In Business? Can I Suggest You Start A Podcast?

Can I suggest you start a business podcast? Especially if you are starting something new or switching things up with your content marketing after Lockdown.

Today our podcast "Own It: Your Business & Your Life" celebrates 150,067 downloads.

Rather than give all the usual reasons including massive podcast growth globally especially among the 20-30 age group who use it as 'on demand' radio, or dangle Joe Rogan's $100 million deal with Spotify in front of you, I thought I would share why we do it and why you should think about it too.

Four years or so ago, my ex-business partner Judith Morgan and I, decided to get together on Zoom once a week and talk about our lives, the challenges our clients face and the things that have inspired us. The conversation format is much easier - I'd just done 150 interviews for my previous podcast so I was knackered but I knew I didn't want to stop podcasting.

Our goal was not necessarily to attract clients (although it does that for sure and reminds existing and previous clients we are still there for them) but to inspire older entrepreneurs to get started. We ran ads for our own businesses in the podcast in the early days, but don't bother now, we just run a credit with our own URL's at the end. We only have guests on when Judith takes a break in August and they are always known to us, 'listener guests' we call them.

Our listeners are very diverse in their entrepreneurial endeavours. People listen all over the world, while shopping, walking the dog, running B&B's in France and Austria, trekking across Mozambique in Africa, having breakfast or cooking dinner, on holiday and on the way to work. They say we make them laugh, cry, think, try new things, take action and get inspired. They join our Facebook group and discuss each episode. They are highly engaged and loyal.

It's cost us $15 a month to host with Libsyn, but you can start for free with Anchor or RadioPublic. Ours has a website but you don't need one. Each episode features on mine so creates my content for me, it goes onto many FB pages and automatically goes onto the Facebook page and also YouTube with its own playlist.

We record for an hour, I edit for an hour and J writes the show notes for SEO purposes. We could outsource that bit and probably will one day. My VA does the rest of the tech and it costs about $12 a week for that part. My favourite part of the week is choosing a cool picture for each episode. I want to get the logo redone but it's not a big deal.

We enjoy doing it even though we are chalk and cheese (she's more 'woo woo' and I'm very techie) and it can get a bit tense when we disagree over the big things. Two or three times our differing views have brought us to have the conversation about whether to carry on.

We are as honest as we can be with our listeners about our challenges and wins. Judith became a 'Waspi' woman during our broadcast and has been travelling the country house-sitting ever since. About a year in, we recorded an episode where we talked about my losing my life partner just that week. I moved to Greece to deal with my grief and our listeners came too, while I chopped wood, dealt with random insects and bats invading my living room, got to know the locals and got my zest for life back. Now they are with us during the lockdown and say we are keeping them sane.

We range between 600 and 1200 downloads per episode. We have both attracted clients from it. A slow steady climb, with organic growth and people sharing episodes with their friends and followers.

Anyone can do this. You can do this. It's fun (and even more so if you do it with someone else).

Any questions about podcasting, I'm happy to help. Just ask me under this article. If you want someone to set it all up for you, I can highly recommend the person who set up Own It! for us.

You can listen to any of our latest episodes over at the website (and don't forget to like and share if you enjoy it!). We've even got a list of the most popular episodes on the side of the site.

Just visit Own It The Podcast here https://OwnItThePodcast.com