What I learned from 2 years of podcasting

I’d been told repeatedly by my business coach and others’ in my industry that podcasting would be useful for my business. I wasn’t so sure and I really resisted setting up a podcast. There were a multitude of reasons that stopped me. When I say a multitude, what I really mean is – imposter syndrome – in every form.

I knew podcasting could be good for my business and I would be putting myself out there in a way I hadn’t done before. But still….. podcasting….. I wasn’t convinced I was the person for the job.

Eventually I gave in. I asked everyone I knew who had a podcast for advice, took a (free) course, wrestled with the tech and in 2024 I launched my podcast.

I wasn’t expecting huge results. But the 30 – 40 downloads a week was a bit dispiriting and, quickly it began to feel a little bit thankless. It also didn’t do anything for my business.

Luckily, a chance meeting with Neal Veglio from Podknows Podcasting changed all that. He told me he could get me to love podcasting. I didn’t believe him but thought ‘what have I got to lose?’ And went ahead.

We re-strategised, re-branded and re-launched the podcast. It’s now had 385k downloads (and counting -podcasting SEO and marketing is a thing). Here’s what I’ve learned along the way …

We all know that when podcasting, we’re doing it as a part of our marketing strategy. But it’s not enough to just have a wafty ‘it falls into marketing’ approach and leave it there.

You need a strategy:

Who is it for? (Same with web design, the more niched down it is, the more you can target your ideal client)

What do you want it to do?

There’s no wrong answer here. It’s *your* podcast and you get to make it about whatever you like. But the more intentional you are with it, the more successful it will be.

This seems easy and, for the first few episodes, it will be. Then fatigue will hit, you won’t necessarily feel 100% confident and that’s when changes to your tone/depth of knowledge etc, creeps in. Think of this stage as the equivalent of when you throw up that extra page on a website and it doesn’t *quite* fit with the rest of the site – this is the same when the initial enthusiasm dies down.

Having a brand guideline on the messaging is really going to save you here. Bring it back to:

You’ll see with my own podcast that I cover everything from running a web design business, mindset, dealing with clients, down to which tools to build (and which to avoid) and everything in-between. The aim is to fill the gaps that people have in their knowledge of building websites and a web design business.

Ok, this applies to every area of your work and your marketing. And if this is something you’re struggling with then my Phoenix Programme will really help you. But as we’re talking about podcasting for your business, think about what’s a good schedule for releasing episodes. Some people go with seasons, batch record content over a couple of days and release weekly. Others’ release weekly, fortnightly, include bonus episodes, etc.

For me, publishing fortnightly works. It gives me a chance to produce quality episodes without overloading myself, or my podcast producer. It also stops me from feeling that I’m just rushing out content to fulfil a content schedule, rather than something that’s valuable to the listener.

If you’ve got this far into podcasting setup for your business then of course you’ll be thinking it’s all intentional. But trust me, as someone who saw it as a ‘nice to have’ in the beginning, the main thing I was looking to get from my podcast was followers and ratings.

It was only when I started working with my podcast producer that I discovered this was the wrong approach and what I *should* have been focusing on was selling my own products and services. I switched this up and, within 3 episodes I had made sales of my website designer’s contract pack. These days my podcast regularly does the heavy lifting with people booking onto my Sparks Group Mentoring and Phoenix programmes, as well as regularly selling the courses and packs through the website.

In the same way web designers never recommend people building their own websites, as they don’t know SEO, UX design, copywriting, etc, this all applies to podcasts. The tech is different and new – not just for recording, but for publishing, too. Podcasting SEO is different and there’s a whole host of understanding around downloads, listener retention etc, that you just don’t know about. If you’re serious about your podcast, you’ll need to invest in working with a producer.

Trust me, you’re unlikely to get these kind of results on your own.

With podcasting having a dominance in the freelancer market, now’s a great time to setup and become known as an authority in your industry. Hopefully, after reading this post, you’ll avoid the mistakes I made in the early days of my podcast. If you do setup your own podcast, I’d love to hear about it – click here to email me.

If you’d like to read more about my podcasting journey, here’s my post on This Demanding Life: What I learned from a year of podcasting.

And a guest post I wrote for my producer, Neal: How I launched my mentoring business through my podcast.

You can also listen to my podcast episode here: