Q+A: The best & worst parts of having a daily podcast

Every day for the last five and a half years, Fear & Greed has published at least one podcast episode exploring the latest business news. Today, Sean Aylmer and Michael Thompson discuss the best and worst parts of hosting and producing a daily podcast.

Fear & Greed Q+A: Join Sean Aylmer, Michael Thompson and Adam Lang as they answer questions on business, investing, economics, politics and more. If you have your own question, get in touch via our website, LinkedIn, Instagram or Facebook.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to Fearing Greed Q and A, where we ask
and answer questions about business, investing, economics, politics and more.
I'm Sean Elmer, and good morning, Michael Thompson.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Hello Sean.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Now on a Sunday, we do tend to be more
relaxed and we start talking about stuff we know a
fair bit about.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Yes, we do.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Remember back in COVID the advice was don't start a podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Ah, because everybody else in the world, everyone else in
the world did well.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
We're five and a half years through. We have literally
I don't know the number, but it would be measured
certainly in the thousands of shows I've done.

Speaker 3 (00:46):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
And what I thought we're talking about today the best
part and the worst part of producing a podcast, putting
one together.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
That's a great idea.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
It sounds like a great idea doing a podcast. You'll
stand there, you'll talk about something you know, and people
will love it.

Speaker 3 (01:09):
In theory.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
In theory, I remember the first podcast we did publicly
and I must say yourself myself, and we had a
little bit of a profile, not a huge profile, but
I remember it came out and I was walking down
the street looking at our data numbers and I think
it got to like forty or something or other. Yeah,

(01:32):
forty people, and I was so excited that forty people
had listened to a podcast. But Michael Listen's learned.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
Yeah, yeah, goodness me. And it's funny to think that
on that first day it was forty people. And now
we're somewhere in the downloads across the last kind of
five years is twenty two, twenty three, twenty four million.
It is extraordinary to think that it has has grown
like that. But it does come back to some of

(02:02):
these these core lessons and a lot of things that
my background is in radio, and that they are just
drummed into you in radio, and the same principles apply
to podcasting, the importance of consistency, of turning up every
single day, and that is one of the reasons why
I think the statistic is that most podcasts stop after

(02:24):
three months because people just don't You don't realize how
much work goes into it. That you just it'll be
fun and it is fun to jump into a studio
and to start talking about something. But after you do that,
you then have to do it again and again and
again and again, and you keep doing it and the
only way that you are going to build an audience

(02:45):
is if the audience knows that you are going to
be there consistently for them, and so that that is
probably the single biggest lesson I think that I have
that's been reinforced for me through doing this podcast. The
importance of just making sure that, hey, we say to
you that we are going to have an episode of
fear and Greet out every single morning at the same time,

(03:06):
we have to do it.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
So that's no different to any content. So people, a
radio announcer, you turn him or her on every morning
on the way to work. You expect them to be there.
There's a cadence to that. There's a cadence to a
news bulletin on a TV show, There's a cadence to
a commentator in a newspaper. Exactly the same for podcasts.

(03:30):
People expect a cadence. People expect it to be there
when they think it's going to be there.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
There is another one, and it does vary a little bit,
and that is about the audio quality. And I'm a
u a pedant, I am a pedant. I am a
self confessed pedant on this. But the thing is that
if you're going to invest your time with us, and
if you're going to spend fifteen minutes listening to us,
then we want you to be able to enjoy it

(03:57):
and hear it clearly. And so we put a lot
of time and effort into making sure that it sounds good.
And we have a fantastic colleague, Luke, who works with
us every day, our audio producer, audio engineer, who just
does a fantastic job in pulling it all together making
sure it sounds crystal clear. And that is another one
of those things that comes from radio and into podcasts

(04:19):
and just emphasizes the fact that you need to put
a little bit of effort. And in the early days, Sean,
do you remember.

Speaker 1 (04:25):
How we would would turn up at my house. Yep,
the audio experts, which I'm not but Michael was, it is,
and you'd end up in so originally we did it
from home, and I did it from the cupboard, literally
a cupboard in the bedroom. And so poor Jackie, you'd
have to wake up at four o'clock in the morning
and listen to me talking to you to do the podcast. Yep,

(04:48):
you haven't been there in the night before, sitting up the studio.
So that was all fun nowadays we do some in
the morning, but we actually do some of the night before,
and so we're not quite up quite as early as
we used.

Speaker 2 (04:59):
To be times a day. This is the thing that
because the news is coming through it all times, we're
recording interviews at different times. We're recording different the afternoon
report and the morning show and all of these things
at all different times of the day. So we've got
home studios to do it in. We have the studios
here at Nova as well that we are based in.

(05:19):
But it is a far cry from also the days
when we just have to pull a blanket over our
heads to do it.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
Do you know what I've been mazed by podcasting is
the one on one relationship you have with the listener.
So you run into people and they say Sean and
they're like, they're my best friend, and we like it.
It is such a thrill to get it, you know.
But I'm thinking to myself, what's your name? I don't
know you, and then they say, no, no, don't we
don't know each other. I just listened to your podcast

(05:45):
and it is a real thrill. Please keep doing that. Yeah, yeah,
yeah it is, But it's that one on one relationship
that you have with listeners, which audio does better than
anywhere else. So I'll tell stories and some I mean,
I've told the story about my local area, and in
the local area actually came to me and said, You're sure,
aren't you so good to sea? And I'm thinking, well,
I don't know. Is it a school mum or something.

(06:06):
She just listen to the podcast wanted to know about
the story about the cafe in the local area that
I was cranky with for example, that is amazing. Yeah,
the things are great.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
Yeah. And also then it is one of the reasons
why and this now sounds like I'm reading from a script,
but I'm not. It is one of the reasons why
podcasting has boomed so much in recent years for advertisers
as well, because it is such a direct way to
talk to people who are interested in your product. Because
it's not the case with say radio, where you are

(06:37):
paying for one hundred percent of the audience and really
only trying to target maybe one percent or half a
percent of that audience. You are trying to get in
touch with people who are specifically interested in what you're
talking about. And when you are getting quite niche, which
is what you do in podcasting, whether you're talking about
business news and finance or investing, or you're talking about
kind of cats or overseas holidays or something super niche

(07:00):
the best kind of drill bits to use if you're
putting a house together. There is a podcast for every
single topic, and I think that advertisers have realized that
as well, the power of speaking specifically to the people
that you want to contact.

Speaker 1 (07:15):
Okay, so the question for both of us the best
part of doing a podcast and the worst part of
doing the podcast. So let's go with the worst pass.
While you're thinking it's relentless. Yeah, every single day you
have to turn up and produce content.

Speaker 2 (07:36):
We've done that to ourselves. So when we said that
we are going to have an episode of fear and
read out three hundred and sixty five days of the year,
there are not many podcasts that do that. We have
done that to ourselves. But we've also made that our
calling cardon a way.

Speaker 1 (07:49):
Yeah yeah, yeah, but I mean to me, that kind
of consistency that's challenging. Yeah, I find at times, ye,
your worst part.

Speaker 3 (07:59):
Of it, Ah, the worst part is sometimes you feel
a little bit cocooned from kind of the way that
what you're talking about comes across.

Speaker 2 (08:09):
Yes, very tright, and it's very hard. Then when you
go back and listen to the podcast.

Speaker 1 (08:14):
The worst when you listen to yourself.

Speaker 2 (08:15):
Yeah, it is such an interesting and odd and confronting
experience to listen to it. And I try to do
that every day. Listen back to the podcast and see, Okay,
how am I coming across as a buffoon? No turns
out I'm nice?

Speaker 1 (08:28):
Oh no, oh okay, all right.

Speaker 2 (08:29):
Well that's very subjective, and I think that's probably the
hardest part, trying to make sure that what we are
doing every day is exactly what we need to do
in order to keep providing what we've said we're going
to offer to listeners.

Speaker 1 (08:43):
Yeah, okay, so the best part of it, I know
what you're going to say on you go first. So
I love journalism like I always have from a sixteen
year old back in Orange I worked at the local newspaper.
I just love getting stuff, working out what's going on,
and having the honor of being able to talk about it.

(09:05):
And it is a privilege. It is an honor to
be able to do that. I just every day I think, Wow,
what's going to happen the day. To go to work
every day and think what's going on? That's really cool.
And I have enjoyed it ever since I was a
first sort of a journalist for a small business newspaper
called Business Sydney back in the early nineties right through

(09:26):
to today. I love every day I go to work.

Speaker 2 (09:30):
Michael, I actually I agree with you on that, but
I'm going to say that I love the fun of
this podcast. That you wouldn't think that a business news
podcast should be as fun as it is.

Speaker 1 (09:42):
What listeners don't realize is how much we giggle it.
Some stories come up and they are kind of ridiculous
and they're funny, and we have to retake them two, three,
four times. Then just occasionally you and I specifically, we
get kind of a fit of giggles about the same thing.

(10:04):
That's it for ten minutes. Yeah, walk away, not see
each other, and you come make in the room, you
laugh again, you walk out again. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:10):
It's like trying to make a podcast with a pair
of fourteen old Yeah, it's like when you're trying not
to laugh in maths class or I mean, you just
cannot stop. But the other thing that I love is
the fact that there is a community around this podcast,
and you mentioned it when you had someone come up
to you and ask you about the cafe and things.
The fact that I find it enormously gratifying that we

(10:32):
are a part of people's lives, everyday lives, and the
fact that they do come to Fear and read for
the news. That is just an amazing thing and it
is one of the reasons why I still love doing
it every single day.

Speaker 1 (10:43):
Yep, me too. Alrighty well, I think that's it. Normally
you do the intro, and I think we'll come to
a sort of a halt here because I'm supposed to
be the outro.

Speaker 2 (10:54):
I can do it.

Speaker 1 (10:54):
No, no, no, no no. I think you've done a
cracking job, Michael. Thank you very much for joining us
this fine Sunday morning.

Speaker 2 (11:01):
Thank you, Sean.

Speaker 1 (11:02):
If you've got a question you'd like us to tackle,
send it through on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, or at Fear
and Greed dot com dot au. I'm sure, amor and
this is Fear and Greed Q and D.