Excuse me, I have something to say…. Thank you! Thank you so very much for listening to and supporting my podcast. I really do appreciate it. Can you believe we are about to release episode 10? I sure cannot. Episode 10 will put us smack bang in the middle of season one of Excuse me. It has been such an incredible journey so far and there is still so much more to come.
Last year when I was contemplating turning my humble little blog into a podcast I had absolutely no idea what I was doing or what I was getting myself into. When I was researching how to start a podcast I was incredibly surprised at how kind and welcoming the global podcast community are. There were so many helpful articles, blog posts, and people are so happy to share their successes with you and help you out with time and money-saving info that they learned the hard way. It was so refreshing to find a community of people online who are all supporting each other and raising each other up.
As we neared the end of 2019 I was feeling super confident about starting my podcast, my major concern was would it find an audience? My podcast kind of went against the advice from a lot of material I was reading, in the sense that there was no specific topic for discussion. I envisioned my podcast as being a place where I could share real stories by real people about their real-life experiences with no topic too big or small to tackle. To me, the idea of this was incredibly engaging and limitless, but all advice I was getting was to make it specific to a particular topic… my topic is life, that’s a particular topic, right?
The only other podcast I was listening to that really resonated as one that was so broad was ‘Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness’ where he learns about topics that he is curious about. He talks with professionals and experts across an incredibly broad array of subjects, it’s a great listen. Another great podcast I was listening to was one that my partner put me onto. ‘The Gays are Revolting’ hosted by Lipp media. The gays are revolting is a socially topical show that speaks directly to the LGBTQIA+ community (and anyone else who wants to listen, of course) and their podcast is definitely something special to listen to. I drew inspiration from these two podcasts and a few others to try and set the tone of my podcast.
As we entered into 2020 I was adamant that this year I was going to follow through with this new venture. I got planning episodes, purchasing web addresses, buying licenses for theme music, updating my equipment, and downloading editing software. I was well on my way to starting my podcast. I drew up a release schedule for my episodes and got to work on a trailer. I must have listened to hundreds of podcast trailers to try and find a format that suited my vision. After about 4,000 takes I had a trailer that I was happy with. I scheduled a trailer release date for 03.03.2020 and stuck to it and within a few days, the Covid_19 pandemic had hit Australia and the whole country and the world was heading into lockdown. For me, this meant that I was being stood down from work with no real idea when I would be going back. Not an ideal situation at all but I was determined to make the most of my new found ‘free time’ I got to work on the podcast!
At the same time as I was hard at work on my podcast my good friend Rochelle Lindquist was going hard with her own vegan podcast. It was great because the two of us were sharing our wins, struggles, and successes with each other and raising each other up with encouragement at the same time.
Due to the pandemic, we were being advised to socially distance ourselves with each other and I saw this as a great conversation to have for my first episode with a featured guest. I had originally planned to have 2 friends on as the first guests but the new government rules put a stop to that and in turn, I had just one friend guest on the show Jaclyn Webb and we had that social distancing conversation.
Once I had the audio I then went in blind to the editing suite where I was surprised to find out that I have the most fun there! Turns out I love editing audio... who knew? Once edited down and an intro and theme music were added, I then had to upload it to my chosen podcast platform (buzzsprout), and away we go!
Another fun stage of the podcast process for me is watching the results come in. You work so hard on creating great and relatable content, then you send it off into the universe for all to judge. Thankfully I have been quite lucky so far and I’ve received some very encouraging feedback for my efforts.
When creating your podcast you also have to look at other collateral to go along with it, such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook accounts, not to mention a lot of people are now putting a video of their podcasts on YouTube. It can be a bit overwhelming, especially if you’re new to the game. But it’s ok, I just keep guessing as I go and I must be doing something right because at the moment I am averaging 123 listeners according to Buzzsprout.
As my podcast evolves episode to episode and I keep learning more and more, I continue to try to remain true to the reason I started the podcast and that was to have real conversations with real people and hopefully educate and inspire others to have more open conversations in their own lives.
To date, I have seen my podcast have some pretty impactful impressions on people, and I am not only proud of my little podcast but also of the listeners who keep coming back. Listeners who tell me that they now identify as a feminist due to the explanation and content featured on my feminist episodes, to a friend and listener of the podcast coming out as non-gender-conforming by using the phrase ‘excuse me, I have something to say in their announcement, to people commenting and starting to share their own stories with me.
Today marks the release of my 10th episode and so far we have been able to open up about Social distancing, Nostalgia, nutrition, feminism, becoming our parents, anxiety, and the arts in lockdown during the pandemic. Excuse me, is a body of work that I am incredibly proud of and I will continue to push myself to keep creating fun and new content for the foreseeable future. So for now, thank you for listening, thank you for reading, thank you for following, subscribing, rating, reviewing, sharing and supporting my humble little podcast! I honestly, really do appreciate it and you. Thank you.
Shaun Phillip Naylor
