I did not want to start a podcast.
I did not want to start another project and have it fail. I did not want to start something else and not have it pay off, literally. I did not want to think of marketing it or being “that podcast” or finding people to interview and, least of all, I didn’t want to have to publish and have to be consistent. In other words, I didn’t want another self-imposed deadline.
I did not want that commitment and I did not want that responsibility.
But then, over drinks, I was talking to another Beijing-based friend and she said, “You sound a lot like my colleague. He says the same thing, that he wants to start a podcast but he doesn’t know what he’d talk about.”
And that pushed me over the edge.
If anything, despite all of the strikes against starting a podcast, the one I did not want to be most of all, was that guy who talks about doing that thing, and then never does.
I went home that night knowing full well that I had to at least make a rough draft or give up the idea already. Over a sobering walk and breakfast, I sat down to record a demo podcast. It was definitely rough, but at least it was done. One week later I recorded my first episode.
In a sense, it was very similar to how I got started travelling: I just had to go and do it already or stop talking about it.
So what was I going to talk about?
Well, if someone had heard me say this and then walked into my apartment and saw that I had headphones, a microphone, a computer and the necessary software to do a podcast, and then hear that I also wrote a blog, he’d wonder what I was talking about. “What do you mean, you don’t know what to talk about? YOU HAVE A BLOG!”
To be clear, it’s not like I hadn’t tried to start a podcast before. I had done demos and even some Facebook LIVE videos prior to starting a proper podcast. But nothing was consistent nor did I put much effort into post-production. Record live and be done with it, that was how I liked it. With the live approach I wouldn’t bog myself down with overthinking the entire process, from what I was going to say to how it should sound after. Once it was said and done, it was published and viewed which meant I could then move onto the next thing.
That same thought process of simplifying things helped me through the first few podcasts and addressed the issue of what I was going to talk about.
But, after a few episodes, I could see that I was still spending a lot of time trying to write an outline for each episode (ie, show notes) and that I was getting bogged down in research and details. That brought me to my next barrier: I did not want the podcast, nor my blog, to be some sort of exhaustive research project. I wanted it to be more off the cuff even if it meant I didn’t everything absolutely perfect or proper. So, as I struggled to keep up with my own research to write a blog post every week it meant that I would also struggle to create a podcast every week.
Moreover, it was still a lot of me. I was getting kind of sick of me. I have a whole website dedicated to me. Could I not find something else to talk about?
The idea to have interviews was always there but it was something I was a little shy about. Would people want to talk to me? Would I want to talk to them?
Most podcasts are only an hour and are usually very focused. However, in all of my travels, I don’t think I’ve ever really had a focused conversation. What if I just melded them together? Open-ended, unedited conversations that touched on any and all sorts of topics? Joe Rogan would be the most famous example of this sort of podcast though there are others that have done something similar.
Why not have guests?
I don’t think I’m a bad conversationalist and I do think I am able to keep a convo going in a constructive, if sometime challenging, manner. I still go by that thinking. I’ll push, but I’m not “out to get” anybody.
Further, as a traveller, I meet all sorts of people all the time and have interesting conversations that disappear into the air. Despite the lessons to be learned, these conversations are never discovered by other people three seats away let alone a world away.
And so after some consideration I decided to take the plunge into having guests on my podcast and I think it was the right decision.
Since I have guests I’m able to talk about a lot more than what could be fit into a blog post. This allows for a lot more to be covered in a shorter period of time, even if the conversation tends to meander quite a bit.
There is some editing to make sure the beginnings and endings are proper, but, other than that, the conversation flows pretty naturally between those two points.
I’ve learned a lot, especially about editing audio and have been able to significantly reduce the time spent on working on each episode. For the time being, I see no reason to try to force through any more than one or two episodes per month. Since I’m a one man show, I need to save some energy for other things and if I tried to do any more I’d feel more anxious than anything else. I can take my time with this, there is no rush.
Why didn’t you call it something like an “Experience” instead of “Podcast”?
Convenience, for one. And the fact that it’s what the medium is called.
But here I am, one year later after having officially starting my podcast. If you haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet, here’s the link:
As it stands, this looks like it’s a new addition to my blog or, more generally, to my arsenal of content creation. Whether it lasts another ten years is another question. I’d like to think it can but I also wonder what all of those episodes would be about and who will be on them. I also wonder what else could spawn from this effort. I mean, I have a publication (a blog) and now a radio show (a podcast), where’s the TV show (online video)? Lol, maybe that would be the next step! Ha!
Anyway, I hope you’ve enjoyed what you’ve heard so far and that you’ve been able to glean something from each episode, even if maybe they can be (a lot) longer than what you’re used to in the podcast format.
Thanks for listening!