50. What Have I Learned from Running a Podcast for a Year?

Till now, I have published 50 episodes and many more are in the pipeline. Running a podcast takes a lot more efforts than keeping a blog. Even though, I am still not sure what impact this podcast can bring to kids, parents and educators, I am in it for myself to learn and expand my network in the educational field. That being said, what did I learn running a podcast for a year?

Overcome fear and judgement takes a little process

When I first started the podcast, I was afraid of running the show solely. First, English is not my mother language. Second, it is a podcast for kids and family, I thought it will be nice to have some young hosts to co-host the show with me. 

So, I took some efforts looking for two co-hosts (middle school and high school age) to run the show with me. Sometimes when we have two guests (father& son team or mother&daughter team), we end up having four people on the video chat, which can be a little chaotic. 

Since I run the show, contacting guests and also preparing questions is my key job. In the beginning, I tried to let the co-hosts to prepare their own questions too. But it’s a lot of work for them, and they actually had a hard time coming up with questions. So, I wrote questions for them to ask too. Due to the limitation of the recording device, when I first started, I also drive 30miles to our co-hosts’ place every time when we conduct an interview. That lasted at least 3 months, that’s why I totally feel it was a full time job to run a podcast. 

As the podcast develops, I started to interviewing guests online with our co-hosts. Still, finding a time that can fit for three of us became a hassle. So slowly I started to accept the fact that my co-hosts cannot be at every interview I do. Now, starting 2020, I run this whole show solely. 

In the process, I figured out that having co-hosts is totally to give myself courage. I had fear doing this solely, and I am afraid of listeners judging my pronunciation and accent. Till today, I still find grammar mistakes I made in a sentence or imperfect pronunciation I did on certain words. I know it is not avoidable because I was not born in the U.S. The only thing I can do is to note down these frequent mistakes and keep improving. As a matter of fact, I know I have improved a lot since the first several episodes with the help from my husband (who speaks English as a native).  As a result, The most episodes I do, the less fear I had toward talking to others and expressing myself freely in a second language. I know grammar and accents matters to many podcast listeners, but I have the determination on improving it. Also, I truly believe the mission and purpose behind the podcast, that gives me devotion to keep this podcast running.  

That’s the first thing I learned, overcoming my own fear and others’ judgement takes a little time. I might not be able to run the podcast solely last year, but I am ready this year. I attribute that to my co-hosts who worked with me and supported me at the time when I need that encouragement. 

Self-doubt is the biggest obstacle in achieving our goals

One of the biggest concern for an interview based podcast is to find guests. In the beginning, I limited myself only thinking about people whom I known already. I listed people who I have worked with and friends whom I can talk to. As a result, it is not that easy to ask people around me that fit all of the criteria I have in mind. For example, when I was doing the series on “Study and Become”, I really want to find a student from a private high school in the Bay Area. I asked parents from Hacker, but their kids either are graduating soon, or they have nothing they think they can share with me on a podcast. I ended up searching online myself, find the exact person I want to interview, and had a great conversation on the topic (Creativity and Entrepreneurship) that I care. 

Through out this whole process of reaching out to guest, I have grown from thinking “My podcast is so new and only had a few episodes, how would this kind of guest want to join my interview” to “This is the exact person I am looking for, reach out boldly and plan to deal with rejection.” The transformation came from me trying to reach to those influencer guests and almost ALWAYS end up booking them. I started to think, “oh, even this level of guests want to be on my show, I guess my podcast is not bad at all!” The series on “Change Makers in Education” really strengthen my belief on that because the guests I booked are internationally known for their achievement in the education field. 

From then on, I stopped the self-doubt thinking, and just simply focus on what kind of guests would fit best for the series that I planned. It is indeed an eye-opening experience since I shifted my mindset and I am so astounded how much my show has evolved since then. 

I know the learning “Self-doubt is the biggest obstacle in achieving our goals” sounds cliche, but experiencing through it made me a much better entrepreneur and risk taker. I hope everyone who is in the process of reaching their goals can learn that through their own experience. 

Simplicity also means efficiency

I tried many ways to run this podcast in 2019. I tried talking to guests in person, I tried opening the door to listeners while recording the live stream experience, I tried scheduling with co-hosts at the same time figuring out the guests’ time. All in all, it was a lot to deal with when I made it very complicated. That’s why back in October, I decided to take a break and see how I can improve my current way of running this podcast. 

Starting in 2020, I decided to simplify the process of running this podcast.  First, I reach out to guests in bulk and move on to find replacement when they don’t respond. I use Calendly to ask guests to book time with me and wrote down all necessary tips on the confirmation page so I don’t repeat the same email for every guest. 

Then, I made a promise to all guests to send out questions for the interview 1-2 days before the interview and I have never missed sending one ever since. These questions are important for me to research about the guest and conduct better interviews. At the same time it acts as a reminder for the guests that the interview is coming up in 1-2 days so they won’t forget. 

Lastly, I conduct the interview on the scheduled day and enjoy a great conversation with the guests. I edit all the episodes from the same series at a designated time, and that reduces all the pressure of editing and publishing the episode last minute.  It becomes a smooth process where I bulk plan and edit the podcast. I find it much relaxing and at ease when I know I am 2-3 months ahead of my publishing schedule. 

Simplicity brought me a lot of efficiency running this podcast and I hope I can keep improving the process to make it even better. 

Never underestimate the power of consistency

I started this podcast mainly for two reasons: I want to keep learning and I enjoy talking to people. On top of that, I hope these conversations can inspire others and help them to dream big and take action on their ideas. 

Personally, I have to say every conversation I had with the guests is an eye-opening experience. My knowledge expanded from kids’ entrepreneurship to overall education for youth, critical skills for young leaders and making very specific products for a specific market. Knowing what I know now compare to what I know a year ago, it has been a big growth journey. The only rule I have set for this podcast is to publish consistently - once per week. 

It is not easy to have a weekly podcast while working full time as a product designer. There were difficulties finding guests, scheduling guests and even have time to publish and promote the podcast. But I know it is the level of consistency that bring me great growth and also potential audiences in the future. As a user experience designers, I know the importance of knowing our “end users” through consistent research and interviews. So, this podcast also becomes my weekly user research session for any educational related products I plan to do in the future. 

I don’t know how long I would keep running this podcast. But, as my last headline says “Never underestimate the power of consistency”, let’s see what will happen once I get to 50 episodes, 100 episodes and even more. Marching forward, 2020!