I'm restarting the High Signal podcast

I've restarted my High Signal podcast! I'm going to be interviewing bootstrapped founders on a monthly basis. I've been hesitant in the past about podcasting as it's a bigger time commitment than newsletters.

Here's why I've changed my mind:

Here's why:

Podcasts are fun

I love interviewing founders and finding out how they started their businesses. I get to ask someone successful a bunch of questions and satisfy my own curiousity? I'll take that deal!

Podcasts and YouTube are also a great way to talk to people you wouldn't otherwise have the opportunity to meet. It's a pretty great way to expand your network and you can get to know a lot more about a person from having a live chat with them than sending them a list of questions over email. It's also a more fun way to interact with someone. Talking to someone for an hour feels a lot more natural.

I think as well it's smart to have another marketing arm for my High Signal newsletter and hopefully this will be another way to attract newsletter subscribers. It's also an opportunity to promote other things like my social media ghostwriting and my job board template.

Podcasts are less easy to steal

Unfortunately, it's very easy to rip off another newsletter and pass it off as your own. But you can't pretend to be me and re-publish my podcasts as your own content. So I think there's an advantage to making content that is unique to one person and is, hopefully, unstealable. I think it will also help my own personal brand as well.

Will it make money?

I'm under no illusion - most podcasts don't make any money! So the High Signal podcast isn't directly going to make money. I don't think many people pay for podcasts so I'm not going to charge. I don't plan to run ads because

a) ads in podcast are pretty annoying for the listening experience. I always skip them.

b) I think unless you have a huge audience, podcast ad rates don't really make it worthwhile.

c) podcast ads are also more hassle than newsletter ads as you have to record the audio

Instead, I'm going to be using the podcast to promote my High Signal newsletter and my ghostwriting. So instead of promoting other people's businesses, I'm going to be promoting my own.

Weekly vs a monthly podcast?

I'm going to make it a monthly podcast. It's an easy decision for me. For a podcast that isn't my main business, weekly shows are a no-go. It's just way too much time for something which isn't directly going to generate revenue. When you take the show preparation, the recording, the editing and sharing, it's easily 5 hours of work. I can justify that extra time over a month. I can't over a week.

I also think 12 really high quality episodes a year is more valuable than 50 episodes of varying quality. I'm a big believer in having routines when it comes to publishing content. I send my High Signal newsletter out every Wednesday and Friday. I like things going out like clockwork. So I'm going to publish a new episode on the 1st day of every month. That also makes it easier for the audience to stay engaged and know when the next episode is up.

My podcast equipment

Podcast hosting

If you are making a podcast, the one thing you always need to pay for is podcast hosting. A bit like website hosting, this is a place on the web to store your audio. Most options also give you a nice website where your episodes are listed along with things like social media links etc.

In my case, I chose Transistor FM (affiliate). They provide nice looking software but also, very importantly, their co-founder Justin Jackson, spends a lot of time building in public, supporting other founders and writing online. So this is a big advantage of having a personal brand. When you show up a lot and you're a helpful person to other founders, people are going to want to use your software. It's $19 a month, which also gets you unlimited shows. It's a bit of a steal to be honest!

Podcast editing

I've been editing the podcast (and video, it's also on YouTube) in Descript (affiliate). I really like this software! It lets you edit audio or video by editing the transcript. So if you see a spot in the transcript where you rambled on about something you can just cut out that section by removing the text.

There also also a few other nice touches like removing all the filler "ums" and "ahs" so the recordings sound better. You can also adjust the focus on the camera so that when your guest is speaking, the video focuses on them. Descript is awesome but one slight complaint is that as it's desktop app, it is always bugging me to re-start the app for a new version.

Podcast microphone and headphones

In terms of physical equipment, I have a Shure NT-mini USB microphone. It's an ok, entry-level mic but I think I'll upgrade to the Shure MV7 as I see a lot of people recommend it and the audio quality seems a lot better. I use my trusty Sennheiser HD50 headphones, which are a relic from my days as a DJ in my 20s.

My first new episode is with Lukas Hermann on growing a timer SaaS to over $10k MRR:

Or you can watch it on YouTube