Making my podcast from scratch during maternity leave
Behind-the-scenes on producing The Creatives' Table podcast having never made a podcast before. Oh and with a baby in tow!
🎧 Listen to the podcast on Spotify or Apple
I started making my podcast back in the Spring when I began to develop an idea I had a few years ago. My second baby was around 5 months old and, as is normal for me, my creativity cogs started turning.
I had (and still have) one day a week to work with as my husband is on kid duty on Thursdays. So I started asking guests if they’d like to chat to me and people were saying yes, and so I booked in a bunch of interviews. I wasn’t sure what we were going to talk about.
I had no idea what I was doing but it felt good to be making it happen. There was so much to learn but as I started to do it I realised I had quite a lot of relevant experience.
Things I had to figure out:
How to record guests and where to do it. There are various platforms and they are all pretty similar so it was hard to make a decision. I chose Riverside.fm
Which mic to use and how to get a good enough sound without worrying too much as I didn’t have time to procrastinate. I ended up borrowing a Seinheiser as the only mics I already owned were for recording music. The sound was too boomy so I needed a condenser mic.
What to talk about! It was organic in the end. I put the call out that I was looking for guests and, either people put themsleves forward, or I asked people I was excited to chat to. Some guests suggested topics and I also thought about what I wanted to know. The most important thing for me was that it wasn’t just a bio of each person’s life but more that we drilled down on a particular part of living creatively and the process.
Editing the various elements I wanted to bring together. In my mind, I was mapping out episodes like a magazine. So each episode would include a guest chat, but I also wanted live performances and me responding to letters sent in from listeners.
How to upload episodes to distribute them to all platforms. This is actually a work in progress. I chose to use Spotify for Podcasters as its free and then take the RSS feed from there to share on Apple. I have also published episodes on Substack. Following the analytics is confusing me.
I wanted the theme music to be original so I asked an old friend to help me. I knew he would get my vision for it and so it was quite quick to pull together a theme song and later create some very short sting segues. We had a funny moment where we realised the stings potentially sounded like an episode of Frasier from the 90s. I’m rolling with it.
Skills I already had:
My background is in performing. I was in a girl band when I was 12, I did a vocal performance degree, and I spent 10+ years as a professional singer and vocal coach. So hearing my voice recorded and speaking in general wasn’t a hurdle for me to jump.
Talking to people is my job. Listening and asking questions is part of my toolkit as a coach. Being good at these skills is partly what led me onto the coaching pathway as friends always said I was good to talk to!
Using Garageband to edit audio. I had some experience of this having done demos of my songs over the years so this didn’t take too long to suss out. I just needed to time to finesse piecing things together and mixing the audio towards the end of the process.
Plans for the future:
Get the podcast into the Apple Top 40 Arts chart. Help me by leaving a review and subscribing ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Start planning Season 2 🙌 Suggest a guest or put yourself forward in the comments.
Develop live podcast plans for Autumn 2024 at a secret (very big and exciting) London venue.
I loved all of this but was particularly excited to read the plans for the future part.
I’m excited for the future plans too. Feels fun to share with everyone so you can follow the progress