How To Create Your Own Podcast (or YouTube Channel)

This week, a slightly different episode. I’m answering a question about how to start a podcast, a blog or a YouTube channel. 

 

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Script

Episode 139

Hello and welcome to episode 139 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.

A question I am asked more and more these days is how do you start a blog, podcast, YouTube channel or even a newsletter, so I thought okay, I will answer that question this week because it is linked to productivity and being better with your time management. 

Now, before we get to the question, if you are ready to take your time management and productivity to the next level and build a system fit for the twenty-first century and be ready for when we return to a semblance of normalcy, then now is a great time to get yourself enrolled in the course. 

And if you are not yet ready to buy the course, I do have a number of resources that will give you an overview of the fundamentals of building the system. All the links are in the show notes. 

Okay, it’s now time for me to hand you over to the mystery podcast voice for this week’s question. 

This week’s question comes from Jim. Jim asks: Hi Carl, how do you start and run an effective YouTube channel (or podcast or blog)? I think this is a valuable question for people, like me, who would like to start a podcast or YouTube channel in their specific area of expertise.

Hi Jim, thank you very much for your question. 

Now, before you get started with something like this you do need to understand the time sacrifice you are going to have to make each week or each month. It’s great that you have the idea of wanting to start a podcast, YouTube channel or blog, but the consideration I see a lot of people missing is just how much time it takes to create something like this every week. So let me tell you how much time I need to commit each week to produce the content I produce each week.

First my blog. To write a 1,000-word blog, edit and publish it takes me three hours. I allocate ninety minutes for writing the draft. Then I have a further hour of editing and finally thirty minutes to post the blog post and create the blog’s image.

My YouTube videos take around four to five hours each week. It depends on how many videos I produce. If I am publishing two videos in a given week, I need around three to four hours and three videos would need the full five hours to record, edit and publish with subtitles.

This podcast takes around two hours each week. There’s the script to write and the recording, editing and posting. 

I also write two newsletters each week. Each one of those takes around two hours to produce and publish. 

In total, I spend around fourteen hours each week producing my content. 

Now, of course, you probably won’t be producing six to seven pieces of content each week, but those time estimates should give a rough figure to base your estimates on.

So, if you already feel overwhelmed by the amount of work you have each week, will you be able to commit to a further three hours of work? 

And that brings me conveniently to my next tip. You have to commit to this every week (or month) for the next four to five years. 

Creating a blog, podcast or YouTube channel is not a one-off event. It is a long-term commitment. This is not just about writing one post and thinking you have done it. It’s about writing or recording multiple posts. 

Over the last four years, I have written nearly 300 blog posts, produced 138 podcasts and over 700 YouTube videos. It’s a big commitment. 

So the first question you will have to ask yourself is; are you willing to commit to that time? Is so, then let’s move on to the next tip.

Now, you may have read all sorts of advice on starting something like this. And there will inevitably be a list of questions about who your target audience is, what your branding should be and how will you host it. 

In my experience, that’s all complete rubbish and it invites you to spend far too much time procrastinating. I’ve known so many people that after three or four years are still trying to figure out who their target audience will be, what branding they should use and where to host their podcast. 

None of this matters in the beginning. While you are figuring all that out. You have nothing. All you have is an idea. It would be far better to take your idea and start writing. Start publishing blogs, podcasts or whatever on the cheapest—preferably free—platform. You will never really know who your audience is until you get something out there. Then you will find out. 

Once you have an audience, it is very easy to move your blog or podcast to your own website where you can maintain and curate your own content.

Trust me on this one. I made those mistakes in the beginning. I spent far too long thinking about who my target audience should be, and once I began publishing, I soon discovered I was completely wrong. 

So, just get something out there. Once you have content out, you will start to get some analytics and that will tell you the truth far faster than if you try and guess. 

As you produce more content, you will also develop your branding. Take my blog, for example, my first year or two of writing I just added a random picture I found on Pexels.com. After a year or so, I decided to use duotone images with a subtitle in the picture. That was how I developed my blog’s brand. It evolved over time. I did not, indeed, could not have created that right from the start. It took time. 

The same went for my YouTube channel. If you look at my first few videos and compare them to how I do my videos today, you will see it has been an evolution. The more I learned about my audience the better I was able to ‘brand’ my channels and deliver content that people were asking for. In the early days, the only way I could develop a content list was to think of content that I would find interesting and make that.

And speaking of content or topics: How do you come up with ideas week after week? That’s a good question. The only way that has worked for me is to create a content list in my notes app and add topics as and when I thought of them. 

Now, here I would advise that before you begin creating your content you draw up a list of at least twenty topics. The goal in these early days is to get twenty pieces of content out. As you write or record you will get more ideas. I find as I read articles, watch other YouTube videos or listen to podcasts I get ideas I think would be helpful and interesting. I then add these to my topic’s list. So you do not need to worry about coming up with ideas. Once you get started, you develop a keen sense of what will be interesting to your audience. 

Now a couple of other points I feel you do need to understand. First is don’t go for perfection. You will not be perfect in your early days. You will get it wrong sometimes. You will make great content and not so great content. That’s fine and that’s perfectly normal. What is more important is that you ’ship’. Whatever your publishing schedule is, stick to it. 

For your audience what’s worse than the occasional uninteresting post, is inconsistent posts. I subscribe to James Clear’s 3,2,1 weekly newsletter. (For those of you who don’t know, James Clear is the author of Atomic Habits). Every Thursday evening that newsletter arrives. Tony Robbins is another newsletter that is consistent every week. Every Sunday evening, I get Tony’s newsletter. 

Then there are other newsletters I subscribe to that are woefully inconsistent. They start off with a bang, and then slowly disappear. 

And the worst kind of content are those that come out in a flurry of emails, podcasts and blog posts when they are trying to sell you something and once the sales are over, these newsletters disappear. That just leaves a very bad taste and is guaranteed to lose you your audience. 

The most effective way I have found for ensuring I maintain consistency is to set aside a fixed time each week to create my content. As I prepare this script, it is Tuesday morning. I always prepare the podcast script on a Tuesday morning. I have the same fixed time for my blog posts. Monday morning is when I write my blog post and Friday afternoons is my audio/visual day where I record my YouTube videos. 

The only way I can build in the consistency needed to create my content is to fix the time in my calendar. For me, what goes on my calendar gets done. So, if it’s on my calendar it will get done. 

The reality is if you want to create a blog, podcast or YouTube channel you need to be serious. You need to be in it for the long-term and that means a minimum of four to six years. 

One final point. Don’t go looking at your numbers in the first six to twelve months. If you are writing or recording to build an audience you are never going to build a large audience in the first year or so. If you start obsessing about how many people are following you or how many subscribers you have you will be very very disappointed. It is a slow process. The only way you build an audience is through consistently putting out content week after week. There are no short cuts. 

Create content because you want to help people. You want to teach people something, educate them on a topic close to your heart or because you want to enjoy the journey of building something from scratch. Never do it to become an ‘influencer’. 

If the only reason you want to create a YouTube channel or an Instagram page is to become an influencer, you will fail today. There are far too many people doing that, and the vast majority of those people fail. Give people something of value and you will succeed.

All you need is PACT. Patience, Action, Consistency and Time. With those four elements, you will build something you can be very proud of. 

Thank you, Jim, for the question and thank you to all of you for listening. It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.