91: Is Your Business Ready for a Podcast? Ask Yourself These Five Questions
With more people listening to podcasts than ever before, you might be thinking a podcast is the next step for your business. But the truth is, not every person or business is ready for a podcast. So, if you’ve been considering starting a podcast for your coaching or consulting business, take a listen to this episode where I break the down the five questions you to need to ask yourself to find out if podcasting is a good for you and if now is the right time to start a podcast for your business.
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Transcript
Welcome to podcasting for coaches. I'm Britany Felix and I'm a podcast launch consultant who specializes in helping coaches and consultants utilize the power of podcasting as a way to build brand awareness and generate new leads for their business. I realize not every new coach or consultant can afford to hire someone to help launch their show. So I created this podcast as a way to guide you through the process of launching and utilizing your very own podcast to help you grow your business and reach a new audience of adoring followers and potential clients. If you're ready to get your voice and podcast out into the world, head over to podcasting for coaches.com to learn more. Welcome to Episode 91 of podcasting for coaches. If you've been considering starting a podcast for your coaching or consulting business, this is the perfect episode for you. Because I'm going to be breaking down the five questions you need to ask yourself to know if you and your business are right for a podcast, and if so, if now is the right time to start one. So to just jump right in here, question number one, do you actually have the time to launch and then maintain a podcast? That seems like a pretty simple one. But if you don't know how long those things take, then you may not know how to answer this question. So let me break it down for you. When you are launching a podcast with someone like me, who is a consultant who can guide you, through every single step of the process, tell you exactly what you need to do and cut down on a tremendous amount of research time, I generally tell my clients to anticipate it taking about two months to launch their show. Now I say a two month time frame because I know that all of my clients just like you have businesses to run families to take care of friends and family to spend time with. And of course, just general lives to lead. So I know that they can't necessarily devote all of their time to their podcast lunch. So two months generally gives us a good time frame to do everything we need to do for the podcast, one not feeling overwhelmed with everything else that you have to do. Now, during that two month time frame, I would expect that you can do what you need to do in about an hour a week. But again, that's with working with a consultant like me, and then even varies some weeks, you're just waiting on a web designer or a graphic designer to take care of some things for you. And then other weeks, you're actually creating content, so maybe you're putting in a little bit more time. Now I have had some people who have launched much sooner than that. I had a client in the past who actually launched within two weeks. But that was because they had actual employees that they could have strictly devoted to working on the podcast launch. I have a current client who actually just started with last Thursday. And she has already accomplished almost everything that she needs to do for her podcast launch in order to be able to submit her to all the various platforms for approval, we are kind of just waiting on her graphic designer to become available to work on her artwork. And that's just about it, she is nailing it. So you can make this go as quickly as you want to. However, if you're DIY it, if you're doing it on your own without a consultant like myself to guide you through the process, it's going to take considerably longer, because you're going to have to research the entire process. Yes, there are courses that you can go through, I even offer one of those, there will be a link to it in the show notes, obviously. But even with doing that, you're still most likely going to be googling some things, watching some YouTube videos, reading some blogs, just trying to figure it out. And then question whether or not you're even doing it the right way. So that's obviously going to take longer, I have known people who have been working on their podcast launch DIY for like six months to a year. So you can really have this honestly take as long as you want. And you can spread it out so that you're working on teeny tiny little parts at a time. Or you can devote a bunch of time right up front and get it knocked out super fast. Now, as far as maintaining your show goes, this can kind of go the same way. So if you choose to handle absolutely everything yourself, then you're looking at roughly about two to six hours worth of work every week for your podcast just to do a weekly show. And the reason there's such a range there is because it honestly depends on whether you're doing solo versus interview because doing an interview show obviously takes more time with having to find guests get things scheduled, record the actual interviews. And then of course, after you release the episode, you have to let the guests know about it, create social media graphics for them, all of that fun stuff. And then obviously, if you have a shorter show compared to a longer show, that's going to take less time to edit. Now when it comes to editing, you also need to take into account that you're probably going to have to learn how to edit audio which honestly, I'm almost Five years into editing audio, and I'm still learning new things all the time. So that can be a pretty time consuming part of the process is learning how to edit your show. And then editing it every week generally takes about four to six, sometimes even eight times the length of the audio you're editing. So for example, if you have a one hour interview show, you can expect for it to take you between four to eight hours just to do the editing for that episode. Again, that's not including all of the prep work that goes into it, and then all the promotional efforts that go into after it's been released. So it can be a very big time commitment. So going with shorter solo episodes is a much easier way to kind of get going and get off the ground, it's going to be less of a time commitment. But this then leads me into question number two, which is, if you don't have the time to devote to learning how to launch a podcast yourself, or maintaining a show and editing it and putting it out every single week? Do you have the financial resources to have a support team to help you with those things? Are you able to hire a podcast consultant to help you with the launch? If you don't have the time? Or the desire to learn how to start a podcast yourself? Or do you have the money to hire a podcast editor? If you really have zero desire to learn how to edit audio? Now, you may not be able to answer those questions if you don't know how much those things cost. And as far as launch consulting goes well, and even editing episodes, the range can be pretty wide. And I know that roughly speaking, I have seen people who charge like 1500 for launching a podcast all the way up to my soon to be one on one rate once I launched my group program, which is going to be 5000 for a podcast launch as of the beginning of September 2020. So it can again vary greatly. But it is just like everything else. As you know, as a coach or consultant, you get what you pay for. So depending on how much actual support you need, how experienced and skilled you want your consultant to be, what all they're going to offer in their package a wide variety of things. And then when it comes to an editor, you can find people who will put together a podcast episode for 25 bucks an episode. And then you'll find people who are closer to like three or $400 an episode. Now again, you get what you pay for. So the $25 per episodes, probably not going to be that great, they're probably not going to do that much for you, they're most likely going to be based outside of the United States, which by the way, I'm not saying is necessarily a bad thing, the production partner that I have been working with and outsourcing some of my own client work to for the past few years is based outside of the United States, so I have nothing against that. Now, if you would like to speak to some different editors to get some ideas of what you would need to pay for that so that you can come up with a budget and determine if you have the financial resources to pay to outsource that part of the process. I do have an episode for you that will help. Episode Number 26 is an episode titled tips for hiring a podcast editor. And so that'll walk you through the process of what you need to ask an editor and how to really start doing that research on who you would want to work with. Okay, so that takes us to question number three, do you have enough content? Or can you come up with enough content, if you're just starting your business, if you don't really know who your ideal client is, if you don't really have any products or services, if you're not really sure what you're going to even offer or talk about, then now is probably not the time for you to start a podcast. I'm not saying you need to have this backlog of blog posts, for example that you can pull from, but you need to be able to actually either teach your audience something in these episodes, inspire them, motivate them, or give them conversations with guests who can do that. Now one way to kind of get around this is you don't have to always do an episode every single week. I've had clients who release episodes bi weekly, I have had clients who do seasonal shows meaning they release, you know three months worth of episodes at a time and then they take a break for three or six months and then they come back again. So they're not having to constantly put out content. Now of doing a seasonal show is something that you're considering. I want you to take a listen to episode number 53 where I walk you through the positives and negatives of doing a show in a seasonal format. Alright, and Question number four. Are you prepared for or okay with podcasting taking a full year before you see any real growth? Or are you actually looking for immediate results? If you're looking for immediate results, podcasting is 100% not the medium for you. podcasting is one of the most powerful mediums out there, I 100% believe that I would not have a successful business. If that were not true. However, it's only powerful when you stick with Fit. If you put out a show and you expect to have this influx of new clients within the first three months or even six months, you're probably going to be disappointed. Are there exceptions to this rule? Absolutely. However, in my experience over the past several years working with my clients, and even with my own shows, we don't really start to see significant growth, at least in terms of an audience until they reach about the one year mark. I don't know what it is about that mark. But generally almost like to lose a week, we can start to see a difference in those downloads. When they hit that year, something happens, there's this stride that they hit this momentum that they reach. And generally speaking, after that year, market picks up pretty quickly. However, I don't want you to think that you're going to be just throwing money down the drain for a whole year, there's most likely still going to be some benefits to having your podcast, and even beyond a monetary gain. So I have interviewed several podcasters on this show, about how their podcast has helped their business, and even in some really unexpected ways. So like landing public speaking engagements, helping them to actually learn how to pitch their services better and network better in person. So lots of different things here. So I want you to go back and take a listen to some of those episodes with some of my guests about how podcasting has helped their business to give you some ideas, and know that it's not all about downloads, and specifically having new clients come in because there are more positives to podcasting than just that. So finally, the last question you need to ask yourself, before you decide to start a podcast for your business is, do you actually even want to start a podcast, I constantly hear people say, I feel like I should start a podcast. Or people keep telling me that I should start a podcast. And it's that word should when that word should is thrown in there, then I am always hesitant to work with that person. Because podcasting is a long game, it is a time commitment. And if you're not doing it, because you really enjoy the medium of podcast, and you actually really want to have a podcast, chances are, you're going to get burnt out very quick and you're not going to be able to be consistent enough, or stick with it long enough to actually see real results. And the last thing I want you to do is put a bunch of time and money into something that is just going to disappoint you and you're going to feel like you have wasted all of that time or money. If you actually do want to start a podcast, if you are okay with it taking a year if you do feel like you can come up with enough content. If you are perfectly able to handle the time commitment of doing things yourself, or you're able to outsource it to a team, then I am one super excited for you because you get to join the amazing world of podcasting. But too, I have an awesome resource for you. So you may be wondering right now, okay, yes, I want to start a podcast. I answered yes to all these questions. Now what I am going to be launching my first ever group podcast launch program. This is a live program called start a podcast in eight weeks or less, where we will meet together once a week and I will guide you through the exact process I guide my one on one clients through it's going to be kaftan absolutely no more than 10 members. So it's going to be a very intimate group where each person is still going to receive a lot of high touch attention. The Doors will open to the public for that program. On September 1. However, I have a waitlist that is exclusively open to people who visit my website and happen to notice the banner at the top or people who listened to this podcast. And the people on that waitlist will get access to the program a full week before the doors open to the public. So again, there's only 10 spaces, and that week may make the difference between you being able to enroll in the program and all the slots being full. If you want to join that waitlist or find links to any of the resources that I mentioned in this episode, just go to podcasting for coaches. com, click on the podcast tab in the main menu and go to episode number 91. Thank you so much for joining me and I want to invite you to come back next week, where I'm actually going to talk about the three key pillars to a great foundation for your podcast. Have a fantastic week. And that wraps up another episode of podcasting for coaches. If you'd like to connect with me further, you can do so on Instagram at podcasting for coaches. If you know it's time to finally get serious about starting your podcast, go to podcasting for coaches.com and click on the work with me tab in the main menu to learn more about my one on one launch consultation packages or my self paced online course. And I look forward to seeing the podcast that you create and put out into the world.