into Spotify and individually up a podcast. And then in Castbox and all these other third party players, you go to one place, which is your media host. You upload the MP3 file, you upload the description, the name, the title, the tags, the show notes, all that stuff. You upload it to one place, you hit publish, and then it automatically uploads it to all. It automatically, excuse me, distributes it to all of the audio platforms that are available. YouTube's the only one where you have to upload the track separately. So build the show structure, name, description, title, you know, your artwork. Make sure. Do a little bit of work on the artwork. Guys, look, if you're, if you're trying to be professional here, you can tell the difference. You can tell the difference between somebody who, it looks like, it looks like they somehow revived, you know, Windows 97 and used Microsoft clip art to do their podcast artwork. Don't do that. It's really. It does not. Again, AI tools that exist now. It is not that difficult to go into Canva and come up with something that looks decent. If you want some inspiration, just go to the top 200 shows in Apple podcasts or in Spotify, look at their artwork and go, does mine look like shit compared to theirs? That's the only thing. Okay, you know, as have to. You have to pay five grand for a professional designer or whatever. I've usually gotten mine done on 99designs or like Design Crowd or something like that. I like 99designs because it is like a contest. And I'll get some. I'll get a couple hundred submissions and I'll be able to like work with the designer a little bit more carefully. So I think the last one, I've spent a few hundred bucks on maybe close to a thousand on my artwork the last time I did it. But the first artwork I did, I did myself and I did it in Canva and that was before AI tools even existed. So you don't need to have all this crazy stuff. You just got to put a little bit of effort into it and make it look like you care that it's not just like, I gotta upload a picture, let me just go find something that's in my camera roll. It's like, okay, put a little bit of effort into it. Pretend like you care. So artwork, name, title, description, you know, tags, categories all that stuff is selected inside of your media host. So build out the show. This episode of the show is brought to you by Wayfair. It's Wayday at Wayfair from April 25th through the 27th, you can score the best deals in home. 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We're talking up to 80% off with fast and free shipping on everything. So head to Wayfair.com April 25th through the 27th to shop Wayday Day. That's Wayfair.com W-A-Y-F-A-I R.com Wayfair Every style, every Home this episode of the show is brought to you by Shopify. Starting something new isn't just hard, it is terrifying. So much work goes into this thing that you're just not entirely sure that's going to work out. It can be hard to make that leap of faith. Trust me, I know. When I started this podcast, when I've started several of my businesses, I just wasn't even sure what I was doing. Like, what if nobody listens to the show show? What if I make a fool of myself? What if I embarrass myself? Nobody buys my stuff. Now I know that I was right in believing in myself and launching my podcast and several of my businesses despite all the fears and hesitations. But it also helps when you have an amazing partner like Shopify on your side to help. 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And did I mention that the iconic purple shop pay button that's used by millions of businesses around the world, that's from Shopify. It's why Shopify has the best converting checkout on the planet. Helps boost conversions, meaning less carts going abandoned and more sales for you. So it's time to turn those what ifs into with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com TMM go to shopify.com TMM that's shopify.com TMM structure. This also would include the structure of the show, of the format, right? Like are you going to do guests best conversations like interviews, which I highly, highly, highly, highly, highly, highly, highly recommend. Especially if you just came from my previous episode where I talked about like the. One of the number one ancillary benefits of podcasting, the number one frankly ancillary benefit of podcasting is the connections that you make. So if you're not interviewing guests, you're removing one of the number one reasons to have a show from the table. So I highly recommend doing guest interviews. But you don't have to. You know, you can do solo shows if you want to or you can do co hosted shows where it's you and a buddy talking about a topic that you care about about. So build the actual show structure. Am I going to interview guests? Am I to do solo shows? Am I going to do co hosted shows? Am I going to do some combination of those things that we're going to, are we going to react to clips? Are we going to have a conversation like what exactly are we going to do inside of the show? So build the show structure. And remember when you're asking all these questions, well, how many episodes a week should I be releasing? Should my episodes be an hour and a half or should they be 20 minutes? Well, good thing you already did that avatar essay because now you just got to go back and ask, what would Mike want to see here or what would your avatar want to see here? Are what are their habits? What are their daily routines? Do they go to the gym every day and they're looking some for someone to listen to? Do they commute to work every day and look at something to listen to in the, in the, on the drive? Are they, you know, listening to podcasts while they're going for a jog? Like what does their daily routine look like? And how can I build a show that will potentially fit into the daily routine of that person? So build the show structure, then record some content. That's it. Start recording some content. And, and don't be afraid to scrap your first couple of attempts. When I did my trailer for my first show, I re recorded it probably close to 10 times because it sounded more natural and better every time that I did it. And even the final product was still not that great cause I was pretty new to the space in the medium, but it was better than it was the first attempt. So when you're recording these first few episodes, especially don't be afraid to scrap something if it doesn't feel like you put in enough effort, do some more reps, because that is inevitably going to lead to improvement in progress. But record the episodes. And this is the number one, I think, piece of advice for anybody listening, because what we talked about in the last episode, you know, 90% of podcasts never make it past episode 10. So over almost. There's almost 5 million podcasts in existence, and there's less than half a million that are. That are currently actively releasing episodes. So less than 10% of shows that have ever been started. Started are still in existence to this day. So if you want to make sure that you're on the correct side of that statistic, then all you really got to do is make sure that before you ever launch the show, you have 12 episodes recorded. Now you're already beyond the 10 mark, right? Or 11 episodes recorded, whatever. Just like you're already in the upper echelon of shows that have ever existed. You're already in the top 10% just by. Just by recording 12 episodes before you hit the release button. Because here's what happens. A lot of people just take. Subscribe to the idea of like, I just got to get started. I sometimes I get too much in my head, and I just got to get started. And it's like, yeah, I understand that to a certain degree. But sometimes when you're just, I got to get started, you record an episode on your phone. It's kind of terrible. It's not that great. And then you hit publish, and you go like, cool, I have a podcast. And you announce it on social media. And then next week, when you're supposed to have another episode come out, you go, ah, totally forgot to record an episode, and now you're already missing episodes and you're not consistent in your releases. And then three weeks later, you pop out another episode, and then two months later, you pop out another episode. And then all of a sudden you're just like, well, I have three episodes. It took me four months to record, and then I never did anything ever again. So batch record 12 episodes before you hit the launch button, okay? Then launch the show. Record the 12 episodes. Get 12 episodes produced. Whether it's you or you're paying a VA to do it, use an AI tool, whatever, record them, edit them, produce them, upload them. And then in your media host, you can select publishing days so you can upload all 12 episodes at once. And then go, I want these to come out every month Monday. And then you just go, Monday, Monday, Monday, Monday, Monday. And then you hit publish and Then at midnight on the next Monday or whatever time you set it for, that episode will automatically publish to your media host, which will then automatically, automatically distribute to all of the major platforms that you have syndicated your content on. Okay. If you want to go deep in the weeds in the launch and make it a more successful launch, then build a launch team. Just reach out to a bunch of people who you would think would support you and just say, hey, would you be willing to hit the play button, follow the show, and leave me a rating and review during the first week of my launch? That's all the launch team means. It doesn't have to be something crazy. You don't have to have a bunch of cash prizes and incentives and things like that. It's just reaching out to people to say, like, hey, it'll take three minutes. I just need a rating review. It'd be helpful if you could listen to an episode of the show and give me any feedback, but that's not required. I just want to make sure that when we release that we're not releasing to zero people, that we have a list of people, and make that list as big as you can. Reach out as much as you can. I would say, like, the goal you're shooting for is about 100 people people. If you can launch with a hundred ratings reviews, you're already beating the vast majority of shows that exist on iTunes or iTunes on Apple Podcasts or in Spotify. So if, you know, I've even. We've helped clients before do, like, launch parties where they invite a bunch of people out to and they put on an event and they invite people over and they make it a whole thing and they go like, you know, it's just a regular evening of fun and whatever that you would normally do with a bunch of friends. But then the sort of, you know, common goal is like, hey, everybody, we're launching this show. It'd be really helpful if you could go in and, you know, listen to the first episode real quick and then leave a rating review or whatever. So just launch it. This is why I want to put out this episode, because it's like this. Yes, there's a lot more that goes into it. And yes, we do coaching on this, and we spend eight hours at VIP days mapping this entire strategy out for companies and entrepreneurs all the time. Because it. It can get more intense than this. But for somebody who's just listening, that's like, I would like to start a podcast, and I don't really know what to do. Use this episode as a encouragement to say that you don't need to be the expert. Day one do not get bogged down in all the technical details. Don't focus too much on the mics and the and the cameras and the gear and spending thousands and thousands of dollars on websites and equipment and all this other stuff. Don't focus on all that stuff at first. Focus purely on the strategy. Pick your niche, build the show structure, record 12 episodes, and then launch the show. It should maybe take, you know, 30 to 90 days to be able to do all of this, depending on what your other workload looks like. Like, it's not that difficult, but it will make a tremendous impact in your life and I highly encourage anybody listening to do this as well. Now, if you are a business owner or a entrepreneur and you have money in the bank, but you don't have a lot of time to do everything that I just said, then you can hire me and my team. You just go to travischappel.com coaching, fill out an application, and we might be able to work together to get your podcast out into the world. But that is it for this episode of the show. Thanks for tuning in as always, travis@travischappel.com Shoot me an email or Travis Chapel, Shoot me a daily DM on Instagram and ask me some questions. We'll talk about it here on a future episode of the show. But that's it for this one. We'll catch you on the next one. Peace. Why pay when you can/with TikTok, slash and free, you can cut prices down all the way to zero. Just download TikTok, search slash free, pick items in Tik Tok shop, share the link and buy. Boom. Free items unlocked even with free shipping. So seriously, why pay, download TikTok and start slashing now.