Hosting A Purposeful Podcast with Lauren Popish

Podcasting is a proven way to increase your authority, impact and revenue—but how can you produce a podcast that consistently achieves your goals? Lauren Popish, founder of The Wave (podcast editing for women, by women), shows how to clear the obstacles keeping you from starting—or continuing to grow—a purposeful podcast.

Lauren shares her story and some frank advice:

The two questions that you want to answer before recording a single episode (and use as a touchstone as you grow your ‘cast).

How to think about hard costs vs. the value of your time when outsourcing elements of your podcast production.

What to look for when outsourcing your podcast production—and when to choose a solo or an agency.

What to tell yourself if the sound of your own voice is keeping you from podcasting (start at timestamp 43:56 for the best advice I’ve ever heard on this).

Why purposeful podcasting means playing the long game.

LINKS

Lauren Popish Website | Launch Checklist | LinkedIn | Instagram

Rochelle Moulton Email List | LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram

BIO

Lauren Popish is the founder of The Wave Podcasting. She started podcasting in 2017 after a public speaking blunder that sparked a speaking fear and almost ended her career. She found podcasting to be a safe place to practice speaking and wanted to share it with other women struggling to tell their stories.

The Wave launched The Wave Editing, the first podcast editing service for women by women in 2021. The Wave Editing pairs female audio engineers with female podcasters so they can grow their shows by outsourcing the tedious tasks that prevent many podcast hosts from building their audience. Since then, The Wave has served hundreds of women through affordable editing services, educational resources, and digital community.

BOOK A STRATEGY CALL WITH ROCHELLE

RESOURCES FOR SOLOISTS

Join the Soloist email list: helping thousands of Soloist Consultants smash through their revenue plateau.

Soloist Events: in-person events for Soloists to gather and learn.

The Authority Code: How to Position, Monetize and Sell Your Expertise: equal parts bible, blueprint and bushido. How to think like, become—and remain—an authority.

TRANSCRIPT

00:00 – 00:34
Lauren Popish: How much is your time worth, truly from like a dollar standpoint? What would it cost you to sacrifice 1 hour of your day doing something like editing your podcast? If you think you can get more value from editing it yourself, then you would if you were to go use your time to do something else like do an hour of coaching services or even spend your time marketing your podcast, increasing your audience. If you think that your time is better spent editing, then it’ll be a better value for you than hiring someone.

00:38 – 01:13
Rochelle Moulton: Hello, hello. Welcome to Soloist Women, where we’re all about turning your expertise into wealth and impact. I’m Rochelle Moulton, and today I’m here with Lauren Poppish, the founder of The Wave Podcasting. And she launched the first podcast editing service for women by women in 2021. She pairs female audio engineers with female podcasters so they can grow their shows by outsourcing the tedious tasks that prevent many podcast hosts from building their audience. Lauren, welcome. Thank you

01:13 – 01:18
Lauren Popish: so much for having me. It’s such a treat to be on the side of the microphone, on the side of the podcast.

01:19 – 01:39
Rochelle Moulton: Absolutely. Well, I’m so excited to have you on the show. And not only because I’m a happy user of your podcast editing services, I want to put that right up front. But I also Share your view that podcasting is a great way to get over the fear that many of us have about using our voices and being heard.

01:39 – 02:15
Lauren Popish: I’m so happy to hear you say that because I think it’s 1 of the undersold advantages of starting a podcast is really treating speaking like a muscle, which it is, and like any skill, any skill that we’re trying to build, you have to do it a little bit. And all of us, I think, can use more practice in not just using our voices in the most literal sense, but using it for getting a message across, selling ourselves, selling our companies, our missions. And podcasting is a great way to build the practice and build up that skill

02:15 – 02:32
Lauren Popish: of using your voice. It certainly has helped me overcome what was some pretty debilitating public speaking fear at 1 time and has since truly not just helped build individual confidence, but really has helped build my brand for my business. Well, I’m so

02:32 – 02:36
Rochelle Moulton: glad you brought that up because that was actually where I wanted to start this.

02:36 – 02:37
Lauren Popish: Oh good.

02:37 – 02:50
Rochelle Moulton: Because if I understand rightly, you started podcasting in 2017 after what you called a public speaking blunder that almost ended your career. So I’d really love to hear, like, how did that go down?

02:50 – 03:29
Lauren Popish: Yeah, I was on a sales team for a tech startup that had just gone through an acquisition. And my role at that time was kind of going on a road show of, I believe it was 22 different cities over 4 weeks to sell our new company on these products that this company had just acquired and train them up, show them how to use it. And so I was flying around and doing that kind of typical TV version of what a salesperson looks like. I was flying into 1 city during 1 day, flying out to the next.

03:29 – 04:10
Lauren Popish: I was racking up the points on my credit card. And on the very last day of the tour, so this is literally the last city of that 22 city tour, I was in Charleston and I showed up for a presentation I’d given at that 0, I want to say hundreds of times, either virtually or in person, and showed up like I usually do. Felt a little tired maybe from travel but nothing out of the usual. I showed up to this presentation. I started in on my typical lines and about midway through, I just couldn’t catch my

04:10 – 04:47
Lauren Popish: breath. I was a little dehydrated. I was speaking too fast And I hyperventilated to the point where I had to actually leave the room. I was in the middle of this presentation. I have a complete meltdown. I can’t get any words out. I can’t speak. I kind of feign a coughing fit and I was like, I’ll be right back. And I walked out and speaking at that time was 1 of my best skills. It was something that, I mean, I was in a sales role. It was how I defined myself as someone who is a very

04:47 – 05:09
Lauren Popish: confident speaker. And it was my livelihood at the time. I walked out and the coordinator, she came over and she goes, Oh, let me grab you a glass of water. Let’s head back in there. And I was like, I’m so sorry. I don’t, I don’t think I can do this. I don’t think I can go back in.” And she was like, what are you talking about? Like she truly couldn’t even understand that I was in a moment of full blown panic attack.

05:09 – 05:10
Rochelle Moulton: Yeah.

05:10 – 05:45
Lauren Popish: And so I went back in, I somehow stumbled through that presentation. But that incident sparked a fear so robust. I mean, I have to say that at the time I was in the early incubation stages of having mono, I had just worn myself truly into the ground from all of this work. So my health was failing a little bit. And so I was out of commission for about a month after that, just being so sick. But when I got back, the fear had come to stay. I mean, I every single, it didn’t matter if it was

05:45 – 06:16
Lauren Popish: a virtual call, There was a time where I was so afraid of what might happen to me. I just didn’t, I couldn’t trust my body. I couldn’t trust my voice. I didn’t understand why this had happened when in the past I had never even thought about speaking and all of a sudden I could be standing up there and my voice just wouldn’t work anymore. Like I couldn’t just speak anymore. And so I could barely be in a conference room just having a one-on-one meeting with a colleague who I knew well. I mean, that’s how paralyzed with

06:16 – 06:49
Lauren Popish: fear I was about my own voice and my ability to speak and trusting myself that way. And so I was going through just such anxiety. I had to have someone like a sit in the room with me as I was doing all my sales calls. I was just so afraid that something would happen and I’d have to leave and someone else would have to jump in. And I finally called my boss 1 Sunday as I was in true dread of showing up to start my workday that Monday. And I just said, I can’t do it anymore.

06:49 – 07:22
Lauren Popish: And I don’t know if there’s a role here for me. I don’t know what that means for my career at this company. All I know is that I can’t do this job anymore. And luckily, I worked at a company that was just extremely human people centric. And my boss kind of sat me down and said, hey, we’re going to find something that works for you. And I moved into a product role that ultimately fit like a glove. It fit me a lot better and I had a long career with this company. It was the company that

07:22 – 07:44
Lauren Popish: I was at until I decided to break out on my own with the wave. And that’s really fortunate. But had that not been the case, I would have had to just kind of leave and figure out how to have a career and how to keep supporting myself because I was just so debilitated with fear about speaking at that time.

07:45 – 08:07
Rochelle Moulton: Yeah. So what’s fascinating to me then, I mean, because that story has so many elements. I mean, I’m 22 cities in who knows how many days. I mean, I’m not surprised you’d get mono or be sick or that your voice would just suddenly disappear. But what made you then decide that you could make a business out of podcasting? Right? Like the biggest fear.

08:08 – 08:50
Lauren Popish: Yeah, it wasn’t overnight. It took a long time to kind of come to that decision. I basically immediately started a pretty robust therapy, immersion therapy. I joined Toastmasters immediately. I knew that I needed to get back to, and I will likely never ever get back to that level of carefree confidence that I had at 1 time about speaking. I now manage my fear and anxiety around speaking, but it’s not gone. So I’ll probably never get back to that. But I knew I needed to get to a functional state where I could hold down a job, where

08:50 – 09:22
Lauren Popish: I could come and sit in a conference room with other people and not be so afraid that I was going to have some kind of bodily mishap. And so I started that process. And at that time I was actually, I’ve kind of always had the entrepreneurial fire and maybe other folks who listen to your show can relate to this fact that I’ve worked in, for companies and in corporate environments for a long time, but I’ve always had that little burning fire under me that just says, I want to do it on my own. I want to

09:22 – 09:52
Lauren Popish: do something on my own. And so I was always a side hustle queen. I was, I always had something in the wings. And at the time that this was all happening, I was actually had some funding for a travel app that I was working on. It was kind of Instagramable travel app stuff. And as I was going through this experience, this really kind of life changing experience, I just kind of looked at my work that I had built around this travel app and said, who the heck cares about this? I mean, this is not, this isn’t

09:53 – 10:18
Lauren Popish: important. This isn’t meaningful. And on my worst days, when I get up, this is actually not gonna, I’m not gonna come to this and feel fulfilled by this. And so I really had, in addition to a pretty serious crisis around speaking, I also had a bit of an existential crisis where I was like, if you’re going to start a business and you’re going to put all your… Because we know it’s not easy, we know it takes a lot of

10:18 – 10:18
Rochelle Moulton: time, and We know it takes a lot

10:18 – 10:54
Lauren Popish: of time. And we know it takes a lot out of us. If I’m going to pursue something, it’s probably got to be so important and so purposeful and something that on my worst day, I’m still willing to get up and work on that I really need to change. I need to think about what that would be. And so I sat down, I said, what is the most important thing to me right now? And I just said, well, gosh, the biggest thing I’m struggling with right now is just debilitating public speaking fair. And even at that time,

10:54 – 11:24
Lauren Popish: I said, Lauren, that’s too close to home. It’s actually too close. There’s no way I could attempt to build something around that. But as time went on, you’re really called to the things that you’re trying to overcome. And that as you’re struggling with these challenges, all of a sudden I had all this empathy for all these women and these people around me who I had never experienced public speaking fear until recently. But all of a sudden, I started seeing everybody in a different light. I started seeing my sister who’s always been kind of behind the scenes.

11:24 – 11:59
Lauren Popish: And I did theater in school and she was more of an athlete. She didn’t like the limelight. And so I’m starting to see her in a new light, I’m starting to empathize, I’m starting to look at my colleagues who also don’t want to get up in the middle of the meeting and raise their hand. And all of a sudden, I just started seeing community that hadn’t been there before, because it wasn’t a community that I identified with or I was a part of. Once that group started showing itself, I really started feeling called to support that

11:59 – 12:41
Lauren Popish: community. With all the tools I was trying, the Toastmasters and the therapy and the mindfulness practices and then podcasting, I really saw it as 1 of my tools for curing or trying to heal this moment in time for me, I really felt like I needed to share it. I just felt called to bring this tool to my community because I didn’t really think people might be aware of how good and confidence building podcasting was if you were someone who didn’t feel really comfortable in your own voice, who didn’t feel a certain amount of confidence about speaking

12:41 – 12:50
Lauren Popish: out. I just knew that I had to be spending my time doing something that would support the people that I now felt close to.

12:50 – 13:05
Rochelle Moulton: Well, it’s a little bit like, as I’m listening to you, like your eyes were opened. Oh, other people are afraid of public speaking. I mean, I think when they just surveyed, the only thing people fear more than death is public speaking. Exactly. Yeah. So I

13:05 – 13:43
Lauren Popish: mean, it’s just, it’s fascinating because you had no idea until you were thrust into that situation and experienced that fear, how alone you were not. Right? Yes, yes. And what I didn’t realize until I did a little bit of research is that is true that the majority of people, I think it’s something like I used to have this number memorized, but you know, it’s like in the seventies, high 70% of individuals, all people fear public speaking. But the majority of that identify as female, 44% of that group. And so why is that? That seems weird, right?

13:43 – 14:19
Lauren Popish: Oh, no, that seems totally obvious to me. Exactly. Well, it does, of course, because we were like, well, we’re already kind of fearful to speak up, but for other reasons that are related to our position in the world and in society, not to get too far down my feminist path that I can, that’s a soapbox I can easily step up onto, but I won’t. Just to say that I really just felt like there’s this whole community of people and especially a sub community within those individuals who have some public speaking anxiety. You know, most of us

14:19 – 14:24
Lauren Popish: are women. Why is that? And what can we do to really support each other in that state?

14:25 – 14:57
Rochelle Moulton: It isn’t easy. And not just for women, for people of color, for any marginalized community, because most of us are socialized to be quiet, to not raise our voices or we’ve tried to do it and we haven’t been heard. So after a while we stop. Exactly. Yeah, we could go on about that all day, believe me. But that’s again, I just want to reiterate and that is what I love about podcasting even in my own case I would not call myself shy by any stretch of the imagination but I did find it difficult when I first

14:57 – 15:28
Rochelle Moulton: started podcasting to just really say what was on my mind and feel like that was okay, that it would be valuable and that if somebody didn’t like it, that would be okay too. Right. It just takes a little while, but when you keep doing it to your point, it’s like a muscle. Exactly. And it just keeps getting stronger and stronger. So I wanted to talk a little bit about the way you’ve organized your business. Now, you’re not a soloist, right? You’ve assembled a team of people to work with you. And I have to say in the

15:28 – 16:00
Rochelle Moulton: 6 months or so that I’ve been a client, I’ve never spoken to you or even emailed to you after our initial conversation, right? Because I get a dedicated account manager. I have a dedicated audio engineer. And they get the job done. So that’s why you’ve never heard from me. So tell us about how you set up your business. And I guess I want to introduce this concept that you actually are also working at Google while you’re doing this. And so I just would love to hear about how you set it up. And are there systems that

16:00 – 16:10
Rochelle Moulton: you use to make you more efficient in how you bring this to market and still manage the rest of your life? Yes, I am, as I mentioned, a bit

16:10 – 16:53
Lauren Popish: of a side hustle queen. Although I do consider the Wave podcasting kind of my primary gig. And I kind of consider Google my side hustle, even though I do work for them in a full-time capacity. I really have 2 full-time jobs, essentially. But in order to do that, you really have to be systems oriented and you have to be process oriented. When I started the Wave podcasting, we thought we would support women. The primary way I thought I would be serving my community was through space, physical space, like studio space, and creating really safe, inviting spaces

16:53 – 17:13
Lauren Popish: for women to come record their podcasts in. And that’s because that’s how the company started. I built a beautiful studio in my Brooklyn apartment. I had my friends come over and record my podcast with me. It was a very, you know, hobbyist podcast. It was about books, pairing books with wine. It was a book club podcast.

17:13 – 17:13
Rochelle Moulton: I like that.

17:14 – 17:48
Lauren Popish: And it was all fun. It was just, Again, it was really for the practice of it all. But as more people came through my door, more of my friends were starting podcasts or knew people with podcasts and said, hey, we’re kind of tired of recording in the equivalent of like some guy’s basement. It’s a little dark, it’s a little techie looking, like we wanna come to your space. It’s got art on the walls and pillows and books all around and we can drink wine. Can we rent your space from you? And I really just felt like

17:48 – 18:23
Lauren Popish: there was something there. At the time, Riverside wasn’t around. We didn’t have, Zoom was, but barely. You know, we weren’t as dedicated to virtual podcast recordings as we are now. And so that just felt like the best way to create a safe, comfortable environment for women to feel at ease and feel like they could use their voices in whatever way they wanted. So that’s how we started. But as the pandemic came our way, we knew that we had to make a new space that would support our community’s needs. And at that time, everybody was just asking,

18:24 – 19:01
Lauren Popish: how do I get my podcast edited? Because I do think a big part of the confidence that comes from podcasting, once you get over the initial shock of hearing your voice recorded, there is a lot of healing and confidence that comes from when a professional audio engineer edits your voice, removes the mistakes, makes you sound great, removes all your filler words, balances the audio. There is something really remarkable about hearing yourself sound like a radio host, like the best version of yourself. It can be really confidence building. And so I knew that we needed to be

19:01 – 19:40
Lauren Popish: able to create that experience for women in a virtual space. How do we get them to sound their best if we can’t get them in a space that is ours? Let’s go meet them where they are online. Let’s build a team of professionals that are all female identifying because something that’s little known is that only 5% of the individuals who work in the audio industry identify as female. 5%, compared to so many industries that we consider male dominated, you know, film and finance and tech and all these different areas, 5% is so, so small. And when

19:40 – 20:17
Lauren Popish: we went out to go hire female audio engineers, really hard to find them. I mean, who are trained and have gone to school and have advanced degrees in audio engineering. But we knew that we needed to go get and build a team where women felt as comfortable showing up as themselves using their voices, knowing that on the other end, the person who’s receiving their audio is not going to use unconscious bias to edit and modify their voices, who are going to be understanding and empathetic to the vulnerability that comes from sharing your voice in a recorded

20:17 – 20:53
Lauren Popish: environment. We really just wanted to replicate that in-person experience virtually, but to do that at scale and do that in a way that I’m not an audio engineer, so I knew I had to build a team. No 1 on our team is an employee. They’re all contractors. They all work for themselves. And that’s just how we’ve been able to structure a team where everybody has the freedom that they want and where we feel like we can scale in the way that we need to and adapt to business changes and seasons and things like that, seasons of

20:53 – 21:24
Lauren Popish: business. But we started with 2 audio engineers and we just started there. And then we said, our client said to us, well, I think we also need help with writing, the writing written components of podcasting, like show notes. So we found a writer and we added them to the team. And slowly, we just started building this group of women who were supporting the podcasting needs of our clients. But in order to deliver that, our team is all over the world. We were just saying that your editor, Eva, she’s based in Bulgaria. Gretchen, who is our head

21:24 – 21:49
Lauren Popish: of production, is based in Chile. We have writers who are here in Los Angeles. We have writers who are in Bristol, UK. They’re all over the world. In order for us to effectively deliver consistently high quality and across the globe. We just needed robust systems and processes to do that. So from the very beginning, that has been a critical part of the way we deliver is very systems based.

21:49 – 22:24
Rochelle Moulton: Well, it’s interesting because I found you through a Google search. And I when I started this podcast, which is for women, I felt I really would like it to be edited by a woman. I just, it seemed like the logical thing to do. And so I started searching. I didn’t find you immediately because I knew of someone in my Instagram who I was like, I want to check them out and see what they do. And it was headed by a woman. And then that didn’t work. We couldn’t quite agree on the direction. And so that’s when

22:24 – 22:32
Rochelle Moulton: I really started Googling. And I know you said 5% of audio engineers are women. I swear the percentage has to be less with podcasting.

22:32 – 22:34
Lauren Popish: Oh, I’m sure.

22:34 – 23:09
Rochelle Moulton: Yeah, I mean, I couldn’t find any. And then I finally did the right search combo, and I found you and the wave. And it made all the difference, because some of us really want that experience. We want to be able to work with women on our things. We want to give them a chance to shine. So it really works both ways, right? They help us to be better and we help them to grow their businesses. Absolutely. Let’s dive into how soloists can create and build what I’m going to call a purposeful podcast. And a lot of

23:09 – 23:40
Rochelle Moulton: times when someone says purposeful, we think, oh, it’s this big dream kind of thing. But by purposeful, I mean that you have a goal, a purpose, an outcome that you want to achieve with your podcast. So it could be very mercenary, right? You want to meet potential clients or you want to interview leaders in your space because you want to get to know them. Or I’ve had some clients who have explored an idea and they worked it out by having guests on their podcast for an interview, an interview series, and then they’ve made a book out

23:40 – 23:57
Rochelle Moulton: of it. So I think we have 2 kinds of listeners here. We have people who are maybe toying with starting a purposeful podcast and some others that are already have started. So if I’m just thinking about starting a purposeful podcast, where should I start?

23:58 – 24:39
Lauren Popish: Yeah, this is Anybody who works in the expertise space will maybe roll their eyes at this because it’s such a universal advice for any new pursuit. But really the right place to start is with why. What is the purpose, right? The true outcome. And it may be surprising, but we get a lot of folks that come across our inbox who don’t really know why they’re starting a podcast. They think it will be fun, which by the way, fun is a perfectly fine reason to start a podcast, but it’s different than if you want to make money,

24:39 – 25:13
Lauren Popish: or it’s different if you want to build a brand. And you have to really know what that reason is. It’s just for fun. That means that any return on my investment in this podcast should be quantified in the form of fun. Am I having fun? Am I enjoying it? If the answer is no, then you’re really not meeting the goal and the intent of your podcast. So starting with why, and then really close second question is, okay, I’m starting it for networking purposes, then who is my audience? Who could benefit from this content? And the audience

25:13 – 25:49
Lauren Popish: will really be important to know how you structure your show because my husband has a podcast that we helped him create last year that’s been great for he’s a real estate, he works in real estate and it’s a tool for him to network with more people in real estate. By that measure, the audience isn’t super important. It’s more about his ability to speak to people who he admires, get guests that meet the criteria that he has set, meet folks that are kind of reach goal guests. And so a lot of his time goes into not the

25:49 – 26:24
Lauren Popish: marketing of it to get more audience members. It’s really on the front end to get the guests and the people that are important to him. But if you have a show that is really about building your business, cultivating new leads, bringing clients into your business, then it’s all about audience. It’s maybe less about what you even are personally interested in and is more about the interests of your audience. So Those are the 2 areas to really start at. Why and who’s on the other end of your show. If your why is only about your ability to

26:24 – 26:56
Lauren Popish: speak to high profile guests, it doesn’t matter who’s on the other end listening. You could have 0 people and still find value out of it. But if it’s about sales, then it’s all about the people on the other end. And so that’s really the right place to start a purposeful podcast. And you and I both know that podcasting is a lot of hard work. So If you don’t have a why, you’re going to get a few episodes in and say, wait a minute, why am I working so hard at this? I don’t quite remember. So it

26:56 – 27:03
Lauren Popish: can be a place to anchor back to when things get hard because it’s a very effortful medium.

27:03 – 27:21
Rochelle Moulton: Yeah, and they will get hard. And that’s why so many people abandon podcasts before they get to the 10th episode. What is it, if you get to 10 or is it 9, 10, 11 episodes, you’re like 80% ahead of everybody else. By definition, you’re in the top 20% of podcasts if you just publish.

27:22 – 27:26
Lauren Popish: If you get to 21 episodes, you’re in the top 1%.

27:26 – 27:38
Rochelle Moulton: Okay, there you go. There you go. That’s kind of sad, actually. But it’s nice to know that you can get there pretty easily and pretty well, not easily, you can get there quickly.

27:38 – 27:38
Lauren Popish: Yeah, I

27:38 – 28:03
Rochelle Moulton: did want to mention though, you have a checklist for those starting a new podcast. And I know we’re going to put the link in the show notes. But 1 of the things I suggest if you’re thinking about a podcast is signing up for her emails because your first, I think it’s the first 5 or 6, they are so packed with everything you need to know as a new podcaster and they’re even visually interesting. So I give you extra points for that.

28:04 – 28:35
Lauren Popish: Thanks. Yeah, sometimes when you create things, you put it out there and you hope that it’s being received well, but you never know. So I appreciate that. Yeah, the emails are a great place to start And the checklist is an excellent resource because it really does start. I mean, that checklist, the first 5 questions are, do you have a why? Do you have, and we can even walk you through how to write what we call a why statement, you know, something truly almost like a mission statement to anchor to who your audience is. And we give

28:35 – 29:06
Lauren Popish: you a template for how to create a listener persona to really define who that is. And then we move on from there from getting equipment to defining your structure, the structure of your episode. So it really, that checklist is very all-inclusive, but it starts right where we started, which is thinking hard about why you are where you are. Excellent. So Lauren, If listeners already have a podcast, how can they ensure that they’re staying on purpose

29:07 – 29:13
Rochelle Moulton: and or upping their game? That we don’t just get complacent and bored with what we’re doing.

29:14 – 29:54
Lauren Popish: So I always think that sometimes the pursuit of perfection can be a big reason podcasters don’t start or don’t start as soon as they would like to. And so the big goal for starting is just to start, just begin. Getting it right isn’t really the most important part. But once we’ve started our show and we have a certain amount of comfort with the basics, we can actually begin to go back and refine the parts of our podcast that may have been built hastily and maybe just weren’t optimized to the best of our ability. I always like

29:54 – 30:32
Lauren Popish: to start with an audit of all of the elements of your podcast if you have 1, and just make sure that a few key things are optimized to your show. The first 2 things that are kind of underestimated because they’re boring for us, but they’re important for our audience is our intro and our outro. And if you’re a podcaster who’s experienced revisiting those canned elements that live permanently at the beginning of your show and the way that you close out your show can be a really important opportunity to get people to take critical steps that we

30:32 – 31:05
Lauren Popish: want them to take that they may not be taking right now. So we get back to the purpose a little bit. But if 1 big thing that we’re trying to do is use our show to bring in new business, and we do that through a funnel that is primarily powered by our email, our email marketing engine, then a big call to action we’re probably hoping to get from our podcast is getting people onto our email list, either through some kind of free resource, a lead magnet, something like that. So revisiting our intro and our outro can

31:05 – 31:34
Lauren Popish: be a great way to make sure that in that outro, we’re making that call to action, not just once, but every single time. And that we’re not diluting it with other call to actions that may be creating paralysis for our listener and maybe they’re not taking any action because we’re asking them to do so many things in the outro. Now, the intro is something that we feel like is like, oh, we can skip over. If you’re here, you know what it’s about. And that’s true. But our intro to our podcast is not for our old listeners,

31:34 – 32:08
Lauren Popish: it’s for new listeners. And so we should be using our intro as a way to, in the span of about 20 seconds, introduce a new listener to our show entirely, to us as the host, to the purpose of our show, and to what they plan and should expect to get out of our show in the first 20 seconds, not once every single time. So those are 2 places where tuning up and optimizing and going back to basics a little bit as an existing show host is a really great opportunity. The second thing that I’ll say as

32:08 – 32:41
Lauren Popish: an existing host is podcasts are really good at helping us build audience, build trust, because people are spending time with us as hosts, they’re getting to know us. And that’s the value of a podcast is its ability to build trust, authentic relationships through our show, much better than other mediums like social media or even email. It’s just the amount of time that our listeners spend with us on our podcast. You know, this show is an episode averages between 30 and 40 minutes. That’s a lot of time to spend with someone. So that relationship building is really

32:41 – 33:18
Lauren Popish: strong. What podcasts aren’t great at is helping new audiences find us because discoverability of podcasts is still pretty weak. The places where you listen to shows, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, all the directories and the apps where you listen to podcasts, their algorithms are kind of poor. They’re not great at helping new shows, especially indie podcasts, surface to the top and help you find new audiences. So we have to rely on legacy marketing channels to get our podcasts out there. That means participating on social media. I think a lot of people, you know, hate that because we’re all

33:18 – 33:51
Lauren Popish: so sick of Instagram and we’re all so sick of social. But unfortunately, they have the reach that podcasts don’t really have right now. So if you’re an existing podcast host, who puts all of your effort into the content. So producing the show, either recording it or scripting it, even if you’re doing some of the editing yourselves, any of the show note, right? These are soloists here, so I know we’ve got some a lot of folks in the audience who are doing it all themselves because it’s such an innate part of who we are when we identify

33:51 – 34:21
Lauren Popish: as a soloist. But if you’re spending all your time on that part, the production part, then you’re missing the opportunity to grow your show or find new audiences by not spending enough time marketing your show. And that’s a big misconception that if we build it, others will come to listen. In the case of podcasting, we really have to do our part to get our show out there so others are listening to it. And that just means showing up on other marketing channels and doing our part to tell people about our show.

34:21 – 34:51
Rochelle Moulton: Yeah, I’ve actually told people not to do a podcast until they were committed to marketing it. Yeah, because, you know, you just become the world’s best kept secret. And I just can’t imagine that that helps in the motivation department. Oh, I’m up to 2 listeners. Oh, I guess both my parents subscribe now. Right? I mean, that’s just that’s just deadly. So if you’re going to use your voice, you’re going to use it in your podcast, you want to be able to use it in your marketing too.

34:51 – 35:24
Lauren Popish: Exactly. You’re spot on. And it’s something that we all fall in love, again, with the things we can control. We love to control that content and that audio. You know, we’re giving tons of feedback. We get podcasters who are just leaving dozens and dozens of edits on every single episode. And often what I try and reach out and encourage is say, there are diminishing returns on the outcomes that you will achieve by being more precise about your editing. But there is no limit to the outcomes you can achieve if you were to take that time and

35:24 – 35:57
Lauren Popish: spend it on marketing pursuits. Now marketing is inherently an experiment. We don’t always know how certain content is going to be received when we market it. So it’s that unpredictability of marketing that I think is intimidating above all, will this thing resonate with my audience? But if we treat it like what it is, which is an experiment, We acknowledge that. We know that you actually almost can’t fail. You know, you can’t get it wrong because it is an experiment. We don’t know what’s going to work. If you were talking to a full-time content creator and you

35:57 – 36:31
Lauren Popish: said, hey, tell me how you craft a piece of content that is successful in engagement every single time they would say, I don’t know, sometimes the things I spend the most time on perform the worst. Sometimes that thing that I just spit out yesterday out of nothing that I didn’t even think about performed really well. So if we if we know and we acknowledge that marketing is an experiment, it becomes less intimidating. And it’s absolutely worth your time. If engagement and audience growth for your show is important to you. Again, You may have a show where

36:31 – 36:41
Lauren Popish: the only return on your investment is your enjoyment of the process, in which case it doesn’t matter how many people are listening, you’ve already won in your measure of success.

36:42 – 37:15
Rochelle Moulton: Yeah, I agree. Or in the case of your husband’s podcast, where there’s just certain people that you want to reach, you spend your time on that. It goes back to having a purpose behind this and aligning your actions with the purpose of the podcast. That’s right. So I want to talk about building your podcast team. 1 of the things I hear so often with people who are thinking about doing a podcast but haven’t pulled the trigger is they’re just so worried about the edit. Who’s going to do it? How is it going to happen? How am

37:15 – 37:46
Rochelle Moulton: I going to get it everywhere? There’s so many moving parts. Now for myself, I mean, I have 6 years and counting on my other podcasts, but for this 1, I knew right from the get-go that I wanted a team. It was very clear to me, I knew what I wanted and I didn’t want to piece together my own team. I wanted a system that was already in place that would just work for me. So the question for you is whether the listener is a new or an experienced podcaster, what should they be looking for to get

37:46 – 37:50
Rochelle Moulton: the right combination of expertise and execution?

37:51 – 38:29
Lauren Popish: Yeah, that’s such a great question. Something that I’ve learned about what the value between a when you’re going out to hire and you’re really looking at all of the factors. And I think the 2 really big ones that I think about are cost and time, meaning your time. If you’re hiring someone to do your production for you, how much time you spend facilitating that, project managing that, asking for corrections, being a part of their system and their process. And time is even, I think, the first place to start when you ask, even should I hire someone

38:29 – 39:04
Lauren Popish: or should I attempt to do it myself? The first question I say, well, how much is your time worth? Truly from like a dollar standpoint, like what would it cost you to sacrifice 1 hour of your day doing something like editing your podcast? If you think you can get more value from editing it yourself, then you would if you were to go use your time to do something else like do an hour of coaching services or even spend your time marketing your podcast, increasing your audience. If you think that your time is better spent editing, then

39:04 – 39:36
Lauren Popish: it’ll be a better value for you than hiring someone to kind of do it yourself. But that is often rarely the case or very, very temporarily the case, right? We very quickly realize that there is a way that we can spend our time where we can maximize our profit and our revenue that comes from when we sell our time for services, which many of us do, or we sell it in a certain form, indirectly or directly. It pretty quickly you realize there’s a better use of time than bending it editing. So if you’re going to go

39:36 – 40:12
Lauren Popish: out and hire a team, your first question is, do I really need that team to be budget friendly, meaning I go direct to the editor themselves and hire a contractor myself? Or do I care more about getting even more of my time back? And that’s when you would want to consider hiring an agency. So the wave is technically an agency. It was built with the mindset that it should cost about the same as hiring someone directly. But as time has gone on, we’ve really realized that no fewer than 4 people touch an episode on its way

40:12 – 40:49
Lauren Popish: out the door. And it’s actually all of those people working together from the project manager to the writer to the quality control manager to our marketing manager, along with your audio editor, we’re all coming together to make sure that your episode and your content is So perfect, just the way you want it, optimized to the standards that we know are industry quality and delivering that to you so that you are maximizing your time and not spending it telling them what to do, showing up at this place, doing all of these emails back and forth. So we’ve

40:49 – 41:27
Lauren Popish: built a process where we have the people and the systems that are limiting your time. And an agency is really the only 1 that can offer you that suite, that team of people to deliver on that. But if cost is your most important factor, an individual contractor will always win in terms of their dollar amount, right? You’re basically paying for 1 person versus the portion of maybe 4 people. But you’re spending more of your time guiding them, directing them. If you’re particularly maybe new to podcasting, you may not even know how to direct them. And so

41:27 – 41:39
Lauren Popish: you may spend a lot of time learning how, but I think those are the 2 big factors, your time for sure money and what you can use your time for that may make you more money than you’re actually spending on the service itself.

41:39 – 42:08
Rochelle Moulton: Well, and I would just add to that there’s a risk factor because I did interview, I mean, I know a few independent podcasters, I interviewed 1 and I just was uncomfortable that if something happens in their life, I don’t have an editor. Or it could be something happens in mind, like I’m thinking a couple of times, like I reversed order on episodes, and I asked for 1 to be accelerated over the other. And it could be accommodated even if my person wasn’t available because you have a team, right?

42:08 – 42:08
Lauren Popish: We

42:08 – 42:13
Rochelle Moulton: have 1 person, if they get hit by a bus, you know, you’re in trouble.

42:13 – 42:29
Lauren Popish: Or even a lot less than that. If they get hit by the cold, you know, and that happens all the time, you know, where it’s like, my editor just ghosted me. They just ghosted like, I came and said, Where’s my episode? And they didn’t reply. That’s a huge risk.

42:29 – 42:43
Rochelle Moulton: Yeah. And that’s, again, that goes back to time. I think you’re 2 points of cost and time, but the risk falls into that. So if you want to lower price, then you’re carrying this maybe unrecognized risk, and it might never happen.

42:43 – 42:44
Lauren Popish: That’s true.

42:44 – 43:17
Rochelle Moulton: But it could. And so for me, I don’t want to worry about that. I want to know that my team is available, and they’re going to be there for me within reason. So yeah, so it’s funny because soloists are in our name, but many of the soloists I talk to are absolutely committed to not doing things outside of their genius zone. And very few of us have audio editing in our genius zone. In fact, it was a while back, I talked to somebody who said, I’m spending 5 hours an episode editing my podcast.

43:18 – 43:18
Lauren Popish: And I said,

43:18 – 43:46
Rochelle Moulton: what? And so it was, they had taught themselves how to edit. They did the podcast, then they listened to the whole thing. They agonizingly did the tech. Then they listened to it again, because they weren’t sure that it was good. And we’re not talking about the time to like prep and have guests and you know, all the other things in marketing, all the other things that you do. So yeah, you do not wanna be spending a big chunk of your time on the backroom part. Spend it in your genius zone or spend it doing the things

43:46 – 43:51
Rochelle Moulton: that only you can do for the podcast, like marketing it to your people.

43:52 – 43:55
Lauren Popish: That’s what I say all the time. You’re spot

43:56 – 44:11
Rochelle Moulton: on. So I’m just curious about something because this does come up a lot with people who are thinking about podcasting or they’ve done a few episodes. Like how do you respond when someone tells you that they don’t want to podcast because they hate the sound of their own voice? What do you tell them?

44:11 – 44:51
Lauren Popish: That happens a lot. Or I’ve started a podcast, I heard the first episode and I’m so incredibly mortified. My first response would be like, of course, of course it’s weird. Under what situation are we normally hearing our voices in its true, pure form? It’s kind of like how you can’t kind of smell your own self. It’s like, you don’t really notice your own voice on a daily basis. This is not a normal thing that we’re out there kind of listening to ourselves, listening to it back, listening to our intonation, listening to our pitch. So all I

44:51 – 45:29
Lauren Popish: would say is, first of all, if you’re feeling like, man, I hate my voice, hey, you’re not alone. That’s a very, not only a common, but a very natural response, I think, to say, wow, that’s kind of weird. I don’t do that every day. I haven’t, and I maybe never have done that. So start with normalizing. That’s normal. That’s natural. And then the next thing I would say is moving past the discomfort being bad and moving into the discomfort of being new. When we feel uncomfortable, we often say like, I don’t like it, it’s negative. I’ve

45:29 – 46:09
Lauren Popish: had to learn this obviously the hard way with the public speaking, every little feeling of anxiety doesn’t need to be an indication of eminent danger or something bad. It can just simply be a sensation that we’re having that is normal because of the circumstances. So, wow, I’m uncomfortable hearing my voice because I don’t usually listen to it. It’s a new experience and it’s novel and therefore it’s uncomfortable. Yep, that is happening. And then The next thing I would say is, and what an incredibly unique voice it is. No 1 else has gone through what you’ve gone

46:09 – 46:43
Lauren Popish: through. They haven’t seen what you’ve seen. They haven’t experienced the things you’ve experienced. They weren’t raised the way you were raised. So think of all the things that have gone into giving you the voice you have, the reason you speak the way you do, your patterns, your voice, your tone. Maybe you got sick at a young age and you have this kind of gravelly voice, whatever it is, isn’t it remarkable? Let us just kind of meditate on what has come together to give us the voice that we have. Wow, pretty cool. No 1 else has what

46:43 – 47:15
Lauren Popish: I have. And even though many of us are, not many of us, but many people are good at imitations, you know, mimicking other people’s voices, comedians and things like that. Really, our voice is kind of as unique as a fingerprint. That’s what I always say. It’s 1 of our most novel identifying factors that no 1 else can replicate. How cool is that? We very rarely get to feel so special and unique in a world that makes us kind of feel like we’re ever, like everybody else, you know? If I’m blonde, I’m blonde just like, you know,

47:15 – 47:49
Lauren Popish: millions of other people. If I’m tall, I’m tall like millions of other people. What a special moment to just get to have something that’s only mine, that only I sound like this. And that’s where the power of podcasting and the power of your voice really starts to crack open is when you realize that no 1 else has the perspective that you have, has experienced the world in the exact order and manner that you have. And so even when you feel maybe that your voice itself sounds strange or that your message isn’t special enough. Oh, I don’t

47:49 – 48:22
Lauren Popish: want to start another business podcast. There’s millions of business podcasts. Well, in reality, we now know that most of them have podfaded and they’re not in production. So there’s plenty of room for starting a business podcast. It’s not about the fact that it’s a business podcast that’s special. It’s the fact that you’re the host of this business podcast and you’re unique. You have a perspective that’s never been shared before and your voice is really a reflection of that unique perspective. So that’s kind of the journey I try and take podcasters on. It’s normal, it’s natural, just

48:22 – 48:37
Lauren Popish: because it’s uncomfortable doesn’t mean it’s bad. And then, wow, how cool that we get something that is so unique, different than anybody else. Is that not even more of a reason to start your podcast today? Mic drop.

48:37 – 48:46
Rochelle Moulton: I’m not going to say another thing about that. In fact, I’m going to send that segment to anybody who tells me they hate the sound of their voice. It’s perfect.

48:46 – 48:50
Lauren Popish: I’ll send them to this. I’ll send them to this episode. They need to hear it.

48:51 – 49:05
Rochelle Moulton: So I just have 1 final question as we wrap up, which I love to ask every guest, which is if you could go back to who you were when you started your business, when you first started your business, what’s the 1 thing you’d advise her to do?

49:07 – 49:55
Lauren Popish: I would advise her to think less about tomorrow and think more about 10 years down the road because I actually have a point of view on business that is all about the fact that success comes from time. Time building and expertise, time learning the ins and the outs of your business, learning about business in general. I sometimes think that success has less to do with what you’re offering, how you’re offering it, and more about how long you’re willing to go work through all of the unique problems, challenges, how long you’re willing to endure that makes a

49:55 – 50:31
Lauren Popish: business successful. Because many of the people we admire as business people, while they look like overnight successes, have been doing what they’ve been doing for a very, very long time. And that’s true of all of our TV professionals, you know, not that I think these folks are necessarily examples, but the shark tank people or the leaders or CEOs or founders of Fortune 500 companies, nobody just showed up yesterday and was successful. That’s a, if anybody thinks that it’s a myth. And so in my first few years or beginning a business, I would be so much less

50:31 – 51:07
Lauren Popish: focused on did I pick the right color? Is my logo gonna resonate? Did I write my copy for my mission statement correctly? Did I select the right email service provider? So much less about those things and think so much more about how to get to year 5 with my health intact with with some kind of sanity and just think about it as a long haul and and really it’s also true for podcasting as well. There are no they’re very I won’t say no we all can find an example of a podcast that popped up quickly and

51:07 – 51:41
Lauren Popish: was very successful, probably because they had a lot of funding behind them and they could market really well in ways that most of us indie creators couldn’t. But most podcasters that are successful have been doing it for years. Most business owners who are successful have been doing it for years. Think more about 5 years down the road and just getting there, just lasting that long and less about all of those micro decisions that feel like life and death on day 1. Play the long game. Play the long game. That’s it.

51:41 – 51:59
Rochelle Moulton: Love it. Well, Lauren, thank you so much for coming on the show. I know that you tend to be on the other side of the mic, but I really appreciate your sharing your experiences, your wisdom, and especially about hearing the sound of your own voice. So thank you so much.

52:00 – 52:11
Lauren Popish: Thank you for having me. Truly a treat. I love talking to fellow ambitious women who know the power of their own abilities. Thank

52:11 – 52:15
Rochelle Moulton: you. So that’s it for this episode. I hope you’ll join us next time.