3 Steps to Improving Your Podcast: Gear, Process, and Production

If you've been podcasting for maybe more than an episode, you likely have thought to yourself, “How can I make this better?” We all are, and we're always trying to make our shows better, more effective, more impactful, and more engaging, but ultimately improvement tends to come down to three categories.

Today we're going to talk about those three pieces and how to make changes in each of them that can help you feel better about your show's end result, but also, and maybe more importantly, about your show's process.

Welcome to The More Profitable Podcast with Stacey Harris. I'm Stacey. This is the spot to learn more about the strategies, tactics, and tools you need to build your more profitable podcast. My team and I work every day with podcasters like you to shift shows from frustrating time sucks to productive members of your sales team, because your show should be built to generate and convert leads. So let's get into it.

Spoiler alert. We're going to be talking about what's coming next month. I specifically wanted to have this episode here because I think it is a really good on-ramp to the conversation we start having next month, and that's podcast maintenance.

Next month is August. You may or may not know that, spoiler alert again. It's August next month, which is going to start next week. So, right here next week, you will find the first of four podcast housekeeping episodes.

If you've been listening a while, you've likely noticed these happen every August, but this year's a little different. We have revamped these episodes. Also, they are brand new.

The reason we run these every August is because this is an important thing, these are important pieces to be checking in on. I think today's conversation is such a good first step into getting to think about improving your show and understanding what lever you want to pull here that is going to help you prioritize the level at which you look at these things through the course of the next month as we work through podcast housekeeping.

We are going to have an opportunity for you to bring me questions from this episode, from the Podcast Housekeeping Series next month in what will be our final Roundtable of 2024.

If you would like to join me for Podcasting for Profitability Roundtable on August 14th, be sure to head over now to uncommonlymore.com/roundtable. As I said, this will be our last Roundtable of the year as we shift gears to answering these questions over on the private podcast, over in The Podcast Newsroom.

This is your opportunity to do the group work of the housekeeping series and the conversation we're having today. Make sure you reserve your seat. Again, uncommonlymore.com/roundtable to reserve your seat. After you reserve your seat, make sure you submit a question for the call because I'm looking forward to chatting with you.

Upgrading your show is going to fall into one of three categories. Your gear, your process, and your production. Now, small asterisk, there is also the piece around promotion and actually marketing your show, but we're not going to talk about that today.

Today we're going to talk solely about the development of the product that is your podcast. I think we have to start with upgrading your gear because it is the lever we are all most ready to pull at any point in time, and frankly, probably has the smallest impact on our show of the things we're going to talk about today.

So, lots of fun, not super valuable. I want to talk about it still though because I think the most impactful gear or equipment changes you can make actually have very little to do with your microphone and more to do with the pieces around your microphone.

So, first and foremost, yes, upgrading your mic can be hugely beneficial. Upgrading how your mic sits is more beneficial. So, A, I'm going to include in the show notes a link to an episode we did all around improving your audio quality without replacing your microphone. We'll link to that.

But what I want to draw attention to here is where your microphone is sitting and really what it's sitting in. If you're not loving the sound quality, maybe there's a lot of noise, or maybe you're hearing a thumbing or something, I want you to let me know, is your mic on your desk?

Because if your microphone is currently sitting on a stand on your desk, on your tabletop, and you're touching your desk at all, your mic is picking up those vibrations. We talk about this a little bit in the sound quality episode, so you'll hear me talk about this more there.

But one of the simplest things you can do if you're unhappy with the quality of your microphone or the quality of your audio is getting a boom, an arm, whatever you want to call it. I'll have a link to some options in the show notes.

But all this does is it connects your mic to your desk via a bar so that your mic is floating. If you have seen pictures of me, if you have seen me on Zoom, you have seen my white Rode podcaster mic floating in front of my face as if by magic, but it's held up by a Rode arm, a boom, an attachment that sticks to my desk.

This can be a really quick way to get your mic better positioned to your mouth, first and foremost, but also up off your desk so that it's not getting those vibrations of you touching the table.

I could shake this table right now, and it's not going to change, in fact, I just did, it's not going to change how you hear me outside of the fact that I giggled a little, and so that's a really entry-level, easy way to do this.

The gear element that I want you to be thinking about that not enough podcasters do is actually where you're recording into. Specifically, if you have guests on your show, upgrading from something like Zoom or Google Meet and shifting into something like Riverside.fm, Zencastr, something like that, my recommendation without any hesitation is Riverside.fm.

I really love Riverside. When we feed feature guests on this show, that's how we record it. If like me, you do not have guests very often, here's how I suggest doing this, I turn it on on the months I need it and cancel it on the months I don't need it.

I will often batch record interviews or batch record conversations that I want to feature on the show so that I can get those all recorded in a month and then pepper them out as needed but I love, love, love this move if you're featuring guests if it's a recurring hot important part of your show because the audio quality isn't changed. When you have audio coming out of Zoom, it's compressed because their priority is to deliver these files to you as efficiently as possible and their priority is your live conversation.

With Riverside.fm, Zencastr, or SquadCast, with these tools, the priority is the recording quality. You may see lags in your live video, but you are recording perfectly with no lag, video, and audio are separate for each guest so that you have maximum editing potential.

Again, this is the thing I don't think we think enough about, is we don't think enough about the edit. When we're looking at our gear, thinking about the edit is important. What is going to make it as seamless as possible? What is going to give us the most options possible?

That means upgrading out of something like Zoom or Google Meet and shifting into something that is built to do the job you're trying to get done. Switching to something like Riverside.fm is going to be hugely impactful in the quality and the experience for you, for your guest, and for the listener.

When you're upgrading your gear or if you're thinking about upgrading your gear, I want you to shift away from running out and buying a new mic and instead think about where am I recording. What am I recording into?

I know a lot of solo podcasters who are using Zoom and they're handing over that audio file and guess what? It's been compressed. My chair’s hella squeaky and oftentimes, there’ll be a little squeak and we're able to clean that up because we have the full range of audio because I record my solo episodes honestly into GarageBand.

It's not going to do anything I don't want it to do and I'm able to hand over a high-quality audio to Lauri who is the editor on our team and she's able to do her incredible work getting this cleaned up, removing any squeaks that might get picked up, because it's all here. No compression has already happened. We're getting absolutely everything for better or worse.

That means we have as many options as we may need. Now, if we're factoring in having a guest here too, and I've got two pieces, let's say you and a guest record, your guest is saying something hugely impactful, and your dog goes nutty bananas. I'm talking full-on cartoon mailman nuts.

He wants to jump through the mail slot and eat the mail carrier. It's like every cartoon we've ever seen. Let's say. If I have separate feeds, if I have separate audio tracks for you and your guest, I can still hear on the final production, final edit, that incredible insight from your guest without any mention of your pup.

Now, it may distract your guests, so maybe this isn't the best example, but the end result will not include that because I have maximum editing options, and that's what I want you to be looking for when you're talking about using a recording tool, what's going to give me the most potential, the most options, the most opportunity in the edit.

That's going to be using something like Riverside.fm. That's going to be using something like GarageBand or Audacity, if you're recording a solo show, record it into editing software and then just export that file.

You don't need to do any editing to it, depending on your arrangement with your editor, but you're going to have high-quality audio to hand over to them that hasn't been compressed or played with in any way. That's huge.

The second piece is all about you, babes. It's your process. You have heard me until the cows come home talk about the way you batch, breaking up your planning and your recording and your prep and making sure that each of these steps are batched but you're not doing any of them all together episode by episode.

If you've not heard me talk about that I will have a link in the show notes to episodes where we talk about it but this is your fastest path to changing the way your show feels.

This is the one element that is so completely only in your control. Although we've talked a lot about breaking up the planning and recording stages, prepping first, batching, and things like that, today I want to talk about your environment and your setup.

We talk about this a lot strategically. But let's talk about your experience. If you're somebody who gets wiped out at the end of a call day, then your call days should not be where you're recording episodes. If you are somebody who gets absolutely fired up from being on calls with clients, tack on a little recording session at the end of that so that you can use that energy to propel your episode and move you forward.

If you're somebody who by the time you get to the end of the week, you're like, "I want to say nothing. I want to talk to no one. I am ready for weekend mode, bring on the margaritas," then Friday afternoon is probably not going to be your best recording time or Thursday afternoon if you don't work Friday. It's whatever the last afternoon of your week. It's probably not going to want to be where you record.

On the flip side, if you're somebody who comes into the week with gusto, energy, and excitement, then that's where you should be recording. Use what works. If you don't know this about yourself already, which, fair, start debriefing your weeks.

This is something I learned from Tara Newman. This is something I do every week. This is something that I have done inconsistently for years, but finally—and Tara's going to hear this and slap me for this—but finally really got serious about consistently doing and not just doing when I didn't feel good because that's what was happening before is just when I would be mad, that's when I would do it and not any other times.

Now I do it every single week. It has helped me get clear about where these things fall, where my ebb and flow is, where my energy is best, and where I'm not going to be uber productive with this, where it's going to be harder for me to get this done.

If you already know this about yourself, start making these adjustments, and if you don't know what these times are, start making small adjustments, and then make some notes in that debrief.

Start making small 1% changes, one at a time, and record your insights. It's going to take weeks or months. But as you start to make these changes, you'll find that it gets easier and easier.

In a lot of cases, you can be making educated guesses. This isn't going to be something that's going to take you five years to figure out, but as somebody who identifies as wildly self-aware, as somebody who is very mindful about my energy and my capacity and maximizing when I am batching things and when I am doing things, the insights I've gotten this year have been hugely helpful week to week.

There are chunks and batches that I'm doing now differently than I did this time last year because of the insights from those debriefs. This is the most immediately, physically, and mentally impactful change you can make, is in your process because this is the one where your hands are on the wheel entirely.

You get to choose, am I going to do this when I feel good? Am I going to do this in a way that is sustainable? Am I going to do this in a way that supports me and where I'm really at my best? Or, am I going to make this harder?

Because I'll be honest, the show's going to get done either way. The show has to get done either way. You've committed to this. If you are like most of my clients, you've been doing this for a little while.

Sometimes it's easy. Sometimes it's not easy, it's maybe even hard. Where can we optimize doing it most often? The easy way. Never are we going to get all the time easy, but where can we get most often easy and prioritize there?

The third piece I want to talk about is production, looking at what is happening in your production process and potentially removing some of that production process from your plate is going to give you the capacity to focus on the promotion stuff that we referenced earlier, is going to give you the capacity to grow and engage in other parts of your business, is going to give you the capacity to be playing with your actual recording process.

I'll be honest, I really held on to my show for a long time, even after I had the team doing the incredible work that the team does for all of our clients, I still held on to my show.

I cannot express how deeply I felt the impact of handing over my show and the capacity that it bought back for me to do things like that stupid weekly debrief—which granted, I handed the show off a long time before I did that—but all of these pieces.

All of these things that allow me to be more present and allow me to be more aware and allow me to be more honest with myself about the process came on the other side of me letting go of production because it was really easy for me to do because I can do it.

We can do lots of things. I can even do this particular thing pretty freaking well. That does not mean I am the person to do it. It does not mean I am the best person for that job, even if I can do it, even if I can do it really well, even if I can do it really well and really easily.

It still takes capacity, it still takes time, it still takes mental energy, and it still takes a physical space on my calendar. So handing it off and getting really clear on my role in this show, which is talent, not production, is hugely impactful in the experience of my show and hugely impactful to the impact of my show because I'm able to really show up for this part where you and I connect because I don't have to worry about the other parts.

The same is true for, when I talk about upgrading your process, batching the different parts of it, doing things like planning, recording, editing, and all of these things, these tasks separately is a really good bridge for this.

It doesn't have to immediately be you run out and hire Uncommonly More or someone like us. Allegedly, like us. It has to be one step in the direction. Maybe it's sitting down with me for a Podcast Strategy Intensive so that we can be really clear and really intentional about how your show is going to go so we can together batch all of your planning and prep so that all you have left is recording in production.

Or working with me in intensives and then bringing in an editor who is just going to take your direction and do basic edits and then you're going to handle some of the other elements of post-production.

It can look like a lot of things. In these last few months, here's what we've done: We've launched brand new shows. We've relaunched existing shows. We’ve rebranded shows. We've refreshed production processes for clients so that they could get more time, more clarity, and build stronger assets.

All of that was because those clients raised their hands and decided it was time for them to do something differently because continuing down the road they were continuing down, whether they were working with another production partner or they were DIYing—there have been instances of both across all of those examples—was no longer sustainable, was no longer leading them to the goals and the results they wanted, but instead, we're making them feel burned out, frustrated.

It was too heavy a boulder to carry. If you're feeling that way right now, it's time to make some kind of change. It's time to upgrade some element of your production in some way because you have built a really important mechanism in your business.

For most of the podcasters I talk to—and I'm saying most because I don't like to generalize all all the time—but for most of us, this is at the core of our marketing. Our email, our social, our networking, our speaking engagements, and our appearing at other people's podcasts are built off the work we do here.

The content and the information we craft and create and put together here, everything else rolls off of this hill. So I need to be building this hill not just as effectively as I can but as efficiently as I can. The same is very likely true for you.

If you would like some help with this, if you want us to have a conversation about what changing your production could look like, let's do that, uncommonlymore.com/intensive is the best place to book a call.

If you know you want to get started with production right now, if you know that it is time for you to hand over that piece specifically, head on over to uncommonlymore.com/production. Honestly, you will find both things on the website.

If you're not sure which of these levers to pull, then an intensive is going to be the right fit. So, uncommonlymore.com/intensive. Again, if you're not sure, book a call on one of those pages and you and I will have that conversation. I am more than happy to point you in a direction.

I want you to make sure you come right back here next week for the first episode of the newly revamped Podcast Housekeeping Series. We will, as always, be digging in with short but actionable episodes. Be ready to do the damn thing. All right, I'll see you right back here next week. Bye.

Thanks so much for listening to this show. Remember that content consumption does not make changes, so commit to doing something from today's episode. Maybe it's taking action on what we talked about. Maybe it's reaching out to me and learning more about Podcast Strategy Intensives or what podcast production looks like with our team. All of that is over at uncommonlymore.com.

If you haven't yet signed up for The Podcast Newsroom, I want to remind you that is a great next step. If you're not really sure what comes next, hang out over there. Get those exclusive private episodes. That's over at podcastnewsroom.com. The last favor I will ask, because social proof is endlessly important for sure, is to leave a rating and review for the show. If you go to ratethispodcast.com/more, that's the easiest way to do it. But I would love to hear what you thought of the show, what you think of the show, and if the show has been helpful for you. I can't wait to chat with you. This is just the start of the conversation. Reach out so we can keep it going. Talk soon.