BIRD WILLIAMS: You're listening to Bird Means Business Episode 13.

Hello there, and thank you so much for tuning in to Bird  Means Business. I am so honored to have you here. Thank you for tuning in each week. Today I am going to talk to you about how I set up my podcast. The one you're listening to right now, In less than five weeks, and how it cost me just $9.95. So you are going to want to take notes on this one. It is going to be so good, especially if you're looking to start a podcast. Also if you know someone who might be interested in starting a podcast, this would be a great one to share with them. So make sure you do that. I have a checklist for you. Not only the 24 steps to launching your podcast. But also a weekly checklist for once you get your podcast going to make sure you have covered all of your bases, I want you to go to birdwilliamsconsulting.com/podcasts/13, and you'll see the link there to be able to download your free guide to how to launch your podcast, and how to make sure that you each week know exactly what you need to do again and again. So today I'm going to help get you from just an idea, from nothing to actually streaming on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, and importantly, on your own website. 

Before we get started I want to share a listener shout-out. haf811 on Apple podcasts says, "Excellent advice. I'm not a small business owner but I work for a couple of small businesses, and this podcast has given me more perspective and insight into the management side of things, which is helpful to me to be a better small business employee. On a personal note, I love the no-nonsense and approachable way, Ashley discusses finances, so I can apply it in my life." That is so awesome. I'm so glad to hear that you're loving the podcast, even though you're not a business owner yourself. That makes me so excited to know that it's reaching out beyond what I even thought it would. So, thank you so much for that review. I really appreciate it. 

Okay, so I'm going to start off by just letting y'all know this is just what I did. There are tons of other ways to have an amazing podcast. I mean, y'all can just go out there and Google it. They're even podcast Facebook groups. So do your research. But if you like what you're hearing on my podcast you could at least start here with this template. But the point is that you start. I don't want you to say, man, I have this podcast idea, and never actually start because you feel like you don't have a roadmap. Today you're getting your roadmap. So you could always make it better over time and I plan to do the same with my podcast. But basically, now you have no excuse. So let's get started. 

For starters, as a reminder, I did not plan to initially have a podcast. When I made the decision I had to move really quickly, hence me launching in five weeks. What happened was I launched my consulting firm and I realized that now that I had an online business, for those of you who don't know, my first business is a gym here in Houston, Texas called The League. I launched it nearly seven years ago with my husband. And this is my first online business. So when I launched it, I realized after doing some research that I needed to have consistent weekly content going out to folks. And I was initially going to do that through a blog. Then I thought, no, I'd rather do like, I'd rather be able to kind of convey my heart and like my energy better. Maybe I can do weekly videos. That was not working for your girl because I'm super-duper awkward. And so I thought well maybe if I could do a podcast, it's just the audio and not my weird face. It'll work a lot better. So here we are. And that's why I had to launch so quickly. I actually talk a lot about this in Episode Five if you want to kind of just get that full story. 

But the cool part is now if any of you out there need to launch a podcast quickly or don't have a huge budget. This is going to be really helpful for you because I was able to do it pretty quick, with very, very little money. And really it's a blessing in disguise that it worked out this way because I think if I would have had all the time in the world to decide, I would have never started. I would have looked through all the different types of equipment. I would have gone back and forth between different ways to do stuff. But I didn't have time for any of that. I had to just start, and it's actually working out really great. So I hope this is helpful to you. 

When I got ready to launch my podcast, what I did first was basically go to a Google doc. I actually pulled it up before I wrote the outline for this podcast episode. And it was called Podcast Action Plan. So, if you work with me in any capacity, you'll know that I do a lot in Google Docs. I just love it because you can access it anywhere whether I'm on my computer or on my phone. I can share it with people. I can just get all of my thoughts in one place and I think that's what I like most about it. It's so easy to have notes in your calendar and on your notes app and written down and all over the place. But I just like to have everything in one concise format. So that's what I use a Google doc for. So I encourage you to figure out what works best for you. But you want to make sure you have all of your ideas and thoughts in one place. 

So first I'm going to share with you the steps that it will take to launch your podcast. And then I'm going to kind of summarize and show you what you're going to do each week or each month if you're batching, which we'll talk about in a little bit. So there are a lot of steps with a lot of detail. So like I said, get out a pen and paper or just go and download the checklist, and the launch steps at birdwilliamsconsulting.com/podcast/13. You'll see the link there to just download it. It's free. It'll ask you to put your email address in and then you'll be able to just get the checklist and go from there. 

As I walk you through these different steps I'm going to kind of just share what I did to kind of just provide a little bit more context. I find that more helpful for people as opposed to just going down a checklist. So the first thing you want to do is create a name. I went with Bird Mean Business, obviously, But it took a few iterations. My husband is great with coming up with names and he came up with this one. He had come up with a different name first and I put it by some friends because he wasn't really sure about it. And then we kind of had another name. So my point is, just use your network. If there's someone in your life who you think would be great to put this by, just do that. Or you might already have a name in your mind. 

After you create a name, decide if you're going to have solo shows, or is it going to be like guests that you interview, or will it be a mix. And if you're going to primarily have guests on the show, you want to go ahead and start planning that out now and reaching out to those guests ahead of time. 

Next, you're going to decide if you're going to post in seasons, or if you're going to post every week. So seasons sounds amazing, right? You kind of get a break and it's a little bit easier for you to kind of plan it out, right? You only have maybe have like a six-week season. Then you take a break and you do another six weeks season. I decided to have weekly podcast episodes because again, I wanted to have consistent weekly content for my online business. So just figure out what works best for you. 

Then I want you to decide the typical length of your episodes. I've seen podcasts as short as five minutes. Some I've seen that are like, hours and hours long. For me, I want to keep it under 30ish minutes on average. I know some will go over. But just figure that piece out. 

Then you're going to decide on your recording equipment and software and then also where you plan to record your podcast episodes. So this is the question I get most often. Y'all, I use GarageBand, which is a free application on my MacBook. And I actually believe that PCs have something similar. But there's no mic. I'm not using any mic. I am literally in this moment, leaning into my computer and trying to get my voice as close to the microphone in the computer as I can because I don't have a mic extension on here. I'm just using my MacBook in GarageBand, which is amazing because it's free99. And I'm in my closet. If you follow me on Instagram @birdwilliamsconsulting, you may have seen the video I posted of my husband trickin' out our guest bedroom closet and making it a podcast studio. So, yeah, before I was like, among shoes and jackets and suitcases and it was a hot mess. And now he has it like super nice in here. He put this foam padding on the wall so that the sound absorbs better. But basically being in a closet or in a small space like a small office or bathroom. It just helps a lot because there's just little excess noise. So kind of think through what recording equipment you want to use and where you'll record. Again, you can get as crazy as you want with the recording equipment. Maybe one day I'll upgrade to a microphone. Maybe one day I'll have a whole podcast studio. That'd be a lot more awesome than crouching over in my closet. But again I wanted to make sure that I didn't have any excuse not to start. And so I've just started with what I had and I plan on upgrading it later. Okay. 

Next, I want you to decide if you're going to edit your own podcast, or if you're going to hire someone to. So y'all, I do this myself as well. Thank you, YouTube. But I don't plan on doing it forever. I don't want it to freak you out because really it's not as hard as it could look. I mean I remember the first time I got in GarageBand. I thought oh my gosh, I can't do this. But I went to YouTube, and just figured it out and it's not super complicated. I even put the music in and all that. So you could always just ask a friend if you know someone who's good at that. Or you could just hire someone. I even have thought that maybe there's college students out there who would intern for you to just get experience with editing if that's something they want to do. But basically, I don't want you to make any excuses here. I don't want you to stop and get overwhelmed here. You can do this part, either you or someone you hire. 

Next, you're going to write a short description of your show. So, this is going to appear on all the podcast platforms. Don't freak out. You can totally and very easily change or update this later. And you want to just keep it simple. Say the name of your show, what it's about, how often the show will air, and the intended audience and the host. 

Next, you're going to create a marketing strategy. And you just basically simply want to think about how you're going to market your podcast. Are you going to have a Instagram page or a Facebook page? And just kind of think through what that would look like for your podcast. 

Next, I want you to decide if and how you're going to monetize your podcast, meaning if you're going to get sponsors, have had people pay to have you talk about their business on your podcast. So, you know, people feel differently about this, I'm of the, of the mind that I will never promote anything that I don't feel strongly about or that I haven't used myself. I've had one podcast sponsor, Episode 2: Securing Your Money Team with my accountant, Alby, because he's amazing like that. If you're starting from scratch with a small audience, you may not be able to really nail down any real sponsors because they typically, look at your downloads. But you can just start thinking through it. So when I went to Alby, my accountant, I was like, Hey, I'm doing a podcast episode on securing your money team and I'm going to talk about how awesome you were with helping fix everything with our taxes and all that. He's our accountant. And he's the fourth account and we've used, and he is amazing. And so I told him I was like, would you want to sponsor the podcast and I could like have a link to go to my website and looking at your contact information and have a code to set up. And he was like sure, and he paid me money even though I had literally never even had one download because the podcast wasn't even a thing yet. I was just preparing for it since it was episode 2. And yeah, so, anyway, you can think through whether or not you want to have sponsors or not and in that entire process. Again, my intention isn't to monetize my podcast. It's just to be a way to get consistent with the content out to my tribe. 

Okay. Next, you're going to brainstorm 30 episode ideas. So I don't want you to think hard about it. I just want you to brain dump, I love brain dumps. Just start thinking about all the ideas. Just go write them all down in your Google doc or wherever you keep your notes. And you know I was thinking about where do I get, you know episode topic ideas from because I have so many in my Google doc. I have so many saved. And really it's just like conversations with clients, or friends, or even just like, you know, getting quiet, I find that when I'm in the shower I get so many ideas but I think it's because it's one of the very few places that I am like not able to do anything else and my mind can really like open up to things. I get so many ideas in the shower however weird that might sound. And then also just like social media research. So let's say that you are launching a juice bar, and you are thinking of having consistent weekly content because you want a way to market your juice bar. And you are thinking about having a podcast. You could just go to like Facebook groups around what it is, you know, around your industry, you know people who are into juicing, juice bars, whatever, healthy yoga. All these different Facebook groups and kind of see what people are talking about and asking in regards to juicing or healthy eating, or whatever. And you can think of episode topic ideas that way. 

Next, I want you to pick four episode ideas. And you're going to launch with all four. So when you launch your podcast and you go out to the world and say hey I have a podcast. When they go to it, there will be four already there. At least four. You can have more than that if you want. But the point is that people are going to be really excited about this. And they're going to run over and you don't want them to just be one episode because they're going to want to be able to like binge content. And having more than one really kind of sets the tone and vibe for your podcast and shows people that you're super-duper committed. So you don't want to just have one. You want to have four. 

So I want you to pick four episode ideas, then write outlines for each episode. Now, this is going to look different for different people. Some just need like a loose, bullet points, kind of outline. And some people need like a full script. So just figure out what works best for you. 

Then you're going to create your podcast cover image. And again, you don't got to get crazy here. I use a free tool called Canva that C A N V A. But there are tons of apps out there where you can just create a square image that's clear. And that's your podcast cover image.

Next, you're going to sign up with Anchor. That's A N C H O R. It is completely free. And I didn't believe it. When I found out about Anchor, it was actually through my husband, Terry. I was like, there's no way it's free when these other platforms are charging. They just say that they don't think that people should have to pay for a podcast because they want to help people be creative and get their ideas out into the world. And so it's free. So you simply set up your podcast by adding your title, the name of your podcast, and a short description, the one that you created earlier. 

Then for distribution. Now, Anchor is going to distribute your podcast to Apple podcasts, to Spotify, to those platforms. But they're not going to start doing that until you have an episode or a trailer. So, if you don't have everything ready for your first episode yet you can just do a trailer, and then ask Anchor to go ahead and distribute your podcast. So it will be out there in the world. And then once you're ready, you can add your episode in. But you don't want to wait until the day before or the, you know, a couple of days before you launch your podcast to distribute it because it could take about a week. Check with Anchor to make sure, I don't know when you're listening to this podcast episode. So make sure you check to see how long that really is. But whenever I launched my podcast, it was about a week. So they should do that ahead of time. Go ahead and have your trailer distributed and then once you're ready to plug in your episodes, you know, future episodes, you can do that. 

Once I actually launched my first episode, and I launched four at once, I actually did five at once. I just deleted the trailer because I didn't want to keep it on there. So you don't have to keep it on there. You can even do a short episode and then delete it later, really whatever works best for you. 

Next, I want you to choose your intro and outro music. Okay y'all, this is where I spent that $9.95. So, when it comes to podcast music you want to make sure that you choose something that's royalty-free and licensable music. That's if you go that route. Or you can make your own music if you are a musician and a composer and a producer. Or you can just have someone do that for you, make a custom track just for your podcast. So I ended up choosing to launch with music that came from a website called neilsounds.com, and that's where I paid the $9.95 for this track that I initially used. You could hear it if you go to one of the first five episodes. But then ultimately I didn't love the sound of that. And so I went to Apple Music and I got a different track for like $1.99 so it could have been even cheaper had gone there the first time. And so the intro music you heard today is from that. It was $1.99. But the downside to both of these options is that anyone else could use the same track. Now there's tons and tons of tracks on both of these websites. But someone could pick the same music, and have a similar podcast. And someone could be like wait, isn't that the same podcast music from Ashley's. I'm just gonna keep it all the way real, y'all. That's what could happen because I've gone this route. One day, when I can find the time magically. I am going to hire someone to help me with my podcast music. But for now, again, I'm just trying to eliminate any excuse you have from starting. You don't have to have custom music to start. You can just start with what you have, or paying $1.99 for something online, and always upgrade later. But again, if I would have waited for everything to be perfect. This is episode 13 Whatever people have gotten for the last 13 episodes wouldn't have happened because I would have been still waiting for it to be perfect. So don't let perfection, stop you. 

Okay, next I want you to batch record your episodes. So, guys, this is going to free you up from having to record each week, or every time before you are ready to release an episode or at 1:43 AM, like I am recording right now. What? Yes. I used to batch my episodes but it has been insane and nonstop in my life lately. So I was not able to batch, and I am literally recording at 1:44 in the morning. It just turned 1:44. So yeah, that's what's going on right now. So this is why I'm telling you to batch because it will save you from doing what I'm doing right now. Batching just means you're going to record four or, however many you choose, episodes at once. You can just do two at a time or four at a time. I know people who do like six or eight at a time. I could not do that. But I was doing four just fine. 

So, when you are recording, like what I'm doing, literally right now is, anytime I mess up, I just pause and then I start that sentence over again to signal to whoever edits the audio that you made a mistake. And I'm just saying that because, otherwise it'll just make it really unclear, whether it's you or someone else editing your podcast, to know when to like go in and cut and edit things. So make sure to just pause and then pick it back up. 

Okay, after you batch record your episodes, you're going to batch produce your episodes. So, again, you're going to outsource this if you can. This is the editing piece. But if you're editing yourself, YouTube tutorials will help you. And I'm going to go ahead and say this too. Do not try to edit out every, um, because you will lose your mind. Don't do it. I tried it and I was like, ugh. Just go with it. It won't be perfect and it is totally okay. 

Next, I'm going to have you write, and you're going to batch this as well, writing the descriptions or the show notes for each episode. You're going to put this in Anchor, and it's automatically going to appear on the different platforms. This is just a short little description of what this episode is about. I do notice that on Apple podcasts if you have a link in your episode description, they work regardless of the link. But I noticed that on Spotify, only the links that have 'www.' before them, are actually clickable, where you can click them and it'll go. And it also kind of like mushes all of the descriptions together so I just want to point that out. Again, I'm just trying to kind of give you the full shebang of everything that I am learning through this process. 

Next, I want you to create all of the images for each episode. This is something you can do again on Canva. You're going to upload this image on Anchor and on your website blog post which we're going to talk about in just a second. 

Next, I want you to add the audio for each episode into Anchor from GarageBand. The way I do this is I just go to share in GarageBand and I AirDrop it to my phone. Then my phone asks me where do you want this to go and I select Anchor. And it automatically pulls into Anchor and it allows me to add the title of that episode. And then I'll ultimately add the image and the description all right there. I'll also say that I go in and I rename the audio file in Anchor, so that the .mp3 at the end or whatever it is, doesn't show up whenever people are watching it in their car or what have you. I go in and I actually rename the audio file as well. It's super simple to do. 

And with this, you can schedule posts in Anchor for whenever you want them to go live, which is super-duper helpful. So that's why batching is super easy. You can have these scheduled to go out whenever you want and they're just going to automatically go and you don't have to worry about it. 

All right. So the final step is to create a blog post for your website. So you're going to actually repurpose the description that you've already made that's already in Anchor. And you're going to use that for your blog post. So you might be thinking, Ashley, wait. Why are we doing more work? Why are we doing a blog post? First of all, repurposing makes it not really that much more work. I literally copy and paste from Anchor and put it onto my website as a blog post. 

This is a side note business tip. You will want to ultimately draw people to your website because it's yours and because you own it. And because your website is kind of like your marketing hub. So, sure most people are going to listen to your podcast on all the different major platforms. But let's say someone comes across your website for some other reason and they don't even know you have a podcast. You want them to actually be able to listen to your podcast there. You want to draw people there, in general in business. Once the audio is published, you're able to actually embed the audio. So what I mean by that is, let's say you schedule it to go out tomorrow at midnight. You won't be able to copy the embed link from Anchor until midnight, to be able to then put it into your website. So just kind of note that. What I do is I wake up super early the morning that my podcast goes live. And I just simply go on to Anchor, and get that embed link, and put it into my website. Takes two seconds. So I want to make sure that I point that out. 

And if you really want to get an idea of, like, kind of see how this all works, just go to birdwilliamsconsulting.com/podcast. You'll see all of my episodes there. And you'll be able to click on any of the episodes. You'll see the embedded audio at the top, and then you'll see the blog. If you notice it's the same exact episode description for that podcast episode, whether it's on Apple podcasts or Spotify or wherever you're listening to the podcast. 

Okay. That was fun. See, it's not that crazy. I know it might seem like a lot of steps. But honestly, it's something you could do in a month. It's something that, if you just really put your mind to, it's not that tough. So in summary, I just explained what you would need to do to launch your podcast from beginning to end. 

And now I'm going to tell you what you need to do on a weekly basis. And again, you can choose to do this every single week, or maybe every month, if you're going to batch like four episodes at a time. So let's just go with the latter because again I think that'll keep you a little bit more sane if you batch your episodes and you do four to whatever it is at a time. Let's just say four. So this is what you're going to do. You're going to carve out some time and you're going to set an intention for each podcast episode. You're going to come up with a title and an outline. And then the reason I say set an intention first is that with each podcast episode, I ask myself like what is the listener supposed to get out of this episode. And I make sure that that makes sense and it kind of flows through the entire episode. Because if you can't really state what the intention is, then maybe that's not a good idea for an episode. You want to make sure that your ideal client, this is something that they're going to want to hear. And then you're going to have your title and then like I said, outline which we talked about a little bit. So you're going to have those three things and then you're going to go ahead and go in and record the podcast. And then produce the podcast, which basically means to edit it. Then you're going to create your description. Again this is what's going to go into Anchor and automatically be pushed to whatever platform folks will hear your podcast on. You're going to create an image that's going to be like the cover art for that podcast episode. And then you're going to upload the audio to Anchor. And again you're going to rename that audio file so that it appears the way you want, whenever people are listening in their car or wherever. Next, you're going to upload the title and description, and the image into Anchor. Then you're going to go to your website, and you're going to take the same title, description, and picture, and you're going to put it onto your website. And you'll be able to embed the audio from Anchor into your website once the episode is actually published and live. So that's actually a step that I do at the very end. 

In the meantime, while maybe I'm waiting for that to happen. I'll go ahead and create my social media post because again that's a part of your marketing plan. And then I'm also going to do an email to my list. I have a tribe of people who subscribe to emails. And I send them out just one email every week and it's the one that's related to my podcast episode. And we talk about goals and accountability, and that sort of thing. And it's just really short and quick. I draft that email for each episode. 

And then finally I have a freebie when it makes sense. And by freebie, it's exactly what I am offering to you in this podcast episode. So like I said you can go to birdwilliamsconsulting.com/podcast/13. And you can get the list of everything I just named, both the steps to launching your podcast and also this weekly checklist. That is a freebie. It's also called a lead magnet. And let me just go ahead and tell you all about freebies real quick. So the idea is that it helps you build your email list. And the reason an email list is important is because you could have a million followers on Instagram. But if Instagram and Facebook decide to make it pay to play, or more pay to play I should say where you have to spend ad dollars to really have your, your posts seen. Or if there's a blackout like there was that day a couple of years ago where like no one could post, and no one could see any new posts on Instagram. You can't really control your content in that way. You don't want to rely on Instagram and Facebook. You want to have your own stuff, and an email list is a great way to do that. So when I say, hey, go get this free checklist that will help you. You're giving out free helpful information to people and you're saying in exchange, "Can you give me your email address?" And it's going to help build your email list so that if they want to stay in contact with you or hear from you in different ways, you're able to engage with them that way. 

And again, I'm really particular about the emails I send out. I just send out one a week. I keep them concise because I get so many emails so I don't want it to be crazy. I just wanted to be helpful. And, and so that's how I manage my list. But a freebie is a great way to do that. And when it makes sense for your podcast episode, it's great to add one in to say, hey, if you want to dive in deeper or if you want to get a checklist or if you want some kind of ancillary help associated with your podcast episode, download this free guide. And people are like, yeah, I'd love that and I'm happy to give you my email in exchange for it. And then you're able to give them that, and really welcome them into your tribe. It's a lot of fun. 

So y'all, that is how I did it, and how I do it each week. But I am going to get back on the train of batching episodes and having them planned out in advance because I cannot be sitting up now at 1:58 in the morning doing podcast episodes. Tomorrow is gonna be so fun. 

I also want to say that I do plan on upgrading things. I don't plan on sitting in this little closet forever. I'd love to have my own podcast studio. I'd love to have my own office with my own podcast studio. Hey, like, we'll see. But for now, this is what it is. But there are so many other ways that you can upgrade your podcast situation. But if you need a quick and cheap way to start. Now you have it. 

So in summary, it's easier than you think. And now you have one less excuse to stop you from starting. The world needs your voice so just do it already, just go and start, I would really love if you shared this episode with anyone you know who's maybe wanting to start a podcast, or if there's anyone who's like, you're this thinking you should start a podcast girl you'd be great at it. Send them this podcast episode so that they can see how easy, quick and cheap it is. And I would just really appreciate that. Thank you so much for following on Spotify, for subscribing on Apple Podcasts, and for telling your entrepreneur friends about Bird Means Business. Talk to you next week.